Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

Last Week’s Hype

Posted on November 3, 2014 by woit

When looking at the nonsense spread around the media by this week’s university press-release-driven hype about string field theory “explaining quantum mechanics”, I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have ignored last week’s university press-release-driven hype, which was about the multiverse … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 13 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on November 3, 2014 by woit

From commenter Hendrik, there’s the news that USC has put out a press release claiming that String Theory Could Be the Foundation of Quantum Mechanics. These claims are based on this paper, which argues that finding the Heisenberg commutation relations … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics, This Week's Hype | 5 Comments

Quantum Connection Could Revitalize Superstrings

Posted on August 4, 2014 by woit

Finally back from vacation, postings may appear somewhat more regularly… Science journalist Tom Siegfried has been one of the most vociferous proponents of string theory for many, many years (see here), but even his faith seems like it might be … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 22 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on May 25, 2014 by woit

About every three years KEK issues a hype-filled press release announcing that Jun Nishimura and collaborators have used a supercomputer to get evidence for string theory. Back in 2008, the announcement was of a numerical simulation on a supercomputer of … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 18 Comments

Scientists Find a Practical Test for String Theory

Posted on January 6, 2014 by woit

This sort of thing seemed to be dying down (2013 required a record low number of “This Week’s Hype” postings), but 2014 is starting off with the usual promotion by physicists of nonsense about how they have “found a test … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 46 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on June 18, 2013 by woit

In recent years universities have taken to issuing press releases when one of their particle theorists gets a paper on some speculative topic published in a journal like Physical Review Letters. Many examples of such things, often involving bogus claims … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 5 Comments

Hard Evidence for the Multiverse Found, but String Theory Limits the Space Brain Threat

Posted on May 22, 2013 by woit

In recent years there have been many claims made for “evidence” of a multiverse, supposedly found in the CMB data (see for example here). Such claims often came with the remark that the Planck CMB data would convincingly decide the … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 34 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on April 3, 2013 by woit

The award for this week’s hype goes to the people at CERN, who normally are pretty good about this, but somehow thought it was a good idea to spin the AMS-02 results in a way that makes it sound as … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 22 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on December 10, 2012 by woit

Space.com has a new story entitled Space Bursts Provide Insight to Theory of Everything, which has been picked up elsewhere as “evidence for string theory”. For instance Physicists Find New Evidence Of A ‘Theory Of Everything’ In The Wreckage Of … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 2 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 5, 2012 by woit

BBC Horizon this week is running an episode How Small is the Universe? with a description that features the usual sort of hype about modern physics: It is a journey where things don’t just become smaller but also a whole … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 15 Comments