Category Archives: Uncategorized

Number Theory News

A special seminar has been scheduled for tomorrow (Monday) at 3pm at Harvard, where Yitang Zhang will present new results on “Bounded gaps between primes”. Evidently he has a proof that there exist infinitely many different pairs of primes p,q … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 57 Comments

Miscellaneous Links

There’s an interesting discussion amongst philosophers at Brian Leiter’s blog about the effects of Templeton money (and I contributed my two cents…). In other Templeton news, they’re funding a new “literary science magazine” called Nautilus. Also via Leiter, they have … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Arkani-Hamed Colloquium

Nima Arkani-Hamed was here at Columbia yesterday to give the physics colloquium, which clocked in at a bit over 1 hour and 45 minutes. He did reveal the secret of why his talks are this long: when invited to give … Continue reading

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 45 Comments

Anderson on Anderson-Higgs

Philip Anderson was here at Columbia yesterday, and gave a very interesting talk, mostly discussing what was going on in the late 50s and early 60s at the intersection of condensed matter and particle physics. This has attracted a lot … Continue reading

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To Mars and Beyond

I’m not sure either of these stories from the past week is particularly important in and of itself, but since I try and keep up on trends in theoretical physics, and two is a trend, here’s some news from two … Continue reading

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Various Links

The AMS-02 experiment results will be announced tomorrow, 1700 CERN local time, webcast here. The normally reliable Jester says rumor is no dark matter. For this kind of astrophysics news, you should find a site with an expert to interpret … Continue reading

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Strange connections to strange metals

In recent years much of the attention of string theorists has turned to applications of string theory (via AdS/CFT) to heavy-ion physics and condensed matter physics. Since I’m no expert on either topic, I’ve been curious to hear what experts … Continue reading

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Grothendieck News

On Thursday someone pointed out to me that it was Alexander Grothendieck’s 85th birthday. Hopefully he is well and celebrating appropriately. Coincidentally I just heard the following rumor. Supposedly a couple months ago the librarian at the IHES got a … Continue reading

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Are they wrong? US research funding

It seems to be part of the job description of anyone in the sciences to periodically complain that scientific research funding is insufficient, with the situation going from bad to worse. For some recent examples, see this from Bruce Alberts, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 49 Comments

Planck Results

The long awaited CMB results from the Planck satellite are now out, see here. A NASA press conference is about to start here. You really should be reading about this somewhere else, from a much better informed blogger, someone expert … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments