Category Archives: Uncategorized

Never Give Up

Alok Jha has a piece in the Guardian yesterday about the failure to find SUSY. His conclusion I think gets the current situation right: Or, as many physicists are now beginning to think, it could be that the venerable theory … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 60 Comments

Latest from the Stacks Project

My colleague Johan de Jong for the last few years has been working on an amazing mathematical endeavor he calls the “Stacks Project”. As boring 20th century technology, this is a work-in-progress document (now nearly 4000 pages), available here. But … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

News From All Over

I confess to mostly finding “philosophy of physics” arguments not very helpful for understanding anything, but for those who feel differently, some new things to look at are a Scientific American article Physicists Debate Whether the World is Made of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

No Joking Matter

Back now from vacation, and while I was away several people sent me links to point out that string theory promoters definitely aren’t taking a vacation. Links here with a few quick comments, followed by something about the issue of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 46 Comments

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

I’ll be heading North tomorrow, ultimately ending up in backwoods Maine, hiking the Appalachian Trail, then back home after a week or so. The comment section here will likely be closed for the duration. Progress is being made on my … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Nature on the new Nobels

This week’s Nature has an article by Zeeya Merali about various new science mega-prizes, including Yuri Milner’s Fundamental Physics Prize. There’s also a podcast here, and a Nature editorial here. I’m quoted in the article, saying about what you’d expect, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Nature at the energy frontier

Last week a symposium on Nature at the energy frontier was held at the ETH in Zurich, funded by the Latsis foundation. Videos of many of the talks have appeared here. As part of the symposium, David Gross gave a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

Simons 75th Birthday Conference

Last week the CUNY Graduate Center hosted a conference in honor of the 75th birthday of Jim Simons. It was organized by Dennis Sullivan as a set of expository “mini-courses” on various topics related to Simons’ mathematical work. I was … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Snowmass on the Pacific

Due to popular demand from the comment section, I spent some time this afternoon taking a look at the talks now posted from the KITP Snowmass on the Pacific conference held the past few days. This is part of an … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

A Tale of Two Oxford Talks

Last week (for more, see here) Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford about his ideas about “Geometric Unity”, with positive coverage from the Guardian, leading to various critical commentary. I agree completely with the main point of most of … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 72 Comments