Preposterous Universe

 
Just some links

From Tbogg, a link to an article at Axis of Logic on the status of 9/11 as a political football, and in particular who is to "blame" for the incredible intelligence failure. This is a topic where it's hard to find level-headed discussion, but this article is sufficiently well-documented as to be quite persuasive. Not to give you the wrong impression -- it's completely partisan, but defensibly so.

Astronauts who have risked their lives to explore space are joining the chorus to save Hubble. Let's keep it up, hopeless though it may seem at the moment.

Peter Woit has a new blog. He's a mathematician who argues that string theory (our attempt to derive a consistent quantum theory of gravity from a theory of extended objects, rather than ordinary point particles) is bad news for physics. I don't agree, but it's worth listening. I think string theory is fantastically promising and quite remarkable, but plenty of scientists (including particle physicists and gravitational physicists) disagree, which is an interesting state of affairs. Some time in the future our current generation of string theorists will either be viewed as visionary pioneers soldiering forward despite overwhelming odds, or misguided crazies who derailed progress in physics with their hopeless detachment from experiment. Maybe we'll live to see which one.

~ posted by Sean Carroll at 2:25 PM ~ link ~ ~ ~