Discuss among yourselves

Way back when, when I went around interviewing for faculty jobs, there was one particular interview which I really enjoyed. Usually, you get to have a dizzying sequence of brief interviews with faculty members (no, this is not a tribute to David Foster Wallace), but in that one, unusually, I also got to meet with [...]

Read Full Post »

Some good news for today.

I just stumbled on this article on the New York Times today. The lawsuit against the LHC was dismissed, even if it was based on procedural grounds. At least there is some good news on a day like today.

Read Full Post »

The basic dichotomy of quantum gravity

Last time I had time to write a detailed physics post, I got to the point of declaring fields as the fundamental entities of nature. Since we can get particles from quantizing (certain kinds of) fields, and since the pointlike particles are confusing and paradoxical, we don’t really need them. Our basic theory of nature [...]

Read Full Post »

Should you trust statistics?

OK, so I admit I occasionally wander around and fill random tests on the web as well. It seems a lot of people do, so what is the harm in admitting it? This is not a rhetorical question. One might do a bit of social calculus: does filling this test say something about me? What [...]

Read Full Post »

An entertaining physics puzzle

I thought I would give you a physics puzzle to solve for a change. This puzzle was posed to me this week right before lunch and we had a fun discussion with my colleagues about it. The great thing about the puzzle, is that you can check for the solution in your kitchen if you [...]

Read Full Post »

Brief note

As expected, I got too busy with the day job. Consequently, this week I was unable to contribute to the type of entertainment and physics fun our 3 readers got used to in the past, er… week or so. This week there is a department review going on, and this means way too much paperwork [...]

Read Full Post »

Playing the odds at the LHC: the luminosity frontier

We all like to play darts occasionally, and some others like buying lottery tickets. Although there is some skill that needs to be acquired when playing darts (we could call this the aim), playing the lottery requires no skill at all. In both of these situations a natural mathematical object comes to the fore. We [...]

Read Full Post »

Background independence

About a couple of years ago I received, to my surprise, an invitation to be the token string theorist in the annual conference “Loops 2007″. Over the years, especially during my long term stays at the Perimeter Institute, I befriended quite a few people from the loop community. Mexico is always a pleasure to visit, [...]

Read Full Post »

Hook’s law: Peter Pan must walk the plank.

Yarr, ye scurvy dogs. Me here talkin’ pirate, seeing as it’s talk like a Pirate day (Thanks Todd) and me thinkin what would Pirate’s physics must look like. Being prone to long explanations and other yarring expletives, methinks we shall talk about proper designs of planks fer walking the plank. Seeing as planks are ye olde [...]

Read Full Post »

Essay contest

The always enigmatic FQXI foundation (try to guess the acronym!) announced a while ago its first essay competition. The topic is “the nature of time” and it has the potential to be very interesting (or not). From the perspective of a string theorist, this is truly a foundational question, one that needs much more work, [...]

Read Full Post »