Comments on: Catching Up: Lisa Randall, Parents, Toronto and New York

By: Daniel P. Wilkins

Daniel P. Wilkins — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:39:39 +0000

Did science fiction help Lisa Randal with her various multiple dimensions of her warped universe book? Did her book, help any new science fiction writer write their next book or movie.
In Disney’s Latest Science fiction epic–”The Last Mumzie”
They send a hi-tech stuffed animal, through another dimension, to reach Earth in the 21st century.

By: The 8th Northeast String Cosmology Meeting | Cosmic Variance

The 8th Northeast String Cosmology Meeting | Cosmic Variance — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:14:21 +0000

[…] As promised before my extended season-of-indulgence break, I thought I’d report on my day at the 8th Northeast String Cosmology Meeting, organized by the Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University, and held at the The New York Academy of Sciences in their new home in the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center. […]

By: Cosmic Variance

Cosmic Variance — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:04:18 +0000

The 8th Northeast String Cosmology Meeting

As promised before my extended season-of-indulgence break, I thought I’d report on my day at the 8th Northeast String Cosmology Meeting, organized by the Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University, and held…

By: beezle

beezle — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 21:42:11 +0000

thanks!

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:21:05 +0000

Hi beezle. I can’t start a new page of general meetings, but my own calendar is prety up to date usually:

http://www.physics.syr.edu/~trodden/calendar.html

By: beezle

beezle — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:19:35 +0000

Sadly I read this too late to make an appearance - wish I had known about it much earlier. Which brings up a useful point: can you start an informal page of known talks/conferences, date/location, are you attending, open/closed and level of discourse? Or perhaps just the ones any of you are planning to attend or speak at? This might be a better way to give your readership (learned or not) a heads-up.

By: Plato

Plato — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:46:21 +0000

Cascading is important, even while thinking of the cosmos?

By: nc

nc — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 16:28:55 +0000

(The cosmological constant powered by dark energy is superfluous if you allow for quantum gravity: force causing “exchange radiation” between distant receding masses is redshifted by recession, weakening gravity. That maps the supernova recession data on to general relativity without requiring any cosmological constant. There is simply a weakening of long range gravity from this mechanism. Hence dark energy isn’t required to negate long range gravitational attraction.)

By: nc

nc — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 16:19:54 +0000

RE: the trackback in comment 1, which links to a claim that cosmology is not science. I’ve seen similar disputes, eg, a Daily Telegraph article by Roger Highfield reports:

Prof Heinz Wolff complained that cosmology is “religion, not science.” Jeremy Webb of New Scientist responded that it is not religion but magic. … “If I want to sell more copies of New Scientist, I put cosmology on the cover,” said Jeremy.

- http://www.science-writer.co.uk/news_and_pr/announcements/2005a_announcements.html

I disagree with the implied attack on the big bang, which does make checkable predictions which were observationally confirmed in detail, such as abundance of light elements and microwave background radiation (for which a Nobel Prize was rightly awarded).

The big bang is definitely a science so long as you don’t get too far into claiming that ad hoc modifications to general relativity (cosmological constant powered by “dark energy”) were predicted by Einstein’s steady state cosmology of 1917. If you religiously worship it, then you’re not doing science. The key thing is being critical about the more speculative ideas and “fixes” involved, without throwing the baby out with the bath water by not accepting well verified facts: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm is a very important page about the big bang evidence.

By: nc

nc — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:58:05 +0000

Warped Passages is the best string theory book I’ve read so far, from my point of view. Dr Randall is searching for interesting things, the connections between the theory and the reasons real world phenomena, like why gravity is especially weak. That kind of problem is more interesting to me than coming up with reasons for non-observed particles or non-observed Planck scale unification. Maybe it is because they are searching for explanations for known facts that they have very high citations. If so, that is very encouraging. If the physics community is really most influenced by people trying to connect theory to experimental facts (ie, not spin-2 gravitons, not supersymmetry, not 10^500 parallel universes), then it is very encouraging. The probability that any stringy ideas are the correct ideas is less than 1, seeing that there is no solid (falsifiable) prediction yet, but it is encouraging that researchers who are trying to make connections to real observations are generating the most interest and the most respect in the physics community.