Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

Today’s Washington Post has an opinion piece from Brian Greene, running under the demonstrably false title Decades later, string theory continues its march toward Einstein’s dream. In the piece, the argument of string theory critics is given as: Critics argue … Continue reading →

PRL has just published this paper (preprint here), with associated press release here. The press release explains that the authors have discovered how to use string theory to provide “an easier way to extract pi from calculations involved in deciphering … Continue reading →

Until about a year and a half ago, the way to get funding in physics was to somehow associate yourself to the hot trend of quantum computing and quantum information theory. Large parts of the string theory and quantum gravity … Continue reading →

If I’m going to point to something about string theory and say the same things as always about it, seems best to first start with the opposite, an item about something really worth reading. This spring I’ve been teaching a … Continue reading →

For the last thirty years or so, one tactic of those who refuse to admit the failure of string theory has been to go to the press with bogus claims of “we finally have found a way to get testable … Continue reading →

For a low-rent version of the self-congratulatory program discussed here, Bad Boy of Science Sam Gregson has a new video up entitled Particle Physics Is Not In Crisis – but we can make improvements. Cliff Burgess plays the Strominger role, … Continue reading →

I just finished watching the video here, which was released today. Since this was advertised as a panel discussion on the state of string theory, I thought earlier today that it might be a good opportunity to write something serious … Continue reading →

Nanopoulos and co-authors have predictions from superstring theory that are “in strong agreement with NANOGrav data.” He has been at this now for almost 40 years. See for instance Experimental Predictions from the Superstring from 1985, where the superstring predicted … Continue reading →

Stories about the latest prediction of superstring theory here and here, based on a Tsukuba University press release about this paper. Generally ignoring this kind of nonsense these days, but the new feature of this one is that the press … Continue reading →