The past few years I’ve been noticing more and more claims like this one, supposedly finding a way to “connect string theory to experiment”. When you look into such claims you don’t find anything at all like a conventional experiment/theory connection of the usual scientific method, giving testable predictions and a way to move science forward. As...

A few items, all involving Peter Scholze in one way or another: A seminar in Bonn on Scholze’s geometrization of real local Langlands is finishing up next week. This is working out details of ideas that Scholze presented at the IAS Emmy Noether lectures back in March. Until recently video of those lectures was all that was available (see here, here...

A common theme in discussions online of the problems of fundamental theoretical physics is that the subject has gotten “lost in math”, losing touch with “physical intuition”. In such discussions, when people refer to “math” it’s hard to figure out what they mean by this. In the case of Sabine Hossenfelder’s “Lost in Math” you can read her book and...

PRL has just published this paper (preprint here), with associated press release here. The press release explains that the authors have discovered how to use string theory to provide “an easier way to extract pi from calculations involved in deciphering processes like the quantum scattering of high-energy particles.” The press release has led to stories...

The following makes no claims to originality or any physical significance on its own. For a better explanation of some of the math and the physical significance of the use of quaternions here, see this lecture by John Baez. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about spinors and vectors in four dimensions, where I do think there is some important...

There’s been very little blogging here the past month or so. For part of the time I was on vacation, but another reason is that there just hasn’t been very much to write about. Today I thought I’d start looking at the talks from this week’s Strings 2024 conference. The weird thing about this version of Strings 20XX is that it’s a complete reversal...