Monthly Archives: February 2020

This Week’s Hype

Posted on February 28, 2020 by woit

Sabine Hossenfelder already has this covered, but I wanted to add a few comments about this week’s hype, a new article in Quanta magazine by Philip Ball entitled Wormholes Reveal a Way to Manipulate Black Hole Information in the Lab … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 32 Comments

Why String Theory Is Both A Dream And A Nightmare (as well as a swamp…)

Posted on February 26, 2020 by woit

Ethan Siegel today has a new article at Starts With a Bang, entitled Why String Theory is Both a Dream and a Nightmare. For the nightmare part, he writes: its predictions are all over the map, untestable in practice, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Robert Hermann 1931-2020

Posted on February 15, 2020 by woit

I was sorry to hear today of the recent death of Robert Hermann, at the age of 88. While I unfortunately never got to meet him, his writing had a lot of influence on me, as it likely did for … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 11 Comments

Various

Posted on February 3, 2020 by woit

A few months ago I ended up doing a little history of science research, trying to track down the details of the story of the Physical Review’s 1973 policy discouraging articles on “Foundations”. The results of that research are in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments