Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

A Black Future

Posted on December 5, 2009 by woit

Tom Siegfried, the editor of Science News, seems to have decided to join with Michio Kaku in the science-fiction as science business. He marks the startup of collisions at the LHC with A Black Future, an article about how “the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

On the Defensive

Posted on November 13, 2009 by woit

There’s another article here about Michael Green succeeding Hawking as Lucasian chair. It emphasizes the idea that this is all about more funding for string theory: MICHAEL Green, the 18th holder of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, is clearly … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 16 Comments

A Line on String Theory

Posted on November 12, 2009 by woit

According to the Harvard Gazette, it seems that string theory predicts a very distinctive experimental signature that should be easily observable at the LHC. The claim is that string theory predicts that the LHC should produce stau particles, with a … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 27 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on August 12, 2009 by woit

From Softpedia this week, the news is of a Universal Theory of the Universe in the Works. According to the article, The theory of quantum mechanics was devised around 1920, and explains all this, but without accounting for gravity. Therefore, … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 15 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on July 7, 2009 by woit

A Leiden University press release headlined Physical Reality of String Theory Demonstrated is being picked up and used to generate news stories in the media. It starts off: String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 25 Comments

Role Reversal

Posted on May 29, 2009 by woit

It used to be that New Scientist had somewhat of a reputation for publishing misleading articles about speculative physics, and Science News was a more stodgy but reliable publication that stuck to serious physics. Recently there has been a role … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 2 Comments

Star Trek Warp Speed?

Posted on May 8, 2009 by woit

To continue with the string theory/movie theme, a commenter just wrote in to tell about some new ideas for using M-theory to create a warp-drive. These are contained in some papers from the past year or two by string theorists … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

Brane Science

Posted on May 2, 2009 by woit

There’s a nice article in Nature News about the solution to the Kervaire invariant problem mentioned here. It’s an excellent and accurate description of the result and its significance, except for the last paragraph, on “Brane science”, where the author … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments

The Only Game in Town

Posted on May 1, 2009 by woit

This week’s New Scientist has an article promoting the string theory multiverse, starting off with positive comments from Brian Greene, and continuing with a claim that the majority of physicists now embrace the idea: Greene’s transformation is emblematic of a … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 42 Comments

Atiyah-Singer String Index Theorem

Posted on April 21, 2009 by woit

Just made it to Edinburgh for the Atiyah conference. It seems that someone at a local newspaper really wants to get my goat. See the story headlined World’s Great Minds Gather to Celebrate Atiyah’s Birthday. Update: Will try and write … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 23 Comments