String Theory:
Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins pokes string theorists: Ernst Rutherford, the "father" of nuclear physics, once airily declared "In science there is only physics. All the rest is stamp collecting". By this he meant that the theory of physics...
Posted on March 29, 2008 7:15 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a piece by Michael Dine in Physics Today this month with the ambitious title "String theory in the era of the Large Hadron Collider, thus combining two of my very favorite topics... I was going to give it a...
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Posted on December 5, 2007 9:10 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The infamous Davies op-ed has been collected together with some responses at edge.org, and one of the responses is by Sean Carroll, who reproduces his response at Cosmic Variance. Sean's a smart guy, and I basically agree with his argument,...
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Posted on November 26, 2007 10:16 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The title of this post is a famous question (posed, for example, by Joe Polchinski) which is modeled after an even more famous question by Ken Wilson, "What is Quantum Field Theory?". I certainly can't answer the first question, but...
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Posted on August 26, 2007 2:18 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Thanx to everyone for all the interesting questions in the previous thread. I apologize for not being able to answer every one of them. I just arrived at a workshop on Long Island, and I'm also feeling a bit under...
Posted on August 20, 2007 5:57 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I see below that (in what comes as a total surprise) the string thread has already gotten lively. As an experimentalist doing quantum mechanics at the ultra-low-energy end, I don't have a strong opinion on string theory qua theory, and...
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Posted on August 18, 2007 9:00 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The title says it all.
Posted on August 17, 2007 9:32 AM • 48 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a lot of buzz in physics blogdom about the Strings 07 meeting, which starts today in Spain. They currently have a list of speakers, and promise slides and video to come. Also, there's a new paper by Edward Witten...
Posted on June 25, 2007 10:46 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Even the comments on a silly April Fool's Day post parodying the world's funniest physics blogger immediately devolve into name-calling.
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Posted on April 3, 2007 8:54 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As we look at science in general, and physics in particular, a clear pattern emerges: the scientific endeavours most worthy of praise and acclaim are the most abstract and mathematical sciences. Physics is of greater worth than biology, theoretical physics...
Posted on April 1, 2007 10:07 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's a good day for people posting about science I don't understand... Peter Woit points to the Non-Commutative Geometry blog, at which Alain Connes, the godfather of non-commutative geometry, is posting. It's not the most polished blog, but if you...
Posted on February 23, 2007 10:14 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Discover magazine has announced a contest: Your goal is to create a video that quickly and clearly explains perhaps the most baffling idea in the history of the world: string theory. And the best part is that you have just...
Posted on January 31, 2007 8:09 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
One of my favorite experiments in physics has released a new set of results in Physical Review Letters, putting experimental limits on the size of any extra dimensions of the sort predicted by string theory: We conducted three torsion-balance experiments...
Posted on January 13, 2007 9:37 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Scott Aaronson is offering his services to the highest bidder in the String Wars. His prices may be a little steep-- a well organized review article will set you back $2 million, though a sloppy and poorly sourced one is...
Posted on December 22, 2006 9:56 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Lisa Randall chat: Nice idea, but the execution needs work.
Posted on November 10, 2006 8:43 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Discover magazine is hosting a live web chat with Lisa Randall this afternoon at 2 pm. Randall is famous for developing some ideas relating to the physics of extra dimensions, and has recently published a popular book (Warped Passages) on...
Posted on November 9, 2006 8:49 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics." (anonymous student evaluation comment)
