Sociology of Physics: comment and indices

[marcus]

The storm of enthusiasm for pop multiverse books shows no signs of abating. At noon 28 Feb the top five stringy/multi books, e-hidden, hidden, e-grand, e-elegant, grand, ranked an estimated 97, 97, 247, 279, 430 for an average of 230.
This is much the same as it's been all the past month, whenever I've looked.
In the case of Amazon's "kindle" e-books I estimate their equivalent print-book ranks based on the separate kindle ranking provided by Amazon.

To follow trends in professional research literature, I've begun using the German mirror of Stanford Spires. The Stanford homesite has become too slow, and often times out. So here is the mirror:
http://www-library.desy.de/spires/hep/

So for example here is Loop research publication for consecutive years:

2005 41
2006 82
2007 122
2008 141
2009 147
2010 160 (as of 28 Feb 2011)

2010 search:
http://www-library.desy.de/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=Keeping track of string research publication, I see no clear trend. Here are figures for four successive years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 using the
Harvard Abstracts search, keywords M-theory, AdS/CFT, superstring, brane, compactification, heterotic: 5549, 5471, 5734, 5667 (as of 28 Feb)

 

[Fra]

The storm of enthusiasm for multiverse books shows no signs of abating.

What is the world coming to?

/Fredrik

 

[marcus]

Hah hah! Well you tell me where it's going, if you see any significance. Lacking evidence I must suppose that multi-dreams are just a temporary fad.

I fear that in the long run authors like Greene and Hawking undermine the respect for science.

Confusion and mistrust build up, after being taken for a ride and disappointed folks will tend to suspect subsequent popularizers of half-baked hucksterism.

AFAICS the only safe path for science in the long run is avoid excesses of speculation and stick staunchly to the rigorous Empiricist tradition. Don't raise unfounded hopes or peddle fantasy to sell books.

I need to keep this DESY database search link, for recent quantum cosmology papers, handy so I'll put it here for the time being:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+cosmology+and+date+%3E+2008&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

 

[Fra]

Hah hah! Well you tell me where it's going, if you see any significance. Lacking evidence I must suppose that multi-dreams are just a temporary fad.

I fear that in the long run authors like Greene and Hawking undermine the respect for science.

Confusion and mistrust build up, after being taken for a ride and disappointed folks will tend to suspect subsequent popularizers of half-baked hucksterism.

I'm associating to the romantic era beeing a reaction to the enlightenment. I'm starting to think that the lack of success or reason with regards to unification and QG maybe have created this "romantic reaction" of mysterious multiverses... when reason fails what do you do? ;)

Worst case we just have to ride it out, and await the next counter reaction. But I feel the counter reaction coming already... it could be the inferencial views that is like a purification of empiricism. I see it as far away from multiverses or ensembles of universes you can come.

I'm not sure what to expect. But the romantic era laste for what was it a century? When did this multiverse stuff get started? then add 100 years... before the train is turning?

Maybe the amplitude is lower these days, but then at least overall humanity is improving.

/Fredrik

 

[marcus]

But remember Fra, the multiverse fad is primarily in the POPULAR market.
I think you are right that at the level of real scientists (when they are not writing pop-slop or trying to grab headlines) the reaction against multivism is already in progress.

There was a great workshop at Princeton IAS trying and condemning multivism already back in 2008 as I recall, or maybe 2009. they even brought Lenny Susskind to it, to be sure he got the message. We hear a lot less about it now than say in 2006.

What we have to take notice of is the wave or fad at popular level. It appeals to people as a viral fantasy.

The storm of enthusiasm for pop multiverse books shows no signs of abating. At noon 28 Feb the top five stringy/multi books, e-hidden, hidden, e-grand, e-elegant, grand, ranked an estimated 97, 97, 247, 279, 430 for an average of 230...

Today the noon average ranking was in the 300s, having stayed a long time in the 200s.
At noon 3 March e-hidden, hidden, e-elegant, e-grand, grand ranked 133, 133, 436, 546, 673 for an average of 348

 

[Oriako]

Damn You! I just read this ENTIRE thread and spend over an hour doing it, now I'm behind on my homework... God PhysicsForums ruins me sometimes.

Extremely interesting stuff though, it's good to see that in the scientific community (researchers) there is less interest in string theory, multiverses, etc.

They should be focusing on quantum gravity, REGULAR cosmology, and other empirical fields that can be tested by observations... here, in OUR universe!

Thanks for doing all the amazing work, keep it up... but damn this forum for snatching up at least an hour of my time every day, it's like an addiction.

 

[ZapperZ]

Damn You! I just read this ENTIRE thread and spend over an hour doing it, now I'm behind on my homework... God PhysicsForums ruins me sometimes.

Extremely interesting stuff though, it's good to see that in the scientific community (researchers) there is less interest in string theory, multiverses, etc.

They should be focusing on quantum gravity, REGULAR cosmology, and other empirical fields that can be tested by observations... here, in OUR universe!

Thanks for doing all the amazing work, keep it up... but damn this forum for snatching up at least an hour of my time every day, it's like an addiction.

But this is really not new, nor is it a revelation. If you look at the percentage of members in the various divisions of the APS, you'll see that none of these fields are that big. A lot of people are often surprised when I tell them that the largest percentage of practicing physicists are in the field of condensed matter physics/material science. These are the people responsible for your iPod, iPhone, and other modern electronics.

Physics isn't just a subject dealing with esoteric stuff. The largest percentage of it actually deals with knowledge that has a direct bearing on how we live.

Zz.

 

[marcus]

There is a new research literature database in beta version called InSpire. Stanford-SLAC is offering it as an improvement over their old workhorse Spires. I don't know how much work it would be to switch over.
Here is an update on the indices that I've been using until now.

Loop research publication for consecutive years:

2005 41
2006 82
2007 122
2008 141
2009 147
2010 161 (as of 7 March 2011)

2010 search:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=In string research publication I see no clear trend. Here are figures for four successive years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 using the Harvard Abstracts search, keywords M-theory, AdS/CFT, superstring, brane, compactification, heterotic: 5549, 5471, 5735, 5669 (as of 7 March)

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2010: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

Spires top cited articles during some past years
(with number of recent string papers making the top fifty)

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/annual.shtml (zero)

In this tally, papers count as recent if they appeared during the past five years. For instance in 2009 one of the fifty top-cited papers was recent string (recent being 2005-2009). It was number 33.
In 2001 twelve of the fifty were recent string (recent being 1997-2001). Their ranks were 2,3,4,5,6,13,14,17,22,39,49, and 50.

In the popular book department, String is enjoying a period of unusually high popularity associated with the appearance of Multiverse books by Hawking and by Greene. Today (7 March) at noon the five most popular books (hidden, e-hidden, e-elegant, grand, and e-grand) ranked 89, 167, 294, 423, 552, for an average of 305. This is better by more than a factor of 10 than has been the case for several years. In the case of e-books these ranks must be estimated from their separate e-book ranks which Amazon provides. Here are some recorded noon averages around the middle of past months for comparison.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January2007:     4396
February2007:    3789
November2008:    3711
July2009:        6485  
March2010:       7521
April2010:      11983
May2010:         6884
June2010:        9731
July2010:        8461
August2010:      9606
September2010:   1060 
October2010:     1344
November2010     2220
December 2010    2705
January 2011     1252
February 2011    223

 

[sutivnn]

Smolin's most recent book, The Trouble with Physics, seems to be hanging on to a fairly constant market share, relative to the most popular string reading. It could be that interest in both string apologetics and critique is fading.http://www.noithat-fami.net"
In any case at noon on 24 August, Trouble ranked 9831 and the five string books currently most popular (fabric, parallel, black hole, elegant, hyperspace) averaged 7726.2, making the ratio 0.79
Likewise on 25 August the ratio was 0.77. Trouble 13004 and string topfive average 9997.2.
The stringy top five were fabric, elegant, parallel, black hole, idiot guide.

thanks !

 

[marcus]

Hi Sutivnn!

You quoted a very old post, I fear the information is way out of date. But thanks for your comment.
By now Smolin's book has pretty well dropped out of sight. The new fashion in popular physics speculation is Multiverse. There is no popularized critique to take the place of Smolin's book in this new context of Multiversism.

There are books by Greene and by Hawking that are selling fantastically well. I do not recommend reading them, or speculating about Multivism, but I watch to see what science or pop-science the public buys.

Today 10 March at noon the Amazon ranks of the top-five string books (hidden, e-elegant, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) were (estimated in the kindle case) 130, 229, 252, 499, 746, for an average of 371.2

I abbreviate: hidden means Greene's Hidden Reality. e-hidden is the electronic version, e-elegant is the electronic version of Greene's Elegant Universe. grand is Hawking's Grand Design.

 

[marcus]

For the March mid-month reading of the popular stringy book market I will take noon (Pacific) averages on three days: 14,15, and 16 March.

Today at noon (14 March) the five most popular stringy books (e-hidden, hidden, e-elegant, e-grand, grand) had ranks 135, 143, 151, 401, 669. In the case of the e-books these had to be estimated from the separate Kindle ranks which Amazon posts, and their places in the physics bestseller list.
The 14 March topfive average was thus 300.

That is way better than it's been in the past:

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January2007:     4396
February2007:    3789
November2008:    3711
July2009:        6485  
March2010:       7521
April2010:      11983
May2010:         6884
June2010:        9731
July2010:        8461
August2010:      9606
September2010:   1060 
October2010:     1344
November2010     2220
December 2010    2705
January 2011     1252
February 2011     223

The top stringy books are now mainly focused on Multiverse, and currently multivism seems to have strong popular appeal---so these books Greene Hidden Reality and Hawking Grand Design are selling fantastically well.

 

[marcus]

At noon on three consecutive mid-March day the stringy topfive readings were
300, 266, 480, for an average of 349.

To give a little detail, at noon on 16 March the five most popuiar stringy books (hidden, e-elegant, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 185, 375, 388, 682, 771 which averaged out to 480.
Amazon gives separate ranks for "kindle" e-books so their ranks have to be estimated linearly from the ranks of their immediate hardcopy neighbors on the bestseller list.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January2007:     4396
February2007:    3789
November2008:    3711
July2009:        6485  
March2010:       7521
April2010:      11983
May2010:         6884
June2010:        9731
July2010:        8461
August2010:      9606
September2010:   1060 
October2010:     1344
November2010     2220
December 2010    2705
January 2011     1252
February 2011     223
March 2011        349

 

[marcus]

Some updates on research literature

Loop research publication for consecutive years:

2005 41
2006 82
2007 122
2008 142
2009 147
2010 162 (as of 22 March 2011)

2010 search:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

Harvard abstracts service has gone back and added quite a bunch of papers to their catalog for past years. Here are figures for four successive years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 using the Harvard Abstracts search, keywords M-theory, AdS/CFT, superstring, brane, compactification, heterotic: 5587, 5516, 5775, 5728 (as of 22 March)

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2010: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

Spires top cited articles during some past years
(with number of recent string papers making the top fifty)

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/annual.shtml (zero)

A paper is counted as recent if it appeared in the past five years.

 

[marcus]

Today at noon, 6 April, string topfive (e-elegant, e-hidden, hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 314, 387, 473, 623, 1837, for an average of 727.
E-book ranks are estimated from their "kindle" ranks and their placement amongst the conventional physics book bestsellers.

 

[marcus]

At noon, 7 April, string topfive (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 250, 299, 527, 555, 1353, for an average of 597.

An interesting trend has surfaced in the research area of quantum cosmology (QC). This is the appearance of papers by professional theory testers ("phenomenologists") exploring ways to test Loop QC by observation of the primordial light.
(The Loop cosmology bounce, if it occurred, would have left an imprint that would be detectable in the microwave background.)

Here are some 29 papers which have appeared since 2009 in early universe phenom'y bearing on the practicality of testing Loop QC. Most are by phenom people, not the theorists themselves.
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

We can watch the volume of publication (and of citations) in Loop bounce phenomenology to get an idea of the extent to which bounce cosmology is "going empirical" or becoming an observational issue subject to testing.

We could also track overall publication in quantum cosmology as a whole, or the loop part of it, for a sense of how the field is growing.

 

[marcus]

At noon Pacific on 12 April the string top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 262, 304, 397, 762, 1298, for an average of 605.

I want to streamline the Spires search used here to track Loop research output. I will drop the group field theory (gft) keyword and run successive years as before.

If you would like to check the numbers paste this into the search box at Spires:

FIND DK SPIN,FOAM OR QUANTUM GRAVITY, LOOP SPACE OR QUANTUM COSMOLOGY, LOOP SPACE AND DATE = 2005

and then repeat, each time increasing the date.

Loop gravity research, by year 
2005    41
2006    81
2007   121
2008   142
2009   141
2010   154

Someone might be interested in the component of this which is Loop cosmology. In that case paste this in:
FIND DK QUANTUM COSMOLOGY, LOOP SPACE AND DATE = 2006
and repeat as above. The current formulation (Ashtekar et al) only appeared in 2006 so I start with that year:

Loop cosmology research, by year 
2006    21
2007    39
2008    46
2009    45
2010    57

 

[marcus]

At noon Pacific on 12 April the string top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 262, 304, 397, 762, 1298, for an average of 605.

Maybe I'l do a full seven days around the 15th, for the midmonth check this time. At noon on 13 Aprll the string top five ( (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 201,292, 383, 1021, 1546, for an average of 689.

The multivist craze in the popular book market is still strong but may be easing off some.
Amazon is selling the e-book version of Elegant for $2.11, so that partly explains why it has moved to near top. The other four stringy books are all primarily multiverse speculation: "Hidden Reality" and "Grand Design".

 

[marcus]

Inspire beta version gets different numbers of papers than the Spires searches i have been using to keep track of research publication. Probably the most important thing is to be consistent---keep tracking the same index. But in any case I want to see what the Inspire searches do. So here I put in keywords "Loop quantum cosmology OR Loop quantum gravity OR spin foam".

Loop gravity research including Loop cosmology (using Inspire beta)
2007   129
2008   154
2009   154
2010   163

This is actually not much different from the results of a similar Spires search that I tabulated a post or two earlier. Here are the links if you want to see the lists of papers for any reason.
2007:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2007&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2008:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2008&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2009:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2009&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2010:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2010&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb

And here I put in keywords "Loop quantum gravity OR spin foam" omitting the keyword "Loop quantum cosmology".

Loop gravity research without pointer to Loop cosmo (using Inspire beta)
2007    97
2008   119
2009   120
2010   130

2007:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2007&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2008:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2008&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2009:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2009&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2010:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2010&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
=================

Here's what you get just putting in "Loop quantum cosmology" for keyword.

Loop cosmology research (using Inspire beta)
2007    45
2008    51
2009    50
2010    64

2007:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2007&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2008:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2008&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2009:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2009&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb
2010:
http://inspirebeta.net/search?ln=en...y=2010&sf=&so=a&rm=citation&rg=100&sc=0&of=hb

I've discovered that with Inspire it is important to use the "advanced search" option and enter the date in the "added since" row rather than as a search term in one of the three search term fields. Otherwise double counting can occur since each paper can have both an arxiv date and a journal publication date---these can be in different years. Just a word of caution.

With the links given in this post, that has been taken care of. You don't have to worry about double counting because the year has been entered correctly.

 

[marcus]

At noon Pacific on 12 April the string top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 262, 304, 397, 762, 1298, for an average of 605.

Maybe I'l do a full seven days around the 15th, for the midmonth check this time. At noon on 13 Aprll the string top five ( (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 201,292, 383, 1021, 1546, for an average of 689.

The multivist craze in the popular book market is still strong but may be easing off some.
Amazon is selling the e-book version of Elegant for $2.11, so that partly explains why it has moved to near top. The other four stringy books are all primarily multiverse speculation: "Hidden Reality" and "Grand Design".

At noon 14 April the top five (e-elegant, hidden, e=hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 205, 285, 577, 930, 1971 for an average of 794.

So we've got the beginnings of a 7-day midmonth average: 605, 689, 794,...

=========================

A really remarkable development in Quantum Cosmology is the increasing interest shown by phenomenologists in testing (and possibly falsifying) the Loop Cosmology bounce.

This is what replaces the "Big Bang" singularity when the geometry of the universe is quantized according to the Loop model. The pheno people are new arrivals, not committed either way to any of the various theories, they are professional testers whose reward is figuring out tests, whichever way it goes.

A few posts ago I posted this link:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

At that time it got 29 pheno papers that appeared 2009 and later. Now it gets 31 papers. I think this growth of interest in testing represents a change in the feel, or opinion climate, surrounding Loop gravity and its application to cosmology.

 

[marcus]

At noon 15 April the stringy top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 241, 339, 437, 720, 1870, for an average of 721.

12 April 605
13 April 689
14 April 794
15 April 721
16 April ...
17 April ...
18 April ...

I intend to average these to record a midmonth figure. It may be that we are pulling out of the current Pop-Multiverse craze, that started September 2010 with appearance of Hawking's latest Fizz---I'm checking more thoroughly because I want to be sure and not entertain false hopes.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January2007:     4396
February2007:    3789
November2008:    3711
July2009:        6485  
March2010:       7521
April2010:      11983
May2010:         6884
June2010:        9731
July2010:        8461
August2010:      9606
September2010:   1060 
October2010:     1344
November2010     2220
December 2010    2705
January 2011     1252
February 2011     223
March 2011        349

 

[marcus]

At noon 17 April the stringy top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 149, 220, 407, 610, 892, for an average of 456.

12 April 605
13 April 689
14 April 794
15 April 721
16 April 559
17 April 459
18 April ...

 

[marcus]

At noon today, 18 April, the stringy top five average rank was 717, making the April midmonth average come out
(605+689+794+721+559+459+717)/7 = 649

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649

In case there's curiosity about detail, today's string top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 241, 351, 572, 921, 1500, for an average of 717. For a month or more the list of five best-selling stringy books has been remarkably stable. Whenever I have sampled it, I saw the same 5 items. An e-book version of the older (1999) string book, Elegant, on sale for $2.11, plus four new primarily multiverse ones (Hidden Reality, and Grand Design, both with conventional and e-book versions).

 

[marcus]

Stanford-SLAC has introduced a beta version of "Inspire" as an eventual replacement for Spires physics research literature search tool. I do not trust Inspire for going back more than a few years. I prefer still to use Spires. One actually has more options if one knows how to use it.
I use the German mirror http://www-library.desy.de/spires/hep/ because the Stanford site is slow.
I do pure DESY keyword searches (prefix DK) because that does not mix in "hits" arising from occurrences of words in the title (and possibly elsewhere). It goes purely on the classification by the DESY librarians, and I have found this more reliable than mixing in word-occurrence hits.

With Inspire one does not seem to have the option of a pure DK search.

If you would like to check the numbers paste this into the search box at Spires:

FIND DK SPIN,FOAM OR QUANTUM GRAVITY, LOOP SPACE OR QUANTUM COSMOLOGY, LOOP SPACE AND DATE = 2005

and select sorting by citation count so the more interesting papers come up first. Then repeat, each time increasing the date. That generates the following seqence of searches:
2005:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2005+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2006:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2006+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2007:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2007+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2008:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2008+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2009:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2010:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

Loop gravity research, by year 
2005    41
2006    81
2007   121
2008   142
2009   141
2010   154

Someone might be interested in the component of this which is Loop cosmology. In that case paste this in:
FIND DK QUANTUM COSMOLOGY, LOOP SPACE AND DATE = 2006
and repeat as above. The current formulation (Ashtekar et al) only appeared in 2006 so I start with that year:

Loop cosmology research, by year 
2006    21
2007    39
2008    46
2009    45
2010    57

If anyone wants to compare Inspire results, look back to post #218.
Over the next day or two, I hope to re-check these numbers and perhaps improve the tables.
Right now I am trying to think how to track the rate of CITATIONS to Loop papers. This could be as interesting as the simple numbers of papers given here.

 

[marcus]

Now I want to see how we an track changes in citation numbers over time.
In the field of quantum gravity, cite-numbers are small compared with HEP and experimental, so QG papers do not normally show up in the Top Fifty at Spires.

However we can do a miniature version, and specialize to the DK "quantum gravity" category.
Then we can have the list of each year's QG papers sorted by rank.
And we can look at the Top Ten, and see how many Loop papers make the Top Ten.

I already did this for String-related papers in the QG category. So I will simply re-do the count and add a line to the table

Papers making the QG top ten
Year               2000      2002      2004      2006      2008      2010
String-related       4         3         1         4         3         2
Loop                 0         4         6         3         4         5

One could say that not much is happening here. But "flat" is also a kind of information, so I post it even though it shows nothing dramatic.
There was a dramatic spike in 2009 when Horava QG appeared, but it subsided. This spike does not show up here simply because I am only tabulating even years.
One could expand the table to include Horava QG, and odd years, and see the spike.

When making this count, it is obvious which papers are Loop and which are not. However
people may wish to see what I have included as "string-related". I have included some papers that were just Sugra4 or Sugra8 without mentioning strings or branes. Also I included the topic of Randall-Sundrum contructions even though I have heard people say that is not real string. And AdS stuff. And Bousso's 2002 holographic paper, which is really not string at all (the result was extended by Ashtekar so as not to fail at the singularity). But maybe some people feel possessive about these things and feel they "belong" to the String program, so I want to accommodate that. So I consider the "string-related" figures a bit inflated.
Here are the papers that I included:
2000:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2000&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
4 out of 10 here (that I can see). The string papers I identify are numbers 1,3,5, and 9. I'm happy if anyone wants to check that.

2002:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2002&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
3 out of 10, this time. I would say 1, 6, and 7 are the stringy ones.

2004:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2004&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
1 out of 10. The one string paper making the top ten is number 8.

2006:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
4 out of 10. The stringy ones are numbers 1, 3, 6, 8.

2008:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2008&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
3 out of 10. Numbers 1, 6, 10.

2010:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2010&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
2 out of 10. Numbers 5 and 8.

One could also do this for the Quantum Gravity "Top Twenty". I don't know what the results would look like.

 

[marcus]

I'll try the experiment of changing this to the Top Thirty

Papers making the QG top thirty in terms of citations
Year               2000      2002      2004      2006      2008      2010
String-related       8         4         3         5         5         7
Loop                 6        11        14        10        14        14

Here are the papers that I found and tallied, indicated by their current rank numbers:

2000:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2000&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 8/30. Currently 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 17, 29
Loop 6/30. Currently 14, 16, 21, 22, 24, 27

2002:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2002&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 4/30. Currently 1, 6, 7, 25
Loop 11/30. Currently 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 28

2004:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2004&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 3/10. Currently 8, 25, 26
Loop 14/30. Currently 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29

2006:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 5/30. Currently 1, 3, 5, 8, 17
Loop 10/30. Currently 2, 6, 9, 14, 16, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27

2008:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2008&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 5/30. Currently 1, 6, 10, 17, 20
Loop 14/30. Currently 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 19, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30

2010:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+gravity+and+date+%3D+2010&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
String 7/30. Currently 5, 9, 13, 16, 22, 24, 26
Loop 14/30. Currently 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 29

Because citations occur regularly the place in the list can change. So the place-numbers are only as of today. If you look later you may find the paper with a rank one more or one less than what I list here.
When making this count, it is obvious which papers are Loop and which are not. However
people may wish to see what I have included as "string-related". I have included some papers which resorted to Sugra4 or Sugra8 without mentioning strings or branes. Also I included paprs with Randall-Sundrum contructions, and whatever AdS stuff showed up. And Bousso's 2002 entropy bound, which does not depend on string (the result was extended by Ashtekar using LQC so as not to fail at the big bang singularity). Maybe some people are sensitive about these things and feel they "belong" to the String program, so I wanted to accommodate that. Therefore the "string-related" figures might be slightly inflated.

 

[marcus]

I checked for recent Loop papers making the annual Spires "gr-qc" Top Fifty. The curve is flat.
Recent means in the past five years including the year in question.
This is for years 2010 down to 2002. I happened to make the tallies in reverse chrono order.http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (7)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2008/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (6)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2006/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (4)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (7)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2004/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (7)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2002/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
For convenience I put part of this in chrono order

2003:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
2005:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (7)
2007:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)
2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/eprints/to_gr-qc_annual.shtml (5)

 

[marcus]

...A really remarkable development in Quantum Cosmology is the increasing interest shown by phenomenologists in testing (and possibly falsifying) the Loop Cosmology bounce.

This is what replaces the "Big Bang" singularity when the geometry of the universe is quantized according to the Loop model. The pheno people are new arrivals, not committed either way to any of the various theories, they are professional testers whose reward is figuring out tests, whichever way it goes.

A few posts ago I posted this link:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

At that time it got 29 pheno papers that appeared 2009 and later. Now it gets 31 papers...

Out of curiosity I broadened the search to include Loop pheno papers that appeared 2008 or later.
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

There have been 41, so far. 2008, 2009, 2010, and part of 2011 (up to 1 May)

 

[marcus]

There might be some interest in these informal tallies, which mainly apply to the US+Canada particle theory job situation:
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08

Prof. Erich Poppitz at U Toronto keeps track of "first time faculty hires" in theoretical particle physics (high energy physics theory, including cosmology and phenomenology).
His unofficial counts are based on information posted at this UC Davis site (the theoretical particle physics jobs rumor mill):
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php?id=archive:2009

Poppitz charts the data year by year 1994-2010 but for brevity I will combine years and tabulate three years at a time.

First time faculty hires in HEP theory:
1999-2001 53
2002-2004 73
2005-2007 68
2008-2010 38

Percentage string:
1999-2001 51%
2002-2004 32%
2005-2007 27%
2008-2010 18%

Poppitz does string research himself--he has a range of interests. I find that based on his tabulation, multiplying the total hires by the percentages, I get these numbers for what he counted as first time faculty hires of string people in particular:

First time faculty hires in string (based on postings at Theoretical Particle Physics jobs rumor mill)
1999-2001 27
2002-2004 23
2005-2007 18
2008-2010 7

===============================
On the popular market, the noon string topfive ranks have averaged:

11 May 963.5
12 May 905
13 May 892

The five most popular have consistently been a $2.11 electronic version of Elegant Universe (e-elegant) then hidden, grand, e-hidden, e-grand.

 

[marcus]

To get a mid-month reading of the popular book market, string topfive average noon ranks:

11 May 963.5
12 May 905
13 May 892
14 May 796
15 May 669

 

[marcus]

For a mid-month reading of the popular book market, string topfive average noon ranks:

11 May 963.5
12 May 905
13 May 892
14 May 796
15 May 669
16 May 504
17 May 432

The same top five as usual---primarily multivision books referring to the myriad landscape of "M". Within those five, the order has changed: until last week Greene books consistently led Hawking, but the latter has been featured in the media recently and there has been a big surge in demand for his "grand design". Today 17th the top five were:
grand, e-grand, e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden.

Recent Hawking appearances (Google Zeitgeist symposium, Guardian interview) mentioned here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

The e-book version of "elegant universe" is being sold for $2.11.

 

[marcus]

String topfive average noon ranks for mid-May:

12 May 905
13 May 892
14 May 796
15 May 669
16 May 504
17 May 432
18 May 536

The average around the middle of the month is 676.
905+892+796+669+504+432+536)/7=
So the longterm record of mid-month averages looks like this:

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676

The last midmonth post was this:

At noon today, 18 April, the stringy top five average rank was 717, making the April midmonth average come out
(605+689+794+721+559+459+717)/7 = 649

In case there's curiosity about detail, today's string top five (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 241, 351, 572, 921, 1500, for an average of 717. For a month or more the list of five best-selling stringy books has been remarkably stable. Whenever I have sampled it, I saw the same 5 items. An e-book version of the older (1999) string book, Elegant, on sale for $2.11, plus four new primarily multiverse ones (Hidden Reality, and Grand Design, both with conventional and e-book versions).

It is remarkable how little has changed since April. Today it was the same list of five most popular stringy (now with emphasis on the multiverse myth instead of unified physics) titles, merely in a different order---namely grand, e-grand, e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden.

 

[marcus]

The list of bounce cosmology papers keeps growing. This search now gets 33.
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+INFLATION+OR+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=ds%28d%29

The main sociology-of-science trends we are watching here are the growth of activity/interest in nonstring QG and the dwindling of the string program.

Here are possible indicators of dwindling.

No first-time faculty jobs in Usa & Canada so far this year: The hiring season is about over for 2011 and so far no offers for string theorists.
See the "particle physics job rumor mill" and Woit's blog.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3715
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php
Post #228 has some figures and source links on this, including this table.
===
First time faculty hires in string (based on postings at Theoretical Particle Physics jobs rumor mill)
1999-2001 27
2002-2004 23
2005-2007 18
2008-2010 7
===

Citations to current string research are down: The Spires HEP top 50 used to show a dozen or so recent (past 5 years) string papers. In 2010 no recent string paper made the top 50.

Conference attendance: We should try to keep track of this. Attendance at Strings 2010 was down, but that could have just been a fluke. (Perhaps the leadership goofed by having it in Texas where nobody wanted to go, at a time when everybody was busy.)

Quality of entering PhD students: Again something to try to keep track of as best one can.

All these things have competing alternative explanations which may be interesting to consider. Explanations do not necessarily reflect on the merit of stringy analysis as a mathematical toolkit! There can appear to be some downsizing or downgrading (say of job prospects in academia) which are merely due to historical accident, without any unfavorable reflection on the abstract merit of method.

 

[marcus]

I neglected to specify that the link given in previous post is for the phenomenology subcategory of Loop cosmology.

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+INFLATION+OR+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

This just gets the several dozen having to do with testing.

Getting ready to record the June midmonth string topfive average salesrank, as of noon 13 June it was 903.0
The five most popular stringy books continue to be the inexpensive ($2.11) electronic edition of elegant, and the print and electronic editions of Hawking's and Greene's multiverse books.

 

[marcus]

At noon today the five most popular stringy books (e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-hidden, elegant) ranked 367, 708, 843, 1395, 2070 for an average of 1076.6.
To smooth out random fluctuations I plan to take 5 readings around the 15th

13 June 903.0
14 June 1076.6
15 June ...
16 June ...
17 June ...

and use their average for the mid-month record.
===================

Judging as best I can based on objective, quantitative indices, we see declining enthusiasm in the string program and a tendency for researchers' interest to dissipate into neighboring fields. It isn't clear why this is happening. A retrospective publication "Forty Years of String Theory" is being compiled by a team of editors headed by Nobel-physicist Gerard 't Hooft. this may give some perspective on the reasons.

Some of the indications:

Drop in string jobs (shrinking share of hep-theory first-time faculty offers)
Drop in citations--by the researchers themselves--to recent string research (declining representation in the annual Spires hep top-50)
Apparent decline in annual string conference participation.
Cases of prominent string figures moving (part or full-time) into other lines of research.
Growing acceptance of rival approaches by the research community (faculty and PhD student activity at several more institutions including, for instance, UC Berkeley.)

For example, the annual conf. participation figures were discussed here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3266311#post3266311
Some figures represent CAPS imposed by the organizers, e.g. the Madrid conference was restricted to 440 participants ( http://www.ift.uam.es/strings07/010_welcome07.htm )

Strings 2003 Kyoto 396
Strings 2004 Paris 477
Strings 2005 Toronto 415
Strings 2006 Beijing ~600
Strings 2007 Madrid 440
Strings 2008 CERN 400
Strings 2009 Rome 450
Strings 2010 Texas A&M 193
Strings 2011 Uppsala 247 (preliminary, as of 14 June)
http://www-conference.slu.se/strings2011/

I'm happy to report other details in case anyone wants confirmation, but at the end of the day what one would like is to understand the reasons. BTW this does not seem to involve a marked change in PUBLIC attitudes. AFAICS there is still a good market for string popularizations.

 

[marcus]

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676

13 June 903.0
14 June 1076.6
15 June 1390.9
16 June ...
17 June ...

The pop string top-five average seems to be getting back to the level it was around September 2010.
===================
Late registration could still bring the annual conference participants figure up. The Uppsala conference does not start until 27 June, i.e. in about 12 days.
Strings 2003 Kyoto 396
Strings 2004 Paris 477
Strings 2005 Toronto 415
Strings 2006 Beijing ~600
Strings 2007 Madrid 440
Strings 2008 CERN 400
Strings 2009 Rome 450
Strings 2010 Texas A&M 193
Strings 2011 Uppsala 249 (preliminary, as of 15 June)
https://www.akademikonferens.se/list.jsf?conf=strings2011
===========
Links to review job situation:
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08
The Toronto website has bar-graphs through 2010. Declining percentage of first-time faculty hires in high energy theory since 2000.

 

[marcus]

Here are some of the main string indicators being tracked in this thread:

Spires annual HEP citation ranking, with number of recent string papers making the top fifty

2001 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
2003 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
2005 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
2007 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
2009 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)
2010 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/annual.shtml (zero)

A paper is counted as recent if it appeared in the past five years. There has been a decline in citiations to recent string research reflected in a drop in the number of papers making the top fifty list.
======================

First-time faculty hires in HEP theory as a whole, and the string share, averaged over 3 year periods

First-time faculty hires, US and Canada

[U]period[/U]        [U]particle theory[/U]        [U]string[/U]
1999-2001     17.7 per year        8.9 per year
2002-2004     24.3  per year       7.7 per year
2005-2007     22.7 per year        6.0 per year
2008-2010     12.7 per year        2.3 per year

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/

Sources:
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3715
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php
Post #228 has some figures and source links on this.
There has been a decline in string jobs both in absolute terms and compared with high energy physics theory jobs as a whole.
======================

Registered participants in the annual conference (for brevity I list only odd years and the last two, 2010 and 2011)
Strings 2003 Kyoto 396
Strings 2005 Toronto 415
Strings 2007 Madrid 440
Strings 2009 Rome 450
Strings 2010 Texas A&M 193
Strings 2011 Uppsala 249 (preliminary)

The registration figure for 2011 is 249 as of 17 June, could increase over the next 10 days.
http://www-conference.slu.se/strings2011/
However, we may be seeing a decline. Some earlier conferences were "booked to capacity"---registration limited by the organizers and more applicants than could be accommodated. E.g. for logistical reasons the Madrid organizers registered only 440 participants--their stated maximum. This seems not the case with the 2010 and 2011 conferences, for a change.
===================

Meanwhile, here's how the Amazon salesranks of stringy popularization books have been doing:

13 June 903.0
14 June 1076.6
15 June 1390.9
16 June 1234.8
17 June ...
These are noon readings of the top-five string salesrank averages, made around the middle of each month. On 16 June the top five books (e-elegant, hidden, grand, e-grand, e-hidden) ranked 438, 783, 940, 1596, 2417 for an average of 1234.8. The string pop market is now primarily for multiverse books. These have been selling very well.

 

[marcus]

13 June 903.0
14 June 1076.6
15 June 1390.9
16 June 1234.8
17 June 1158.4
These are noon readings of the string top-five salesrank averages, made around the middle of each month. On 17 June the top five books (e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-grand, elegant) ranked 502, 832, 874, 1604, 1980 for an average of 1158.4.

That made the June midmonth average 1153.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676
June 2011         1153

 

[marcus]

I redid the format of this information:
Number of recent string papers making the top fifty in the annual Spires HEP topcite list

year (some omitted for brev.)   2001    2003    2005    2007    2009    2010
recent work highly cited in year  12       6       2       1       1       0

A paper is counted as recent if it appeared in the previous five years. This gauges the quality/significance of current work by how other researchers receive it.

Annual first-time faculty hires (US and Canada) in HEP theory as a whole, and in string, averaged over 3 year periods

period                           1999-2001    2002-2004   2005-2007    2008-2010
annual HEP theory hires as a whole      18           24          23           13
annual string hires                      9            8           6            2

Registered participants in the annual conference (some years omitted for brevity)

Strings 2003 Kyoto     396
Strings 2005 Toronto   415
Strings 2007 Madrid    440
Strings 2009 Rome      450
Strings 2010 Texas A&M 193
Strings 2011 Uppsala   261

Links to sources:
2001 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
2003 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
2005 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
2007 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
2009 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)
2010 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/annual.shtml (zero)

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3715
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php

http://www-conference.slu.se/strings2011/
https://www.akademikonferens.se/list.jsf?conf=strings2011-S

 

[marcus]

I plan to take noon readings around the middle of the month, as usual, to keep track of the amazon salesranks of the top five stringy offerings---especially popular recently with the multiverse books by Hawking and by Greene. Barring accidents, this month I will try to get a whole week of readings, around the 15th, to base the average on. Mass market string books seem less about actual string theory nowadays---and more about multiversal imaginings (stimulated by the many versions of physics which M-speculation suggests but does not choose among.)

mid-July topfive average:
12 July 1390
13 July
14 July
15 July
16 July
17 July
18 July

At noon 12 July, the five most popular (e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-hidden, elegant) ranked 1063, 1311, 1325, 1475, 1777 for an average of 1390.

 

[marcus]

mid-July topfive average:
12 July 1390
13 July 1234
14 July 1163
15 July
16 July
17 July
18 July

At noon 12 July, the five most popular (e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-hidden, elegant) ranked 1063, 1311, 1325, 1475, 1777 for an average of 1390.
At noon 13 July, the five most popular (e-elegant, e-hidden, hidden, grand, elegant) ranked 727, 1087, 1157, 1577, 1622 for an average of 1234.
At noon 14 July, the five most popular (e-elegant, hidden, grand, e-hidden, e-grand) ranked 761, 979, 1252, 1359, 1466 for an average of 1163.

 

[marcus]

To get a mid-July string topfive salesrank average, tracking the popularization market:
12 July 1390
13 July 1234
14 July 1163
15 July 1488
16 July 1156
17 July 969
18 July ...

Updating the other indices:

Number of recent string papers making the top fifty in the annual Spires HEP topcite list

year (some omitted for brev.)   2001    2003    2005    2007    2009    2010  
recent work highly cited in year  12       6       2       1       1       0

A paper is counted as recent if it appeared in the previous five years. This gauges the quality/significance of current work by how other researchers receive it.

Annual first-time faculty hires (US and Canada) in HEP theory as a whole, and in string, averaged over 3 year periods, with prelim. estim. for 2011

period                   1999-2001    2002-2004   2005-2007    2008-2010    2011
annual HEP theory hires    18           24          23           13          11 
annual string hires         9            8           6            2           0

Registered participants in the annual conference (some years omitted for brevity)

Strings 2003 Kyoto     396
Strings 2005 Toronto   415
Strings 2007 Madrid    440
Strings 2009 Rome      450
Strings 2010 Texas A&M 193
Strings 2011 Uppsala   265

Links to sources:
2001 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
2003 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
2005 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
2007 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
2009 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)
2010 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2010/annual.shtml (zero)

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3715
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php

http://www-conference.slu.se/strings2011/
https://www.akademikonferens.se/list.jsf?conf=strings2011-S

 

[marcus]

As of noon 18 July the five most popular string books at Amazon (e-elegant, hidden, e-hidden, grand, e-grand) ranked 783, 1204, 1353, 1651, 1994, for an average of 1397.

To get a mid-July string topfive salesrank average, tracking the popularization market:
12 July 1390
13 July 1234
14 July 1163
15 July 1488
16 July 1156
17 July 969
18 July 1397

1257 is the mid-month average for July. Here's the record of mid-month string salesrank averages.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676
June 2011         1153
July 2011         1257

Interest slumped during March-August 2010 (high salesranks) and then shot up in September 2010 (Hawking multiverse book) and in January 2011 (Greene multiverse book).
The two popular multiverse books (Grand Design, Hidden Reality) are not primarily about stringy ideas of unification but they do invoke the string "Landscape" of possible versions of physics (stringy thought does not nail down or determine anyone version of basic particle physics, but allows a vast range of possible versions.) Making the best of this defect, some have suggested that perhaps all these possibilities are realized somewhere in nature---i.e. in a "multiverse". This IMO is more fantasy than science, but it permits one to continue regarding string/M formalism as a theory of nature. The multiverse excitement may be abating, judging from recent trends, but it is really too early to say.

 

[marcus]

You can see from the longterm record that there is currently an uptrend in the salesranks, back towards levels prior to September 2010---ie before the latest Hawking and Greene books appeared. Today 20 July at noon the stringy top five ( e-elegant, grand, e-hidden, hidden, elegant ) ranked 1221, 1738, 1894, 2395, 3389, for an average of 2127. Amazon ranks e-books separately so their ranks as books must be estimated from where they occur among the regular books on the physics bestseller list.

 

[marcus]

The string midmonth salesrank average for July was 1257. As a spot check, to see how it was doing, I looked today at noon 27 July and it was 1440.

That breaks down like this: the five most popular string books were e-elegant, hidden, grand, e-hidden, elegant, 4 for Greene and 1 for Hawking. 2 regular string and 3 multiverse (which promotes string to a possible theory of nature because it has room for the many different string versions of physics, and is thus a string-friendly vision.)

The ranks were 669, 1249, 1457, 1712, 2111 for an average of 1440.

Multiverse speculation tends to be shut out of regular annual Strings conferences, but it is popular with the general public. So it got minimal attention at the recent Strings 2011 actual conference, but outside there was a public lecture about it. Also little or no attention by the professional in regular session at Strings 2008, 2009, 2010. But sometimes stuff for the public on the outside. A curious split of emphasis.

See post 241 (three posts back from here) for indices tracking the interest and activity of actual string researchers as opposed to the popular book market.

 

[marcus]

Significant developments at the professional level can be summarized by saying that faculty hires for string are way down. (First-time faculty hires in Usa+Canada at or near zero this year.)
See post #241 above.

The annual string conference attendance has fallen off, and at the last one few of the talks were actually about string/M---people were asking "where are the strings?" and speculating as to the significance of that.

Annual citations to recent string/M research papers are sharply down from their earlier (say 2001-2003) levels.

On an anecdotal, individual level one can see a tendency for prominent string researchers to get out of the field and into related or neighboring areas of research. Perhaps "string-inspired" but not actually dealing with string brane and space with extra rolled-up dimensions. String unification seems to have been side-tracked or put on hold, with more emphasis on finding applications of the math tools in other areas. One hears a more sophisticated view that the string pictures may not necessarily be how the world is but rather one analytical approach---convenient in some context but not essential or fundamental.

There has also been some shift in views on Supersymmetry recently. Since signs of SUSY have not been showing up at the CERN collider. Quotes from string theorists have been assembled in this blog post.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3864

===================

At the level of general public interest, string popularity in the book market, which is now focused mainly on multiverse thinking, has been running around 1600. Already up some from the mid-July average of 1257.

At noon on Thursday, Friday, Saturday (28, 29, 30 July) the saleranks of the five most popular string books averaged 1657, 1654, 1594.
The top five have tended to be e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-hidden, e-grand with little variation.

 

[marcus]

Not useful as a statistical index (or so I've concluded) but perhaps a handy snapshot of current topics in string research. Harvard abstracts database search using keywords: superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic

First six months of 2010
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

First six months of 2011
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

The Spires database has cataloguing done by human librarians. The Harvard system seems simply to use occurrences of words in the title or abstract---tagging is done by machine in other words. Whatever the reason, the results are different.

Here's a Spires search using (human-applied) keywords "string model" and "membrane model":
2002:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2002&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (1783)
2009:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (1036)
2010:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (935)
2011:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2011&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (500)

I think the point of a search like this is not to get "ALL" of some category of research paper that you imagine in your head and you think is the right definition of string research. The point, I guess, is to apply the same test repeatedly and see if there is change and see if you can understand it. Here the test is what the DESY librarians classify a certain way, and one can only hope that their criteria are stable over the years.

BTW at noon 3 August the salesranks of the top five string books (e-elegant, grand, hidden, e-hidden, e-grand) averaged 2202. Still a long way to go before that index gets back up to its pre-September 2010 levels, that pertained before the two big multiverse books appeared.

 

[marcus]

Among indices of professional research activity a small but interesting one is the number of Loop phenomenology papers (related to observational testing) that have appeared post-2008 (i.e. 2009 and later). This search picks up a number of them, probably not all. Testing (using observations of the early universe) is crucial. So even though this only involves a few dozen papers, it is an indicator to watch.

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28QUANTUM+GRAVITY+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29+%29+AND+%28GRAVITATIONAL+RADIATION+OR+PRIMORDIAL+OR+INFLATION+OR+POWER+SPECTRUM+OR+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE%3E2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=ds%28d%29

Here's a Spires search tracking Loop gravity research publication using DESY keywords for spinfoam, loop quantum gravity, loop quantum cosmology. Evidently the figure for 2011 is incomplete. I made the search for the same years tabulated for string in the preceding post, just for comparison's sake.

2002 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2002+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (25)
2009 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (142)
2010 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2010+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (154)
2011 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2011+&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (112)

The possible significance here is not the absolute numbers but the change over time, assuming the librarians apply their keyword categories consistently each year. DESY keywords are applied by hand, not by machine. You probably can't get ALL the papers you imagine to be in whatever category, but you can see how the number changes.

Here's a Spires search using the DESY library's keywords "string model" and "membrane model":
2002 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2002&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (1783)
2009 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (1037)
2010 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2010&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (935)
2011 http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+STRING+MODEL+OR+DK+MEMBRANE+MODEL%29+AND+DATE+%3D2011&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE= (529)

This is as of 13 August, evidently the 2011 figure will increase as the year progresses.
If you want a very rough estimate of the final figure you can multiply the current one by 12/7.5 since at this point about 7.5 of the 12 months are in.

For other indices connected with professional research and faculty jobs, see post #241 in this thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3407914#post3407914

=======
The main indicator of wide audience interest we have been watching is the string topfive Amazon salesrank average.
At noon 13 August the five most popular stringy books (grand, e-elegant, e-grand, e-hidden, hidden) ranked 752, 1198, 1501, 2408, 3547 for an average of 1881.

The corresponding topfive average at noon 12 August was 1757. I'm planning to record a midmonth average as I've done in the past.

12 August 1757
13 August 1881
14 August
15 August
16 August
17 August
18 August

The most popular stringy books tend to involve imagining multiverses rather than explaining string theory per se. Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design is especially popular in the wake of his prominent role in a TV series called "Curiosity".

Here's what that index has looked like for the past year. September 2010 was when Hawking's grand design multiverse book came out.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676
June 2011         1153
July 2011         1257

 

[marcus]

To update something in the previous post,

12 August 1757
13 August 1881
14 August 1371
15 August 1831
16 August
17 August
18 August

At noon 15 August the top five stringy books (grand, e-elegant, hidden, e-grand, elegant) ranked 1023, 1436, 1769, 2015, 2914, for an average of 1831

 

[marcus]

12 August 1757
13 August 1881
14 August 1371
15 August 1831
16 August 2244
17 August 2618
18 August

At Pacific noon 17 August the top five stringy books (grand, e-elegant, e-grand, hidden, elegant) ranked 1546, 1797, 2443, 3472, 3833, for an average of 2618.

 

[marcus]

At Pacfic noon 18 August the string top five (e-elegant, grand, e-grand, hidden, elegant) ranked
1736, 1762, 2661, 3319, 4405, for an average of 2777. This makes our 7-day mid-month average for August come out to 2068.

Midmonth averages of string topfive salesranks
(recorded at Pacific noon on several days around the 15th of each month)

January 2007:     4396
February 2007:    3789
November 2008:    3711
July 2009:        6485  
March 2010:       7521
April 2010:      11983
May 2010:         6884
June 2010:        9731
July 2010:        8461
August 2010:      9606
September 2010:   1060 
October 2010:     1344
November 2010     2220
December 2010     2705
January 2011      1252
February 2011      223
March 2011         349
April 2011         649
May 2011           676
June 2011         1153
July 2011         1257
August 2011       2068