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Latest news this evening from Scott Aaronson at the IAS in Princeton: Tonight, David Nirenberg, Director of the IAS and a medieval historian, gave an after-dinner speech to our workshop, centered around how auspicious it was that the workshop was … Read more
Scientific American has a new article today about the supposedly mysterious fact that electrons have “spin” even though they aren’t classical spinning material objects. The article doesn’t link to it, but it appears that it is discussing this paper by … Read more
I woke up this morning to find out that a new Higgs particle which could explain dark matter has been discovered, in a table-top experiment at Boston College. For some of the news stories about this, see here and here. … Read more
Things for many years now have been going badly for string theory on the public relations front. Today the Economist has Physics seeks the future: Bye, bye, little Susy, where one finds out that: But, no Susy, no string theory. … Read more
I heard this morning the news that Steven Weinberg passed away yesterday at the age of 88. He was arguably the dominant figure in theoretical particle physics during its period of great success from the late sixties to the early … Read more
There’s a very good new book about Stephen Hawking that just came out, Charles Seife’s Hawking Hawking. Some detailed reviews can be found at Prospect Magazine (Philip Ball) and the New York Review of Books (James Gleick). Seife has chosen … Read more