Monthly Archives: July 2019

Quick Links

Posted on July 24, 2019 by woit

A few quick links: Philip Ball at Quanta has a nice article on “Quantum Darwinism” and experiments designed to exhibit actual toy examples of the idea in action (I don’t think “testing” the idea is quite the right language in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Prospects for contact of string theory with experiments

Posted on July 13, 2019 by woit

Nima Arkani-Hamed today gave a “vision talk” at Strings 2019, entitled Prospects for contact of string theory with experiments which essentially admitted there are no such prospects. He started by joking that he had been assigned this talk topic by … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 20 Comments

Against Symmetry

Posted on July 10, 2019 by woit

One of the great lessons of twentieth century science is that our most fundamental physical laws are built on symmetry principles. Poincaré space-time symmetry, gauge symmetries, and the symmetries of canonical quantization largely determine the structure of the Standard Model, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

What happens when we can’t test scientific theories?

Posted on July 8, 2019 by woit

Just got back from a wonderful trip to Chile, where the weather was perfect for watching the solar eclipse from the beach at La Serena. While I was away, the Guardian Science Weekly podcast I participated in before leaving for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments