Author Archives: woit

Planck: It’s Just Dust

Posted on September 21, 2014 by woit

The Planck paper with results on dust in the BICEP2 patch of sky is now out, see here. I’m sure experts will weigh in soon and I’ll link to such discussions, but my non-expert take is that Planck is saying … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 41 Comments

Quantum Field Theory: Past, Present and Future

Posted on September 21, 2014 by woit

Video is now available of David Gross’s colloquium this past week at NYU, which had the title Quantum Field Theory: Past, Present and Future. It’s quite interesting to compare his current point of view to that of ten years ago. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Job Action at the Journal of K-theory

Posted on September 20, 2014 by woit

Back in 2007 I wrote here several times (see for example here and here) about the story of the resignation of the editorial board of the Springer journal K-theory in favor of a journal published by Cambridge, called the Journal … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on September 17, 2014 by woit

The MacArthur Foundation today announced “Genius” grants of $625,000 to 21 people, including two mathematicians, Jacob Lurie and Yitang Zhang. While there was a time these awards often went to mathematicians and theoretical physicists (the 1987 winners included string theorists … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on September 5, 2014 by woit

Well worth reading is High Energy Colliding Beams; What Is Their Future, by Burton Richter. Richter is one of the pioneers of designing and building colliders, and he starts off by recounting some of the history. About proposals for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 21 Comments

SUSY Bets

Posted on September 3, 2014 by woit

The LHC long shutdown (LS1) seems to be progressing on schedule, with physics collisions at 13 TeV planned for early April 2015. I’d guess the earliest 13 TeV results might appear at the summer 2015 conferences. The long term plan … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Use the Moment Map, not Noether’s Theorem

Posted on August 28, 2014 by woit

For a fourth provocative slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Use the moment map, not Noether’s Theorem. Pretty much every physics textbook these days explains the way symmetry principles work as: Start with an action functional, invariant under a Lie … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 25 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on August 25, 2014 by woit

Now back from the West Coast, here’s a list of things I’ve run across that may be of interest: One piece of news from Berkeley is that Peter Scholze will be there this fall, giving a course describing new techniques … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Nature is Fundamentally Conformally Invariant

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a third slogan I’ve chosen: Nature is fundamentally conformally invariant. Note the weasel-word “fundamentally”. We know that nature is not conformally invariant, but the kind of thing I have in mind is pure QCD, where the underlying classical theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 33 Comments

Grand Unification of Mathematics and Physics

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a second slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Quantum mechanics is evidence of a grand unification of mathematics and physics. I’m not sure whether this slogan is likely to annoy physicists or mathematicians more, but in any case Edward … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments