Category Archives: Multiverse Mania

Particle Fever

Posted on October 1, 2013 by woit

Yesterday I got a chance to see Particle Fever, the long-awaited film about particle physics. It’s at the New York Film Festival, where there will be another showing on Wednesday, although tickets are already sold out. Oliver Peters was also … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Film Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 20 Comments

Assorted News

Posted on September 4, 2013 by woit

This past weekend I was up in Boston and attended quite a few talks at the Gelfand Centennial conference at MIT, in honor of the 100th anniversary of I. M. Gelfand’s birth. Abstracts of the talks are available, but most … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 42 Comments

Belief in multiverse requires exceptional vision

Posted on August 14, 2013 by woit

Tom Siegfried at Science News has a new piece about how Belief in multiverse requires exceptional vision that starts off by accusing critics of multiverse mania of basically being ignoramuses who won’t accept the reality of anything they can’t see … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 73 Comments

Where are we heading?

Posted on July 23, 2013 by woit

Every summer the IAS in Princeton runs a program for graduate students and postdocs called “Prospects in Theoretical Physics”. It’s going on now, with this year’s topic LHC Physics. Much of the program is devoted to the important but complex … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 52 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

A Tale of Two Oxford Talks

Posted on May 28, 2013 by woit

Last week (for more, see here) Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford about his ideas about “Geometric Unity”, with positive coverage from the Guardian, leading to various critical commentary. I agree completely with the main point of most of … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 72 Comments

The “Unnatural” Standard Model

Posted on May 25, 2013 by woit

The Standard Model is a physical theory of a spectacularly successful sort. It is built on beautiful and deep mathematics, covers almost all known physical phenomena, and agrees precisely with the result of every single experiment ever done to test … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 58 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

The Existence of Nothing

Posted on March 22, 2013 by woit

The sold-out “debate” held Wednesday night here in New York is now available for viewing online, see here. I just watched most of it, and one of many things I couldn’t figure out is what if any propositions were being … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 34 Comments

More about Nothing

Posted on March 13, 2013 by woit

It seems that last year’s philosopher-physicist fight over nothingness (if you missed this, you can read about it starting here) is flaring up again. Recall that it all started with a David Albert New York Times review of Lawrence Krauss’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 25 Comments