Various and Sundry

Some things that might be of interest: The ICM is starting next week in Philadelphia. One traditional aspect of the ICM is the announcement of the Fields Medal winners. This year there won’t be much surprise, since evidently someone found the names of the winners hidden in the website code (see here, English language news story here). It’s Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang. At least all science journalists who want to write about this now know the names, no controversies about who has embargoed information as in some past years. Strings 2026 was held last week in Beijing. Looking through the talks (see here, videos here), I see nothing nothing that looks like a significant new idea or any evidence this isn’t a dead field. I watched the public talk by David Gross, which was just bizarre. Much the same talk Gross has been giving for thirty years about string theory unification, with no indication there’s any problem with the idea. For detailed discussion of a similar…