The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Swampland Published
Regular readers of this blog might remember that last year I did a post about a very comprehensive review article which had appeared on arXiv with the title Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist’s Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme. The article is by Kay Lehnert (who happens to be my PhD student). Well, that paper was published last Saturday (28th March 2026) in the journal Fortschritte der Physik (which I translate roughly as “Advances in Physics”, but whose official English title seems to be “Progress of Physics”). Anyway, it is available (and indeed openly accessible) here. And, if you don’t believe me, here’s a grab of the front page showing the deets (as you young people say):
In the Dark 
March 31, 2026 at 11:07 am
Thank you so much, Peter, for blogging about my review article!
Indeed, I’d say the German word ‘Fortschritt’ could be translated as ‘progress’ or ‘advancement’, both meaning ‘going forward’. Checking the Cambridge Dictionary definition of the two English terms also does not provide much distinction:
Progress: ‘movement to an improved or more developed state, or to a forward position.’
Advance: ‘to go or move something forward, or to develop or improve something.’
As long as we all progressively advance forward to a more developed and improved state, all is good.
March 31, 2026 at 12:12 pm
I should have clarified that I only did one year of German at school and neither the word “progress” nor “advancement” describe how that went.
March 31, 2026 at 11:12 am
Extremely impressive to write a review article while still a PhD student – especially one of 142 pages and over 1800 references! (Don’t think I have ever seen that many before). Well done!
March 31, 2026 at 5:35 pm
Yes, indeed. Being asked to write a review article is more often than not an indication of old age…
March 31, 2026 at 10:07 pm
[…] Swampland Programme” appeared in the journal Fortschritte der Physik last week.[1][2] Spanning over 170 pages and citing more than 1,800 references, it equips researchers with tools to […]