Category Archives: Multiverse Mania

Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat

Posted on February 27, 2016 by woit

This week’s New Scientist has an article by Jim Baggott and Daniel Cossins entitled Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat, which deals with the recent controversy over attempts to excuse the failure of string theory by … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 69 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on February 13, 2016 by woit

This week’s dramatic announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves was a major milestone for the fields of physics and astrophysics. The LIGO observation validates a lot of previously untested aspects of our understanding of general relativity, and promises the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 30 Comments

More From Polchinski

Posted on January 28, 2016 by woit

Joe Polchinski has a rather odd preprint on hep-th, more of a blog posting than a paper, summing up his views on string theory and the multiverse. This is a revised version, wisely dropping a really unfortunate section. The material … Continue reading →

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Updates

Posted on December 16, 2015 by woit

Some new items mostly updating older ones: Natalie Wolchover has a very good article at Quanta, entitled A Fight for the Soul of Science, reporting on the recent Munich conference discussed here. David Gross sounds a little bit like John … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 70 Comments

Today’s Hype

Posted on December 9, 2015 by woit

Joe Polchinski’s contribution to the ongoing Munich meeting has now appeared on the arXiv, with the title String Theory to the Rescue. Evidently he’s not actually to be at the meeting, I’m not sure how his paper will be presented. … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 39 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on September 14, 2015 by woit

The semester here is finally underway, and I’m getting back to work on my quantum mechanics and mathematics book (latest version available here). Current plan is to have a final version by next spring, with publication by Springer late next … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 63 Comments

This Week and Next Week’s Hype

Posted on September 3, 2015 by woit

This week’s hype comes to us from Discover Magazine, which has Is Our Universe One of Many? Here’s How We Can Find Out. Needless to say, the author doesn’t actually tell us how we can find out, just repeats the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 29 Comments

SUSY 2015

Posted on August 29, 2015 by woit

SUSY 2015, this year’s version of the big annual conference on supersymmetry, has been going on for the past week at Lake Tahoe. Joe Lykken began his summary talk by explaining how as a kid he was a big fan … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 36 Comments

Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies and the Multiverse

Posted on August 22, 2015 by woit

This past week the large biennial “Lepton-Photon” (International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies) conference has been taking place in Ljubljana. These have been going on since 1965, now alternating years with the ICHEP (“Rochester”) conference. It’s been … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania | 17 Comments

Short Items

Posted on August 12, 2015 by woit

A few short items: The New Yorker has its own coverage here of the NSA GenCyber summer camp program for children that was discussed here. The LHC is about to start doing physics again at 13 TeV, with beam intensity … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 21 Comments