Monthly Archives: March 2012

This week at Caltech there’s a workshop celebrating the 35th anniversary of N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory. George Musser of Scientific American is covering the workshop here. He reports that N=4 Super Yang-Mills is being describe as the “Darth Vader theory”, … Continue reading →

Theoretical physics, as practiced in the mainstream media, seems to be moving from a mania about multiverses to a religious battle over nothingness. On one side we have physicist Lawrence Krauss, with his best-selling new entry into the atheism book … Continue reading →

In the years before the LHC start-up, one heavily promoted claim that “yes, string theory can too make predictions, and here’s what it predicts the LHC will see” was based on a class of models known as “F-theory”. Detailed superpartner … Continue reading →

The 2012 Abel Prize was awarded this morning to Endre Szemerédi. I know nothing about him or his work, but there’s a webcast going on right now with Tim Gowers providing explanation. Update: The written version of the Gowers talk … Continue reading →

Particle theorist Paul Frampton of the University of North Carolina was arrested in Buenos Aires January 23rd on charges of attempting to smuggle two kilos of cocaine out of the country. He denies the charges, but is in jail in … Continue reading →

The latest New York Review of Books has a review by Freeman Dyson of Margaret Wertheim’s recent book Physics on the Fringe (which I wrote about here). Dyson is much more sympathetic than most physicists to “fringe physicists” like Jim … Continue reading →