Two More

Two more items:

• I can’t recommend strongly enough that you watch the new Curt Jaimungal podcast with Edward Frenkel. The nominal topic is the recent proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture, but this is introductory material, with geometric Langlands and the proof to be covered in a part 2 of the conversation.

  Before getting into the story of the Langlands program at a very introductory level, Frenkel covers a wide range of topics about unification in math and physics and the difference between these two subjects. While there’s a lot about mathematics, Frenkel also gives the most lucid explanation I’ve ever heard of exactly what string theory is, what its relation to mathematics is, and what its problems are as a theory of the real world. He has been intimately involved for a long time in research in this field, playing a major role in the geometric Langlands program and working together with both Langlands and Witten.

• Nordita this month is hosting a program on quantum gravity, aimed at covering a diversity of approaches. Videos of the talks are appearing here. The program includes an unusually large number of panel discussions about the state of the subject. One of these is a discussion of the Status of the string paradigm which has the unusual feature that two string theory skeptics (Damiano Anselmi and Neil Turok, who have worked on string theory) have been allowed to participate in the six member panel.

  The response to the failures over the last forty years seems to be that current researchers should not be held accountable for ways in which the string theory paradigm of the past has not worked out. Things are fine now that they have moved on to the Swampland program, have realized that progress on string theory will have a 500 year time-scale, and know that string theory is better than the Standard Model since it has a finite or countable number of ground states.