Category: cosmology

Cosmic inflation one more time—well, two

March 21, 2014 • 12:32 pm

Reader Sergio called this comic to my attention (via  Twi**er: @JenLucPiquant and @phdcomics), which gives a good explanation of the meaning of the recent evidence for cosmic inflation.  Maybe you understand those scientific findings by now, but just in case you didn’t read this, from Jon Kaufman and Jorge Cham at PhD Comics (Kaufman was a member of the BICEP2 team that helped make the discovery):

Inflation

And here’s a video of Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll explaining the phenomenon on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and its significance. He does a very good job!

BICEP, gravitational waves et al.

March 20, 2014 • 8:10 am

Reader Justin sent a link to this animated video by MinutePhysics that tries to explain what the BICEP project really revealed about the Big Bang (I say “tries” because I’m not a physicist). Do note, though, that Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll was an advisor on the science, so it must be right!.

One thing I took from this video (and again, readers in the know can explain it) was the statement that “this discovery marks the first confirmation that gravity is indeed a quantum mechanical phenomenon.” It was my impression that the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics was one of the great unsolve problems of physics, and I’m wondering if the BICEP results will help that project.

Note that two minutes in, the video tells you how to get a free audio book, and the selection includes one recommended by Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd.

As for the significance beyond physics, it’s explained in yesterday’s The Far Left Side cartoon by Mike Stanfill, a strip I must check more regularly. (Stanfill always adds some explanation below his cartoons.)

3-19-14-science-vs-religion

In less than an hour, scientists will announce their discovery of the Big Bang’s echo

March 17, 2014 • 8:18 am

by Matthew Cobb

For the last few days, Tw*tter has been abuzz with speculation about a press conference around a ‘major discovery’ that’s being held today at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, at noon US Eastern Standard Time (16:00 GMT/UTC).  There will be a live-stream of the presser from 11:55 am EST/15:55 (as of now, the site has crashed…). If you can understand it, you can get all the raw data here.

It seems most likely that the researchers will announce that the BICEP2 experiment – based in Antarctica – has detected primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background. These would have been produced just after the Big Bang – the ‘echo’ of that event that set in motion everything that is or ever will be. And when they say ‘just after’, that’s exactly what the cosmologists and astronomers mean, for this would be a sign of the inflationary phase that followed the Big Bang, at around 10-34 seconds. That is, 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after… The nature of this incredibly faint signal will tell us something about this key phase in the history of the universe.

I won’t pretend I understand all the cosmology (and I don’t feel bad about that – what do the cosmologists know about maggots?) but I know it’s exciting. If you want to know more, I recommend reading The Guardian’s explanation from last Friday when they blew the story wide open, or if you are more technically-inclined, this post by the Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll.

If—like me—you’re going to be glued to the press conference, and in particular if you’re in a group that’s watching, liven up an already exciting event by printing out these handy bingo cards, replete with all the expected clichés…

Please feel free to pitch in below, particularly if you have expert knowledge in this field. [JAC: I can’t pretend to understand the significance of this, either, even though I’ve read the relevant posts, so reader feedback would be appreciated, especially to distinguish this new finding from the older, Nobel-recognized discovery of the microwave radiation that also echoed the Big Bang.]

[UPDATE: Stanford has just posted this great video, in which Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo of the BICEP2 experiment popped  round earlier on today to see Professor Andrei Linde, one of the scientists who developed much of the theory behind inflation, to tell him he was right. His response – and that of his wife – is charming. (The ‘5 sigma’ they are talking about is the significance level of the results, which is amazingly high because the data are so clear. As one of the BICEP2 researchers said during the press conference – ‘we were looking for a needle in a haystack; we found a crowbar’.)

JAC: I’ve posted a picture, noted by reader Kevin in the comments, of the timeline of the evolution of the universe, a NASA creation taken from Wikipedia:

800px-CMB_Timeline75

The new “Cosmos”

March 10, 2014 • 1:41 pm

Sadly, I cannot provide a review of the new Cosmos television show produced by Ann Druyan and starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, for I didn’t see it. I will probably watch it in rerun when I have time to see it properly.  But I thought I’d provide one review, from Reverend El Mundo, and give readers who saw it an opportunity to weigh in. First, the Reverend and his cat Coco:

Hope you got to see Neil deGasse Tyson present the first episode of Cosmos last night.  It was excellent and he did a fantastic job.

Check out the photo.  I swear I did not set this scene up.  My cat, Coco, watched the series on and off like this for at least 30 minutes!  When I got up for a treat during an intermission, she’d walk over to the kitchen w/ me (for one as well) and then eventually come back and park her butt in front of the TV and watch more of the special!  I have no clue what could possibly have gotten her attention for so long but she seemed to be really interested in something.  Maybe it was Neil’s discussion of the treatment of Giordano Bruno by the Morans* of the day!

Coco&Cosmos

For my own edification, I asked the good Reverend what “Morans” were, and he added this:

The word “Morans” relates to my description for the ignorami of the era.  The word gained popular circulation during the tortuous GW Beanbrain period (2000-2008) when the attached photo made its first intertubes appearance.

MoransIf you Google the word and select “images,” it’s the 1st image to pop up!  It’s the perfect picture for the OED word, “ignoramus.”

So, if you saw “Cosmos”, what did you think? Nearly all the reviews I’ve read online have been positive. And if you also saw the original with Carl Sagan, feel from to contrast/compare.

______
UPDATE:  Another cat, sent BY reader Helene, also watched “Cosmos”:

Your reader, the reverend, is not the only one who has a cat that enjoyed Cosmos last night. Mr Mumps spent almost the entire program watching up close. Not sure why—the last time he did that was during the Olympics to watch skiers.

In the attached image, you can see him approving of the big bang.

I wonder what was appealing to cats. Do you think there is a chance that there are more Cosmos cat enthusiasts out there? I’d hate to conclude anything from a sample of only two.

Cosmos cat

A good piece about Carl Sagan

March 4, 2014 • 11:00 am

With Neil deGrasse Tyson’s presentation of “Cosmos” (produced by Ann Druyan and Seth MacFarlane) set to premiere this Sunday, people are harking back to the original “Cosmos” of Carl Sagan. That original ran for 14 telvision episodes at the end of 1980, and I remember it well. Sagan was mesmerizing, and his excited presentation didn’t seem an affectation, like that of some science gurus, but a true reflection of his personality.

One of the best retrospectives I’ve read is a piece in the new Smithsonian by Joel Achenbach,  “Why Carl Sagan is truly irreplaceable“. Have a read when you have some leisure time and (preferably) a good libation.

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff: about Sagan’s meeting with Timothy Leary, in prison for LSD use, about Sagan’s habit of dictating his books, and about his own prolific use of marijuana (I didn’t know that he was such a stoner). I’ll quote only one part, about Sagan’s death and atheism.  I suppose, as I get older, I get more fascinated with how people face the end of their lives. Sagan appears to have done it with courage and aplomb:

Sagan became gravely sick with the blood disorder myelodysplasia in 1994, and underwent a bone marrow transplant from his sister, Cari. Sagan, then 60, wanted everyone to understand that although he was facing the possibility of a premature death, he would not seek comfort in some traditional religious belief in an afterlife.

In 1996, a man wrote to him asking about the distance to heaven. Sagan’s response: “Thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. (One light year is almost six trillion miles.) With best wishes…”

When a religious couple wrote to him about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996: “If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.”

Sagan became agitated after reading a new book by the legendary skeptic Martin Gardner, whom Sagan had admired since the early 1950s. It suggested that perhaps there was a singular God ruling the universe and some potential for life after death. In November 1996, Sagan wrote to Gardner: “[T]he only reason for this position that I can find is that it feels good….How could you of all people advocate a position because it’s emotionally satisfying, rather than demand rigorous standards of evidence even if they lead to a position that is emotionally distasteful?”

Gardner responded: “I not only think there are no proofs of God or an afterlife, I think you have all the best arguments. Indeed, I’ve never read anything in any of your books with which I would disagree. Where we differ is over whether the leap of faith can be justified in spite of a total lack of evidence…”

I interviewed Sagan that spring in Seattle, where he was undergoing medical treatment, and although chemotherapy had ravaged his body he had lost none of his volubility or his enthusiasm for science, reason and the wonders of the cosmos. He felt confident that he could beat his disease.

We talked a lot that day about extraterrestrial life.

“I’d rather there be extraterrestrial life discovered in my lifetime than not. I’d hate to die and never know,” he said.

While he was in Seattle, his secretaries sent a fax daily to Druyan with a rundown on the mail, calls that had come in, speaking invitations, requests for interviews, requests to contribute a piece of writing to some upcoming anthology. Sometimes Sagan would annotate these faxes with a few instructions. Toward the very end he would sometimes merely cross out a paragraph. Couldn’t do it. He was out of time.

Sagan died shortly after midnight on December 20, 1996. He was 62.

I’m 64, and could never imagine being able to do what he did, even if I had three lifetimes. If I could write just one book as good as The Demon-Haunted World, I could die happy. (Well, not really; nobody dies happy.) Sagan was a natural.

Get the popcorn: Sean Carroll goes at it hammer and tongs with William Lane Craig—livestreamed tonight!

February 21, 2014 • 9:02 am

I’m sure we’ll all be rooting for Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll as he begins his two-day series of debates and discussions with William “Kill the Canaanites” Craig this evening. And you can watch tonight’s debate live (see below). The topic is whether modern cosmology gives any evidence for God, and you can read all the preliminaries here.

As Sean said on his website yesterday (my emphasis):

Tomorrow (Friday) is the big day: the debate with William Lane Craig at the Greer-Heard Forum, as I previously mentioned. And of course the event continues Saturday, with contributions from Tim Maudlin, Alex Rosenberg, Robin Collins, and James Sinclair.

I know what you’re asking: will it be live-streamed? Yes indeed!

Fun starts at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific. (Corrected from earlier goof.) The format is an opening 20-minute speech by WLC and me (in that order), followed by 12-minute rebuttals, and then 8-minute closing statements, and concluding with 40 minutes of audience questions. Official Twitter hashtag is #GreerHeard14, which I believe you can use to submit questions for the Q&A. I wouldn’t lie to you: I think this will be worth watching.

Sean seems to be actually raising expectations for his performance, for his post continues:

I want to make the case for naturalism, and to do that it’s obviously necessary to counter any objections that get raised. Moreover, I think that expectations (for me) should be set ridiculously high. The case I hope to make for naturalism will be so impressively, mind-bogglingly, breathtakingly strong that it should be nearly impossible for any reasonable person to hear it and not be immediately convinced. Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if there are any theists left in the audience once the whole thing is over.

That sounds like a bit of a joke given that there will be many WLC supporters in the audience, but maybe he’s serious.

h/t: Peter

Sean Carroll to debate William Lane Craig

January 13, 2014 • 11:19 am

Let the sparks fly: Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll will debate theologian William Lane Craig at a “Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in Faith and Culture”. According to the website, these forums are an ongoing program of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and are “designed to provide a venue in which respected scholars of differing opinions dialogue on critical issues in religion, science, philosophy, and/or culture from their differing perspectives.”

Here is the topic and the dates:

Screen shot 2014-01-13 at 1.43.24 AM

As you see, it’s a two-day event, with the schedule here. It’s a bit wonky, since that page lists both the 21st and 22nd as “Saturdays” (the 21st is a Friday), but the formal debate will apparently take place at 7 pm on Friday, with academic papers by Carroll and Craig presented (in a chapel!) on Saturday morning and afternoon.

You can register here: the fee for regular folks is $20, but minister and students get a $10 discount. More privilege for religion!

Well, if someone has to do this, I’m glad it’s Sean, who’w written extensively about how cosmology provides no evidence for God (see the nice essay here, for example).

And I’m also glad it’s about physics, for Sean knows his onions about it, and is also a good extemporaneous speaker. (I wonder if Craig will bring up the the Kalām “Cosmological” Argument.) I also know that Carroll’s savvy enough to realize that Craig has a team of people meticulously researching everything Sean’s ever said, and I trust that Carroll will perform his own due diligence.

Although I don’t approve of debates as ways to settle issues like the fact of evolution or God’s non-existence, I’m not nearly as worried about Carroll—despite Craig’s formidable debating skills—as I am about Bill Nye.

If you’re lucky enough to be in New Orleans, I’d suggest going. It promises to be a good show for $20—so long as the speakers don’t read their papers on Saturday. (Gratuitious gripe: Why do some academics, especially in the humanities, insist on standing in front of an audience and reading from their manuscript? Do they know that the academic written word is deadly dull, and differs from the spoken word? Do they realize that they could just distribute the manuscript, or put it online, and save everyone the trouble of being bored? There is simply no excuse for an academic reading a paper in public.)

h/t: darelle