Author Archives: woit

The Mystery of Spin

Posted on November 22, 2022 by woit

Scientific American has a new article today about the supposedly mysterious fact that electrons have “spin” even though they aren’t classical spinning material objects. The article doesn’t link to it, but it appears that it is discussing this paper by … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics | 45 Comments

Math Job Rumors

Posted on November 17, 2022 by woit

I noticed yesterday a website named Math Job Rumors that has been operating for a couple months. No idea what the story behind it is other than that it’s clearly a descendant of Economics Job Market Rumors, which had some … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Career Prospects for HEP-TH Students

Posted on November 14, 2022 by woit

Guangyu Xu, a student just finishing his Ph.D. at the Centre for Particle Physics at Durham University, recently sent me a public letter he wrote, explaining the story of his job search, in hopes that it might be useful to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

No Landau-Siegel zeros?

Posted on November 10, 2022 by woit

A couple weeks ago rumors were circulating that Yitang Zhang was claiming a proof of a longstanding open conjecture in number theory, the “no Landau-Siegel zeros” conjecture. Such a proof would be a very major new result. Zhang was a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

Physical Mathematics c. 2022

Posted on November 9, 2022 by woit

The arXiv today has a very comprehensive survey of a conventional point of view on where “Physical Mathematics” is in 2022 and where it is going, written by a group of six authors. “Physical Mathematics” is a term popularized by … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 31, 2022 by woit

CERN on Wednesday is hosting a colloquium talk by Joseph Lykken, who supposedly will discuss Prospects for experimental quantum gravity. There’s by now a long tradition of string theorists dealing with criticism that their research program is inherently immune from … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype, Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 11 Comments

David E. Kaplan interview

Posted on October 23, 2022 by woit

There’s a long interview with David E. Kaplan (not the same person as David B. Kaplan…) by David Zierler at the AIP Oral Histories site. The whole thing is quite interesting and I recommend reading it, but I do want … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Will Machines Have Good Mathematical Taste?

Posted on October 14, 2022 by woit

A question that has always fascinated me about mathematics is that of how the field manages to stay healthy and not degenerate in the way I’ve seen theoretical physics do as it lost new input from experiment. On Twitter, Ash … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 5, 2022 by woit

The hype campaign marches on, just three very recent examples: Can stringy physics rescue the universe from a catastrophic transformation? Cosmic strings’ greatest power? Their ability to confound physicists. TF1 Snowmass Report: Quantum gravity, string theory, and black holes

Posted in This Week's Hype | 56 Comments

Something about England

Posted on September 27, 2022 by woit

Heading to Oxford today, this evening I’ll give a talk there on Unified Theories of Physics. On Saturday I’ll try to find some way to get to the HTLGI Festival in London despite a national rail strike, where I’ll give … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments