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Cross Sections: May 2012
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News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Thursday, 24 May 2012. Todays post is slightly off-topic for this blog, but I couldnt help myself. I promise it wont happen too often. I just received, via the departmental mailing list, an advertisment for what sounds like quite a nice event. At the Tate Modern, in London. They are showing a film about mathematics and mathematicians, which will be followed by a discussion with Michael Atiyah. Tuesday, 22 May 2012. I realise that I ...
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: March 2012
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News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Saturday, 31 March 2012. Hairy quantum black holes. The arXiv this morning offered another interesting paper. First, there was the suggestion. The only other paper I want to mention is this one. Here they put forward an argument that, quantum-mechnically, black holes should be thought of as bound states of gravitons. Let me try to summarise their argument very briefly:. They go on to explain Hawking radiation as the quantum depletio...
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Cross Sections: June 2012
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News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Friday, 29 June 2012. String Phenomenology: Day 3. As you will have noticed if you visit this blog, I've not done a very good job of blogging this conference. In order to keep things in order, let me post the only thing I wrote about day 3, so I can move on to the later days! She was fairly adamant that this setup is inconsistent. By Graña et al. went on the arXiv the day after this talk.). Links to this post. Wednesday, 27 June 2012.
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: Higgsmania!
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2012/07/higgsmania.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Wednesday, 4 July 2012. CMS and ATLAS both now have conclusive evidence of a Higgs-like particle with a mass of around $125-127$ GeV; this will be covered all over the internet, so I won't go into details here. I will say that it's a thrilling moment, and that we all eagerly await more data, to elucidate the detailed properties of this particle. ATLAS and CMS are two of the most sophisticated experiments ever. I don't make this rema...
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: Professor Higgs, your boson is ready
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2012/07/professor-higgs-your-boson-is-ready.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Tuesday, 3 July 2012. Professor Higgs, your boson is ready. As has already been discussed extensively by many bloggers (including Jester. And especially Peter Woit. CERN are holding a special seminar and press conference tomorrow morning, to announce the latest results on the hunt for the Higgs boson. It is widely rumoured that the evidence of a $ sim 125$ GeV Higgs from last year has strengthened to the point of being conclusive.
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: July 2012
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Wednesday, 4 July 2012. CMS and ATLAS both now have conclusive evidence of a Higgs-like particle with a mass of around $125-127$ GeV; this will be covered all over the internet, so I wont go into details here. I will say that its a thrilling moment, and that we all eagerly await more data, to elucidate the detailed properties of this particle. Links to this post. Tuesday, 3 July 2012. Professor Higgs, your boson is ready. Which came...
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: November 2011
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Wednesday, 30 November 2011. To show you that its not all so scary, I want to present an example of something quite familiar to physicists, and explain how it corresponds to a common operation in algebraic geometry. Monday, 28 November 2011. Now with real maths! And its webpage is here. However, following a suggestion by Anna in the comments, formulae are now being provided by MathJax. And seem to be working. Thanks Anna! Even if yo...
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: April 2012
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Friday, 27 April 2012. How to explain the Higgs mechanism. The big difference is that the background value of the Higgs field is Lorentz-invariant — it doesnt define any absolute standard of rest. Thursday, 19 April 2012. I dont seem to be finding the time to write proper blog posts, so here is a dot-point rundown of a few things I have found interesting lately:. Bobby Acharya, Gordon Kane, and Piyush Kumar released a preprint.
x-sections.blogspot.com
Cross Sections: December 2011
http://x-sections.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
News, rumours, and discussion about mathematics and theoretical physics. Wednesday, 7 December 2011. The MSSM (sort of) from the heterotic string. Today I have a new paper. Although you probably either know this already, or wont understand it without a lot more background, let me briefly explain what this means. In 1985, a seminal paper. There are lots of problems with the standard embedding as Ive described it so far:. Friday, 2 December 2011. The status of the Higgs boson in 2011. By Tommaso Dorigo (I ...
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