Author Archives: woit

Article for Il Manifesto

Posted on August 8, 2012 by woit

Around the time of the Higgs discovery announcement last month I was contacted by someone from the Italian left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto, who asked if I’d write something for them about the Higgs. I told them that it would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Grigori Perelman, the Movie

Posted on August 5, 2012 by woit

I’ve checked the date on this, and it’s not April 1, so maybe this is actually true. According to the website of the Russian television news network RT, James Cameron to produce story of reclusive Russian genius: Celebrated Russian mathematician … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Interview(s) with Vladimir Voevodsky

Posted on August 3, 2012 by woit

Vladimir Voevodsky is a mathematics professor at the IAS in Princeton, most famous for his proof of the Bloch-Kato conjecture, work which won him a Fields Medal in 2002. This conjecture relates the K-theory of fields and their étale cohomology … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Fundamental Physics Prize

Posted on July 31, 2012 by woit

String theory may not be doing so well in the popular press or among physicists, but at least a fabulously wealthy Russian investor is a fan. Yuri Milner recently deposited \$3 million each in the bank accounts of 5 string … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 149 Comments

Strings 2012

Posted on July 28, 2012 by woit

The big yearly string theory conference was held this year in Munich over the past week. Strings 2012 was the latest in a series of conferences that started more than 20 years ago. I’ve now written something about so many … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 54 Comments

Short Items

Posted on July 26, 2012 by woit

A few short items: To compare and contrast to the activities of the Simons Foundation, there’s the Templeton Foundation, which has a $1.7 billion or so endowment to spend: They have a new Big Questions Online site, which asks Does … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Simons Investigators

Posted on July 26, 2012 by woit

The Simons Foundation has announced the surprise selection of 7 mathematicians and 9 theoretical physicists as Simons Investigators. Those selected will get \$100,000/year for 5 years, renewable for another 5, their departments \$10,000/year, their institutions \$22,000/year. According to a Washington … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

How the Higgs can lead us to the dark universe

Posted on July 22, 2012 by woit

The media frenzy surrounding the Higgs discovery announcement has on the whole consisted of stories that reasonably accurately deal with the scientific implications. Journalists have for instance by now learned that “string theory predictions” are a good thing to ignore. … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 18 Comments

Two New Experimental Results

Posted on July 18, 2012 by woit

Today brings news of two new experimental results, both consistent with the Standard Model: At the Higgs Hunting 2012 conference starting today, ATLAS reports results from the WW decay channel for the Higgs. At the July 4 joint announcement, CMS … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 11 Comments

Implications of LHC Results

Posted on July 16, 2012 by woit

The past few days at CERN there has been a workshop on Implications of LHC results for TeV-scale physics. This is the third in a series of these workshops, which have a goal of evaluating the implications of LHC results … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 33 Comments