Category Archives: Uncategorized

Living in a Post-truth World

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when fundamental physics was making huge dramatic progress and Western democracies were changing in equally dramatic ways, mostly for the better. It truly did seem that the Age of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 58 Comments

The Crisis in String Theory is Worse Than You Think…

Curt Jaimungal has a piece out, an interview with Lenny Susskind, with the title The Crisis in String Theory is Worse Than You Think…. Some of what Susskind has to say is the same as in his recent podcast with … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

Various Items

A few items that may be of interest: Edward Frenkel has a new Youtube show/podcast, entitled AfterMath. I gather that part of the concept here is a follow-on to his book Love and Math, but in this different format. He’s … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Is Spacetime Unraveling?

Quanta magazine has just put out an impressive package of material under the title The Unraveling of Space-Time. Much of it is promoting the “Spacetime is doomed” point of view that influential theorists have been pushing for decades now. A … Continue reading

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Podcast About String Theory, Other Items

A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with Robinson Erhardt, which has now appeared as String Theory and the Crisis in Physics. We mainly talk about the current situation of string theory in physics and the history of how … Continue reading

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The Terrifying Power of Mathematics

Ted Jacobson has put on the arXiv a transcription of a 1947 Feynman letter about his efforts to better understand the Dirac equation, in order to find a path integral formulation of it. The letter also contains some fascinating comments … Continue reading

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Two More

Two more items: I can’t recommend strongly enough that you watch the new Curt Jaimungal podcast with Edward Frenkel. The nominal topic is the recent proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture, but this is introductory material, with geometric Langlands and … Continue reading

Posted in Langlands, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Quick Links

Starting to write a longer, more technical posting, but for now, a few quick links: The film Particle Fever (for more about this, see here) may get made into a musical. With a little luck they’ll skip the nonsense about … Continue reading

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Susskind: String Theory is Not the Theory of the Real World

Lawrence Krauss has just put up a long interview with Lenny Susskind. I was listening to it while doing something else, found myself shocked when the discussion got to the current state of string theory to find that I mostly … Continue reading

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Various and Sundry

A few items of different kinds: The Harvard Math department website has a wonderful profile of Dick Gross. The second International Congress of Basic Science ended a few days ago in Beijing. A huge number of interesting talks, video and … Continue reading

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