Author Archives: woit

John Nash 1928-2015

Posted on May 24, 2015 by woit

I was sorry to hear this morning that John Nash and his wife Alicia died yesterday in a car crash (news story here). They were in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike, heading home from the airport after a … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 20 Comments

Various News

Posted on May 19, 2015 by woit

First test collisions at 6.5 TeV/beam at the LHC are tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning. At CERN today there’s a workshop about the Higgs Machine Learning Challenge. Also on the topic of LHC data analysis news, Tommaso Dorigo announces the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Lurie and Categorifying the Fourier Transform

Posted on May 18, 2015 by woit

Before I turn to the main topic of this posting, a lecture by Jacob Lurie, I’d like to point to something else involving him, a comment and posting at Mathematics Without Apologies, a blog you should be following anyway. On … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 12 Comments

Next Week’s Hype

Posted on May 14, 2015 by woit

I know I should be coming up with material on different topics here, but the multiverse stuff sometimes is just too hard to ignore. Next week’s Comicpalooza in Houston will feature string theorist Gerald Cleaver. His blurb tells us that: … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 28 Comments

Contested Boundaries

Posted on May 13, 2015 by woit

Apologies for too much recent posting here about the tired topic of the string wars. I hope to soon make amends by writing about something new I learned about geometric Langlands. The summer 2015 issue of Perspectives in Science has … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

About That Smoking Gun…

Posted on May 13, 2015 by woit

Aeon magazine has just published a long piece on the current state of cosmology by Ross Andersen. One focus is on Paul Steinhardt and his claims that the popular multiverse/eternal inflation scenario doesn’t explain what it is supposed to, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 33 Comments

The Admiral of the String Theory Wars

Posted on May 7, 2015 by woit

The science magazine Nautilus this month has a profile of me, under the title The Admiral of the String Theory Wars. The writer, Bob Henderson, spent a lot of time talking to me and other people around here, including attending … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 40 Comments

First Collisions of Run 2

Posted on May 5, 2015 by woit

This morning in Geneva saw the first collisions in the revamped LHC, there’s an event display from ATLAS here, CMS here. These collisions are just at the injection energy of 450 GeV/beam, but over the past few weeks beams have … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | Comments Off on First Collisions of Run 2

Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat

Posted on May 2, 2015 by woit

I’ve written a review for the Wall Street Journal of Paul Halpern’s new book Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat (It’s here, unfortunately now behind a paywall [commenter advice is try googling “The Half-life of physicists” and using the Google link]). … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 15 Comments

Dreams of a Final (or Better) Theory

Posted on May 1, 2015 by woit

John Horgan has an interesting interview with Steven Weinberg here. Weinberg isn’t very optimistic about possible progress these days: Horgan: In 1995 you told me that it’s a “terrible time for particle physics.” Are you feeling any better about your … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 21 Comments