Category Archives: Uncategorized

The period of the “String Wars” has now receded far enough into the past that it has become a topic of interest to historians of science. I learned today from Sabine Hossenfelder’s round-up of various articles addressing the history and … Continue reading →

String theory continues to make progress. Today the news is from Megan Fox: “Sometimes I just know things,” she explains. “I accidentally tap into stuff sometimes. I used to do it as a kid, and I do it as an … Continue reading →

During my recent vacation I visited my old friend Nathan Myhrvold, and got a tour of his company’s lab near Bellevue. At that time he told me about what he had been working on recently, which has now appeared on … Continue reading →

A few short items: Things had been going quite well at the LHC, they were ahead of schedule, starting to ramp up intensity for the new run. Then at 5:30 this morning a weasel decided to visit a 66kV transformer, … Continue reading →

Some quick links: Via my Columbia colleague at Mathematics Without Apologies, a documentary about Perelman that I was unaware of. I learned something yesterday about another math department colleague, Mikhail Khovanov: he has games called Ringsanity and Ringiana available as … Continue reading →

I don’t know what this is about, but Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner are here in New York today, with a press conference downtown scheduled at noon, supposedly to announce a mysterious new space exploration initiative, to be called Starshot. … Continue reading →

A few short items: Beams are back in the LHC. You can follow what is going on here real-time, or here for details of this year’s beam commissioning. Physics runs scheduled to start last week of April. There’s a wonderful … Continue reading →

Andrew Wiles is the recipient of this year’s Abel Prize. I have to confess that I found this surprising, since I assumed he’d already won this. His work in general and specifically the work that led to the proof of … Continue reading →