Big Bang & Cosmology
sb admin | November 24, 2007(I know I'm not doing this any more, but I couldn't resist.)
An article in New Scientist reports on musing by two reasonable and respected cosmologists— indeed, ones whom I've met myself— that our discovery of dark energy may have shortened the life of the Universe.
To which I can only say "foo". And I say "foo" on two levels. Primarily, on the sensational way in which this is described by New Scientist. But secondarily, on the interpretations of quantum mechanics that respectable cosmologists are promoting.
First of all, for a bit of perspective. The actual research paper on which this…
sb admin | September 27, 2007Every 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…
sb admin | September 8, 2007Hello 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…
sb admin | August 14, 2007Following the talk I gave in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe, we held a couple of Q&A sessions. The original plan was to have questions right after the talk, but the Second Life main grid crashed right at that moment. We all got online about half an hour later, and I held one Q&A session for the people who came back. There was another one the next day.
Troy McLuhan (his Second Life avatar name) logged the session, and has done the hard work of formatting and lightly editing it for web publication. You can find the transcript of the Q&A session…
sb admin | July 31, 2007I managed to get through my 15-20 minute "talk," and just as I threw it open for questions Second Life had a database problem and everbody in-world had to be logged out.... We got back in 40 minutes or so later, and I answered questions for a while for people who came back. However, if you were at the talk and wanted to ask questions but didn't come back, I'll be doing a follow-up Q&A session tomorrow (Wednesday August 1) at 10AM PDT at the same location.
Below, I've got a transcript of the talk I gave. Other than fixing some typos and merging things into paragraphs, I haven't edited…
sb admin | July 31, 2007Just a reminder: I'm giving a talk / Q&A session about the discovery of the accelerating Universe today in Second Life. The talk is at 10:00 AM PDT / 12:00 Noon CDT / 1:00 PM EDT / 17:00 UT. Find it by going to this location: Spaceport Bravo (120,65,278).
Also, for those of you who don't know: a basic Second Life account is completely free! Go to the site and register for an account, and download the client to run on your computer. After you get in-world, you'll go through an "orientation island" that teaches you how to move about and look about. The Basic Account lets you get in…
sb admin | July 26, 2007Next Tuesday, July 31, at 10:00AM PDT (17:00 UT), I'll be giving a talk and Q&A session in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe.
The talk is being hosted by Troy McLuhan of the Science Center Group. I t will be located at Spaceport Bravo (120,65,278).
And now, for no adequately explained reason, I include a picture of my Second Life self wearing M51 on my head:
sb admin | July 17, 2007This is really cool. Several years ago, the Gruber Foundation established a prize in cosmology. Last year (2006) the award went to John Mather and the COBE team; you may recall that Mather was one of the two winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. This year the award is being split four ways: (1) Saul Perlmutter, leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP); (2) Brian Schmidt, leader of the High-Z Supernova Team (HZT); (3) the members of the SCP who were on the Perlmutter '99 paper; and (4) the members of the HZT who were on the Riess '98 paper. These two papers were the…
sb admin | May 4, 2007There's been a revolution in cosmology in the last 10 years. Alas, many of the popularizations and textbooks are taking time to catch up... mostly because they were published more than 10 years ago, I suppose.
As such, there's this idea out there that cosmologists are trying to work out if the Universe will recollapse or not.
It won't.
OK, I sound more confident than I really am. However, for it to recollapse, Dark Energy would have to be way more perverse than we think it is anyway. Way. We're pretty sure at this point that a recollapse is far off of the table.
And, yet, I still…