Author Archives: woit

This Month’s Hype

Posted on March 14, 2019 by woit

Physics Today seems to have decided to deal with Sabine Hossenfelder’s criticism of a future collider by publishing the least credible possible response: a column by Gordon Kane arguing that string theory predicts new particles of just the right mass … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 31 Comments

In it for the Long Haul

Posted on March 8, 2019 by woit

The CERN Courier today has a long interview with the omnipresent Nima Arkani-Hamed, discussing the current state of HEP physics. About the motivations for a next-generation collider project, I’m pretty much in agreement with him: the main argument is for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 5, 2019 by woit

In recent years string theorists have been having trouble getting taken seriously by the media, a problem they’ve been trying to deal with by enlisting the PR departments of their universities to help. Following Princeton and Stanford, today’s the turn … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments

A Few Items

Posted on February 28, 2019 by woit

A few things that may be of interest: The Perimeter Institute has a new director, Rob Myers, succeeding Neil Turok. Myers is very much a mainstream theorist, and Perimeter over the years has been converging with the mainstream, from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Mathematical Question From Which All Answers Flow

Posted on February 19, 2019 by woit

I’m beginning to suspect that there are actually (at least) two different theoretical HEP physicists named Nima Arkani-Hamed out there. One of them (who I’ll call Nima1) believes the way to understand the fundamental nature of physical reality involves extremely … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on February 15, 2019 by woit

First a couple of items from Paris: Fields medalist Cédric Villani is campaigning for the position of Mayor of Paris. This Sunday there will be a campaign event/book launch for his new book, Immersion: De la science au Parlement. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Where in the World are SUSY and WIMPs?

Posted on February 10, 2019 by woit

Back in 2017, after it had already become clear that negative LHC results about SUSY and WIMPs had falsified theorist’s most popular scenarios for how to extend the Standard Model, Nima Arkani-Hamed gave a summer school talk to students with … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

On Inference

Posted on February 2, 2019 by woit

The first issue of the magazine Inference appeared online back in 2014. At the time, it was surrounded by a significant amount of mystery: who were the editors, what were they trying to do, and who was funding it? I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 50 Comments

Three Short Book Reviews

Posted on January 29, 2019 by woit

Unfortunately I don’t have time now to write about the three following books at the length that they deserve, but here are some quick comments on three books worth your attention: A carefully produced detailed write-up of Sidney Coleman’s Harvard … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 11 Comments

Should the Europeans Give Up?

Posted on January 22, 2019 by woit

The European HEP community is now engaged in a “Strategy Update” process, the next step of which will be an open symposium this May in Granada. Submissions to the process were due last month, and I assume that what was … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Favorite Old Posts | 78 Comments