Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

From the Bolton News: ROCK guitars could hold the key to the origins of the universe, hundreds of young science pupils were told. The Institute of Physics held a lecture in Bolton entitled “Rock in 11 dimensions: where physics and … Continue reading →

This week’s media hype promoting a new observational test of extra dimensions is based on the recent arXiv preprint Transient Pulses from Exploding Primordial Black Holes as a Signature of an Extra Dimension. Stories about it have appeared already in … Continue reading →

The rate of appearance of press releases hyping string theory has now passed the the one-per-week mark. Today’s example is from the press office of the University of Wisconsin, and again is based on the appearance of a paper in … Continue reading →

I was concerned that my “this week’s hype” headlines might be less than accurate, counting only 3 separate over-hyped string theory stories during the past month rather than four. Turns out that I missed one (although a commenter here didn’t), … Continue reading →

This week’s press release trumpeting a bogus “test of string theory” comes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is headlined Scientists propose test of string theory based on neutral hydrogen absorption, and informs us that Ancient light absorbed … Continue reading →

New Scientist had the good sense to pass on last week’s hype about string theory testability, but is responsible for this week’s hype on the subject, with an article entitled String theory may predict our universe after all. It’s unclear … Continue reading →

Over the past year or so, as public awareness has grown that string theory is a failed idea about unification due to its inherent untestability, I’ve been surprised by the way in which many in the string theory community have … Continue reading →

This past week has seen a veritable bumper crop of media hype, involving claims coming from both string theorists and critics of string theory. Besides the overhyped claims and Lisi-mania that has made it into all sorts of media outlets, … Continue reading →

Last week David Gross was in New Mexico, giving an “unclassified talk” at Los Alamos, and one on The State of String Theory at the Santa Fe Institute. There’s a report on the Los Alamos talk from the Los Alamos … Continue reading →