Author Archives: woit

Multiverses: Science or Science Fiction?

Posted on August 3, 2015 by woit

The September issue of Astronomy magazine is now out, with a cover story on Multiverses: Science or Science Fiction? The author Bob Berman does a good job of explaining both the arguments for various Multiverses, as well as the reasons … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 59 Comments

Math and Physics Summer Camps

Posted on August 1, 2015 by woit

With the kids shipped off to NSA summer camp, now is the time for mathematicians and physicists to head off to their own summer camp experiences. Some of these have websites where the rest of us can participate a bit … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on July 28, 2015 by woit

Symmetry, the FNAL/SLAC run online magazine funded by the DOE, today is running a piece of multiverse mania entitled Is this the only universe?. It’s a rather standard example of the pseudo-scientific hype that has flooded the popular scientific media … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 16 Comments

A Beautiful Question

Posted on July 24, 2015 by woit

Frank Wilczek’s new book, A Beautiful Question, is now out and if you’re at all interested in issues about beauty and the deep structure of reality, you should find a copy and spend some time with it. As he explains … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 37 Comments

Random Notes

Posted on July 21, 2015 by woit

The LHC has now finished the first part of its physics run at 13 TeV, with intensity ramping up more slowly than hoped. Total luminosity/experiment so far is about .1 inverse fb (see here), about a tenth of some earlier … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

GenCyber

Posted on July 18, 2015 by woit

Over the years the NSF has financed various summer camps for high school students, designed to get them interested in mathematics or other areas of science. This summer they’ve teamed up with the NSA to deal with the problem of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 39 Comments

My Summer Vacation

Posted on July 15, 2015 by woit

When I was young, I recall that a standard assignment when restarting school was an essay on “what I did on my summer vacation”. Now that I’m back in the office after a vacation, here’s a version of that, covering … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Summer Break

Posted on June 29, 2015 by woit

Heading out soon for summer vacation travels, this time to Ireland and France, back in about two weeks. While away comments will be shut off. My vacation will spare readers commentary on the rest of the Strings 2015 talks, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Anomalies Revisited

Posted on June 22, 2015 by woit

Some of the talks at Strings 2015 have now appeared online, and one of them I found quite fascinating, Witten’s Anomalies Revisited. Some of his motivation comes from string perturbation theory and M-theory, but the questions he addresses are fundamental, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Convergence

Posted on June 22, 2015 by woit

Another conference that starts today is the Convergence conference at the Perimeter Institute. The concept is explained by Neil Turok here. His point of view is one I’m very much in sympathy with: Turok explains that the “large bandwagon” of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments