Comments on: Cosmology Meets Astronomy in Philadelphia

By: Greg Smith

Greg Smith — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:50:31 +0000

Is there a copy of the full remarks of the DVAA lecture? I saw a couple paragraphs included on a Discover website, but couldn’t find a link for the entire speech.

Thanks.

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:40:57 +0000

I think the comparison with Avogadro’s number is valid. There wasn’t one experiment
which made it clear that atoms are real, but rather the convergence of several lines
of investigation. Pais describes this in his “Subtle is the Lord…” biography of Einstein.
(I prefer Einstein’s own translation of the German phrase: God may be slick, but he
ain’t mean.)

How I miss the Quarterly Journal of the RAS! It was an interesting mixture of reports
from observatories (where, in the pre-internet age, one could read that John Barrow
had a dozen single-author papers in refereed journals in one year (in which he also
wrote a popular book)) and “philosophical reviews” of cosmological topics by the likes of
Barrow, Harrison, Rees, G.F.R. Ellis, Longair etc. In one, Longair points out that when he
started out, his advisor, Peter Scheuer, said that there were only two-and-one-half
facts in cosmology. At the time of writing, it was up to nine facts. Today, there are
more.

By: Stephen Serjeant

Stephen Serjeant — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:21:41 +0000

The Oxford department for continuing education has a similar vibe.

dg: wikipedia is very useful but caveat emptor – especially when it’s free! I once edited an article, but found I spent much longer batting away the loons, and eventually gave up.

I wonder how long it will be before large-scale structure / precision cosmology is colloquially considered to be another ‘plank’? Perhaps now the model is becoming over-determined, eventually we won’t speak of planks at all. I’ve read that it was, in part, the diverse yet converging constraints on Avogadro’s number that led to the widespread adoption of the atomic theory of matter, and we don’t usually speak of ‘planks’ of evidence that atoms exist, at least not nowadays.

By: Cormac O Raifeartaigh

Cormac O Raifeartaigh — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:37:54 +0000

! I’m giving a similar talk to the local Astronomy Ireland group here next week!
I have been attending a nightclass in astronomy this semester just for fun – when the lecturer found out that I teach a course in cosmology, he asked me to give one session on the Big Bang model.

I must say I’m glad – although I have enjoyed the course no end, the astronomer’s view of cosmology is very different from ours. I found the one session on cosmology a bit peculiar. Instead of concentrating on the three planks of evidence for BB (and then possibly on problems like the horizon, flatness and singularity problems), the lecture focussed almost entirely on all the stuff we don’t know – dark energy, dark matter etc. There was almost no refernce to GR and it made all of cosmology sound v speculative indeed. Hope to balance this a little next week…regards Cormac

By: Tod R. Lauer

Tod R. Lauer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:48:03 +0000

It is worth remembering that roughly half of professional astronomers started out as amateurs before going off to college. The clubs that you speak to may well have members that will be future colleagues. I was one myself, indeed our club was just across the river from Philadelphia. To raise money, we held star parties for Edmunds Scientific. And regardless of whatever work I do as an observational astronomer, I still enjoy taking my telescope out from time to time, finding my own way around the sky…

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:51:43 +0000

http://www.astro.multivax.de:8000/helbig/gifs/tycho.gif

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:47:04 +0000

My strategy: When non-scientists asked me what I did for a living, I replied
that I was an astrophysicist. I couldn’t say “cosmologist”, since most people
don’t know what that is. I couldn’t say “astronomer” because I didn’t want them
to tell me what sign they are or ask me what mine is (yes, many people do
confuse astrology with astronomy). Among astronomers, I always said I was
a cosmologist, since otherwise people would expect me to know about spectroscopy.
Among cosmologist, if I was among theorists, I said I worked more directly with
observational data (note: I didn’t say I was an observer); if I was among observers,
I said I worked on more theoretical stuff. (Both were true: I worked mainly at the
interface between observations and theory, often also involving gravitational
lensing and/or statistics.)

When I wanted money from the bank, I said I was a physicist.

By: dg

dg — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:47:42 +0000

at the end of astro talks sometimes i have a page-long list of things i need to look up on wikipedia.

By: PeterS

PeterS — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:37:07 +0000

Would you be able to make available a text of your talk? This would be useful to many.