Author Archives: woit

Various and Sundry

Posted on September 28, 2018 by woit

First, news related in some way to Australia: This summer the Sydney Morning Herald published a nice profile of Geordie Williamson. By the way, the ICM plenary lectures are finally available on video, with Williamson’s among those worth watching. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Scholze and Stix on the Mochizuki Proof

Posted on September 20, 2018 by woit

As discussed here a couple months ago, Peter Scholze and Jakob Stix believe they have found a serious problem with Mochizuki’s claimed proof of the abc conjecture, and traveled to Kyoto in March to discuss it with him. Their write-up … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture | 37 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 10, 2018 by woit

The Stanford string theory group is not taking the attack by Harvard’s Cumrun Vafa lying down. After an arXiv barrage of papers defending KKLT (see here), they’ve now enlisted the Stanford press office, which has produced a five part promotional … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

Is Quantum Mechanics a Probabilistic Theory?

Posted on September 7, 2018 by woit

There is a simple question about quantum theory that has been increasingly bothering me. I keep hoping that my reading about interpretational issues will turn up a discussion of this point, but that hasn’t happened. I’m hoping someone expert in … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics | 74 Comments

Beyond Weird

Posted on September 5, 2018 by woit

Philip Ball’s Beyond Weird is the best popular survey I’ve seen of the contemporary state of discussions about the “interpretation” of quantum mechanics. It appeared earlier this year in a British edition (which I just read a copy of), with … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 14 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on August 31, 2018 by woit

A collection of links that may be of interest: Talks from the SM at 50 conference held earlier this summer are available here. A detailed expose of the “Fake Science Factory” is here, a related Nature story is here. For … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Quantum Supremacy

Posted on August 26, 2018 by woit

Hasn’t been much that I’ve heard about worth discussing here recently. Presumably everyone is on vacation. I’ll try and gather some things that may be of interest, starting first with the hot topic of “quantum computation”. It looks like this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

On Status of KKLT

Posted on August 16, 2018 by woit

(Warning, this is just more about the topic of the last posting, which for most people will be a good reason to stop reading now. On the other hand, if you’re obsessed with the controversy over string theory, you might … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Swampland | 15 Comments

Theorists with a Swamp, not a Theory

Posted on August 13, 2018 by woit

In recent weeks string theory has been again getting a lot of press attention, because of claims that new progress is being made in the study of the relation of string theory and the real world, via the study of … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland | 15 Comments

Back

Posted on August 6, 2018 by woit

Back now from vacation. On the global warming front, I can report that Northern Norway has gotten rather warm, Svalbard is still pretty cold. While I was away the big mathematics news was from the ICM. As everyone expected, one … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments