Monthly Archives: June 2009

String Universality

Posted on June 7, 2009 by woit

There’s a new paper out on the arXiv this evening, advertising a new concept called “string universality”. The authors argue that in six dimensions, by use of appropriate compactifications, any consistent 6d supergravity theory has a string theory realization. They … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 28 Comments

Multiverse News

Posted on June 1, 2009 by woit

Some items from around the multiverse: Srednicki and Hartle have a new preprint on hep-th about Science in a Very Large Universe. Like many other multiverse papers, it doesn’t really have any equations in it, so it’s a bit hard … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 37 Comments

LHC: status and commissioning plans

Posted on June 1, 2009 by woit

The LHC’s Mike Lamont has just posted a preprint here based on a recent Moriond talk describing the current status of the LHC commissioning. Here is his discussion of the on-going campaign to identify bad splices and figure out what … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | Comments Off on LHC: status and commissioning plans

The Music of the Superstrings

Posted on June 1, 2009 by woit

String theorist Oswaldo Zapata continues (see here for an earlier posting about this) his remarkable series of essays about string theory and how it came to dominate research in theoretical high energy physics. The latest one, entitled The Music of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Interview With Simons and Yang

Posted on June 1, 2009 by woit

Steve Miller pointed me to a fascinating interview with Jim Simons and C. N. Yang, available on YouTube here. Simons tells the story of how he got kicked out of his job at the IDA in 1968 over his opposition … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments