September 27, 2007
Category: Astronomy & Physics • Astronomy Science • Big Bang & Cosmology • Science & Culture
Every so often you will come across somebody who has a "killer" list
of "problems" with the Big Bang. While there remain unknowns and
questions about the Big Bang— just as there do with biological
evolution— the basic picture of the Big Bang is rock
solid— just like evolution.
Nearly two months ago, I received a query from somebody who found my
name through the
Clergy
Letter Project "expert database" regarding one of the websites that
lists these objects. I've been through quite a number of life changes
in the last 6-8 weeks, and my blogging rate has suffered as a result.
However, I'm finally getting to it. Nearly all of the things I will
respond to here are generic responses, as these "objections" to the
Big Bang are frequently brought up, but for reference I will link to
the site that was given to
me: Dr. Tom
van Flandern's Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang. Nearly all of
these objects are either a misunderstanding of the Big Bang, or
an objection that is out of date. I won't address all 30
individually, but I will hit some of the highlights. The fact
that I don't address a given objection should not be taken as
evidence that I'm ceding the point!
Read on »
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:34 PM • 8 Comments
September 8, 2007
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology • Self • The Business of Astronomy
Hello from England! Last night was the award ceremony for the 2007 Gruber Prizer in Cosmology. It was good to meet up with the members of the SCP again, many of whom I haven't seen in several years. Picture below is the members of the collaboration who were present, underneath one of the many trees labelled as "Newton's Apple Tree" in the UK; this one is at Trinity college, and apparently is a descendant of the original tree from the apocryphal story about the apple falling on Newton's head. Here we are all looking for apples of our own, but evidently these apples are made of dark energy and as such are not falling into gravitational potential wells....
At the awards ceremony, a number of people spoke. I want to comment on three things that people said. First, Jim Peebles, one of the previous winners of this award, thanked the awardees for two things. First, for solving one problem: the mass density of the Universe, and fixing the cosmological "age crisis" through the measurement of a positive cosmological constant. Second, for the introduction of a new conundrum: just what is this cosmological constant or dark energy stuff? There's nothing scientists like better than a good conundrum.
The two individual winners of the award, Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, each spoke, and each had similar themes to what they said. Saul started by noting that there is this popular image of the lone scientist working on brilliant discoveries all himself, but often it doesn't work that way. He then went through a serious of snapshot images he has in his head of the process of discovering the acceleration of the Universe, mentioning the names of each of the rest of his team who were present. (About me, he said that I type and program faster than he talks... and if you've heard Saul talk, that's saying something!)
Brian Schmidt, likewise, came up and said that he wasn't speaking for him, but he was speaking as the representative of the High-Z team. He said that a lot of the problems that are present in science today can not besolved be individuals, despite the fact that many prizes are still given to individuals. Rather, they are solved by teams.
It is significant to me that half of this award went to not individuals, but to the teams of which Saul and Brian were leaders. There were many, many contributions all worthy of recognition.
If I were more cynical I might say that Saul and Brian were just saying what they were supposed to say, facing the fact that about 1/3 of the people in the audience were the other team members.... However, I am not that cynical. I really believe that what Saul and Brian said was heartfelt. I appreciate both of them and the Gruber Foundation for so publically recognizing that this discovery did require teams, and that those teams were worth of honor.
I close with just one picture from the dinner later last evening. Alex Kim, who is pictured, was a graduate student at UC Berkeley when I and Peter Nugent arrived as post-docs in 1996. Ironically, Alex Kim defended his thesis in late 1996, but both Peter and I defended our theses in early spring 1997... for a while, the post-docs didn't exactly yet have their PhDs, but the grad student did! You can see that Alex (now a permanent staff member at LBNL, after a stint as a post-doc in Paris) has done well, for he seems to have located a new standard candle....
Photograph by Nelson Nunes
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:50 AM • 2 Comments
September 5, 2007
Category: About the Blog
I"m sorry the blog's been so quiet recently. With my new job, and my trip out to SF getting started at Linden these last two weeks, I've been quite busy! Things won't settle down until next week, as I'm off to the UK for the next for days for the Gruber Prize award ceremony. I'll be back next week and trying to settle into a routine, after which hopefully I'll be getting to some of my mentally queued posts including one on the Coriolis Effect, one answering common criticisms you may see about the Big Bang, and hopefully one on the bigass void that some of you have read about.
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:55 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Culture
I haven't read the study— it would take some digging to find, after all!— only the CNN Article, but the title sums up half of the results: "Men want hot women, study confirms."
In a nutshell, the study found that in a speed-dating test, men, despite what they said they were looking for, almost always went for the most physically attractive women (measured I am not sure how). Women, meanwhile, went for a man whose "desirability" (again, measured I am not sure how) matched their own assessment of how attractive they are.
The conclusion the article claims is that humans, despite high-minded language about looking for people who share their interests and values, seek out mates based primarily on physical attractiveness.
I want to suggest an alternate hypothesis. That is, "speed dating" is a shallow process that leads people to making judgments based on shallow criteria. Seems possible, no? I mean, even after an intense 3 minutes of conversation, can you really do a whole lot better judging how interested you are in a person than you can viewing a photograph?
It always bothers me to see news stories making (or just accepting) facile conclusions that come from studies where there are obvious potential biases built in to the methodology of the study without even acknowledging that that is something that one should think about.
Update: There is some analysis of what makes a face attractive, inspired by this same news story, at The Anterior Commissure. Hat tip: Cognitive Daily.
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:40 AM • 12 Comments
September 3, 2007
Category: Science & Culture • Science Education & Outreach
Read this book.
First and formost for a book review: Storm World is a good
read. You will not find yourself bogged down or forcing yourself to
push through a book that's "good for you." You will keep reading
because you will want to know more.
As for the book itself: Mooney clearly has a point of view in the
book, and does not hide it. However, that point of view is considered
based on the evidence, and he also admits that it is not exactly the
same as the point of view he expected to have when starting research for
the book. This is not a polemic, it is not a "the sky is falling, we're
all gonna die!" rant about hurricans and global warming. Even if you
are one who is inclined to doubt all of that, I strongly encourge you to
consider reading this book.
The book is really about two things. First, it's a historical and
present account of our increasing understanding of just what hurricanes
are, including that there still is a lot about them that we don't
understand. Second, it's an examination of the scientific process which
is in many ways more honest and true to reality than many of the
sugar-coated versions of the scientific process that we hear.
Read on »
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:45 AM •
August 25, 2007
Category: Intellectual Property • Rant
DRM stands for "digital restrictions management". (Those who are in the business of peddling it as something positive will tell you it's "digital rights management," but the former is really a better descriptive name.) It is software that prevents you from using some other software or digital files on your computer unless you meet certain criteria.
DRM has actually been with us for a long time. Back in the 1980's, games and other software you could buy for your Apple II or Commodore 64 came with "copy protection." These were tricks that the software publishers would use to make it difficult to copy the disks. The computers hadn't been designed to support this, so typically copy protection relied on writing key bits of data to parts of the disk that the hardware wasn't documented to be able to read, or by putting disk errors that had to be there for the software to run. Sometimes these things would break if new versions of the software came out, and sometimes they would actually damage the disk drives or, at least, cause more wear than the same amount of normal use would. This also meant you couldn't back up the software you've purchased. The result: lots and lots of "backup" and "archival" programs were written to facilitate copying of these programs. Copy protection was a hassle for legitimate users, but did not really stop software piracy at all. Eventually, it more or less fell out of favor.
Nowadays its back, and it's still causing headaches and problems for legitimate users.
Read on »
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:45 PM • 25 Comments
August 19, 2007
Category: Random & Gratuitous
Well, not all of these pictures of the sciblings are in the "LOLCats" style, but they do have captions....
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:33 PM • 5 Comments
Category: Random & Gratuitous
Poor Dr. Steve Steve. Such is his international celebrity that he cannot show his furry little face in New York without being hounded by the (new) media! He tries to hide in Tara Smith's bag, but it's to no avail....
...as sciblings and paparazzi MIke Dunford, PZ Myers, Josh Rosenau, and Evilmonkey managed to catch up with him in their stalkings.
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:43 PM • 1 Comments
August 18, 2007
Category: Astronomy & Physics • Astronomy Science • The Business of Astronomy
This is mostly just an MLP ("Mindless Link Post"), and it's nearly two weeks late, but there's a post by Julianne over at Cosmic Variance that I think is of crucial importance. People who are outside the field of science very often lose sight of the huge amount of important science that is done, but doesn't produce the "amazingly sexy discovery" news headlines, or, say, the Gruber prize. Also, people working in one field of science often don't appreciate the value of other fields of science when it doesn't obviously overlap theirs... even though, as Julianne points out, all of that other "uninteresting" stuff may well have included things necessary to generate the bits that overlap their field!
In one of my first years at Vanderbilt (back in the days when I used to be a professor), one of the older experimental particle physicists came into my office, wondering why we were talking about supporting all the other boring star-and-planet formation science being done, when I was the only astronomer doing anything "really fundamental." (I was still working in supernova cosmology at the time.) One of these other astronomers was David Weintraub, not then but now the author of a successful popular science book Is Pluto a Planet?— a topic that would be hard to argue has no general interest. David was and is working on things that addressed the formation of our own Solar System, something which was not only one of the current hot and sexy topics in Astronomy, but which is easily of as much "basic human interest" as the origin of our Universe, and more immediate (so to speak) and tangible besides! This particle physicist nodded, indicating surprise, saying that I had a good point that different people might think different things are of the most basic interest.
It's easy to find particle physicists who think that cosmology is the only thing in astronomy even vaguely of interest. (Just as it's easy to find atomic and solid state physicists who think that particle physics is useless musing whose valuable period ended well before the 20th century, and just as it is easy to find astronomers who think that cosmology is all poorly-grounded crap that represents only borderline interesting science, and is mostly a land grab by particle physicists interested in astronomy funding sources.) There really are two things here. First is the fact that there is an awful lot of interesting science out that that people in your field genuinely have no reason to care about. Second, though, and this is something that as an astronomer as frustrated me watching particle physicists come in and think they know how to use telescopes: people outside of your field know a lot of things about how to do their science that you don't know, and you dismiss them at your peril. Julianne says it best:
...if you limit astronomers' ability to go forth and characterize what the universe is actually like, no one will be laying the foundations for the next generation of crazy-physics-you-can-study-in-space. For astrophysics, the Universe is our LHC, and we've got to be free to characterize our widgets, even if they're boring ole brown dwarfs rather than panels of supercooled silicon wafers.
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:15 AM • 4 Comments
Category: Self
This post has been resurrected from my old blog's location. I've copied the 2006-03-19 post as-is, and I've added a few addenda at the bottom.
I overstimulate fairly easily. This is a serious social disadvantage.
I don’t know how much there is really to this, but I’m attracted to the notion of the Highly Senstiive Person (HSP). (Also see the links from that Wikipedia article, which is really just a stub.) It doesn’t completely describe me– for instance, I am quite enamored with excessively violent video games, and even many excessively violent movies.
However, in almost every other way, the stuff about the Highly Sensitive Person describes me to a “T”. (Whatever the heck that means.) In particular:
Read on »
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:26 AM • 30 Comments
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