Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Lighting Up The Dark

by cjohnson in Science | 7 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >
November 22nd, 2005 12:50 AM

So as I’d mentioned earlier was going to happen, Risa visited USC and gave us a colloquium today. It was excellent, and was very well received by the department. (For example, it is highly unusual for so many students to ask questions - and not just at the end but at several points through the colloquium.)

Have a look at her abstract in the previous post. I learned a lot about what’s the state of the art in these studies of the evolution of structure in our universe, which are so crucial for understanding the role of dark matter and dark energy in how our universe looks today. For more on this, see Risa’s website for links to lots of material she presented in the Compton lectures earlier this year.

-cvj

7 Responses to “Lighting Up The Dark”

1. 1.   Plato Says:
   November 22nd, 2005 at 1:42 am

   Andrey Kravtsov are modelling the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters using supercomputer simulations designed to follow the evolution of dark matter, gas and stars starting from realistic cosmological initial conditions

   I clicked on June 4 slides/summary and came up with a different link.

   I was thinking was about Kravtsov and true to word this quote popped up. But also ideas about the cosmic string Andrey’s model help me to see this way and wonder about the very begginning and how such strings formed?

   One such field, called the dilaton, is the master key to string theory; it determines the overall strength of all interactions. The dilaton fascinates string theorists because its value can be reinterpreted as the size of an extra dimension of space, giving a grand total of 11 spacetime dimensions-Gabriele Veneziano

   I mean if you didn’t see the early uiverse as Andrey depicts it in his model, then such ideas as supersymmetry wouldn’t make sense either, would they?

2. 2.   Risa Says:
   November 22nd, 2005 at 3:27 pm

   My goodness, Clifford — you really do take that camera everywhere.

   Thanks for the props, it was great to finally meet you!

3. 3.   Clifford Says:
   November 22nd, 2005 at 3:42 pm

   It was great to meet you, and everyone enjoyed the visit. Next time, you stay for dinner, you hear? JoAnne (among others) will tell you that it can be worth it. There’s a lot to choose from in LA!

   Cheers,

   -cvj

4. 4.   Dissident Says:
   November 23rd, 2005 at 5:05 am

   Is that really Risa in the picture? Looks very different from the one here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/risa

   I know it’s small, dark and at a different angle, but even the hair color seems wrong.

   And while I’m out asking funny questions, why are there so few posts by the lady?

   Inquiring minds want to know: does Risa really exist?
   

5. 5.   Clifford Says:
   November 23rd, 2005 at 11:34 am

   Dissident. Well, my hair colour is different from what it was when the blog started too. And how do you know that I exist? Recall my recent revelation.

   -cvj

6. 6.   Dissident Says:
   November 23rd, 2005 at 12:13 pm

   Clifford, where did you get the notion that I believe you exist?

7. 7.   Plato Says:
   November 23rd, 2005 at 4:22 pm

   …a first tell tale sign of the neuroncial expansion taking place Clifford is the links to other links, within the thnking brain.
   That you could have reached your other selves is amazing