Monthly Archives: February 2016

Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat

Posted on February 27, 2016 by woit

This week’s New Scientist has an article by Jim Baggott and Daniel Cossins entitled Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat, which deals with the recent controversy over attempts to excuse the failure of string theory by … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 69 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on February 23, 2016 by woit

The online magazine Smashpipe has the first part of a two-part article written by Gerald Alper, who recently came up here to Columbia to talk to me about string theory/etc. It was an interesting conversation, so I’m curious to see … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

Yet More About Grothendieck

Posted on February 16, 2016 by woit

Since Grothendieck’s death somewhat more than a year ago, quite a lot of new material about him and his mathematics has become available. Visit the Grothendieck Circle to find a lot of this, with just one example some new chapters … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on February 13, 2016 by woit

This week’s dramatic announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves was a major milestone for the fields of physics and astrophysics. The LIGO observation validates a lot of previously untested aspects of our understanding of general relativity, and promises the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 30 Comments

Gravitational Wave Predictions

Posted on February 10, 2016 by woit

I think I can confidently predict that tomorrow morning either one of two things will happen: The first observation of gravitational waves will be reported by the LIGO experiment. A large fraction of the scientific community will be really, really … Continue reading →

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Stacks Project Party

Posted on February 7, 2016 by woit

Last night I got to attend a major event of the Manhattan social season, a party celebrating the fact that the Stacks Project has reached the milestone of 5000 pages. As far as anyone knows, no one has ever printed … Continue reading →

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Rutgers Talk

Posted on February 4, 2016 by woit

Slides from my talk at Rutgers are now available here. The idea was just to advertise to physicists there the point of view that is all too familiar to regular readers here. The final speculative comments about relations to mathematics … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments