Cosmology

From the BBC: Albert Einstein thought the three dimensions of space were linked to time – which serves as a fourth dimension. He called this system space-time, and it’s the model of the Universe that we use today. But Einstein also thought it was possible to fold space-time, creating a shortcut between two distant locations. This phenomenon is called a wormhole, and it can be visualised as a tunnel with two openings, each emerging at different points in space-time. Wormholes might exist naturally in the cosmos; indeed, scientists in Russia are trying to use radio telescopes to detect them. But using wormholes for time travel won’t be straightforward. Indeed not. Unless everything is absolutely determined, some wise person from the Read More ›

From John Timmer at Ars Technica: LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves came almost exactly a century after Einstein had formulated his general theory of relativity and an ensuing paper mathematically describing the possibility of gravitational waves. Or at least that’s the story as it was presented to the public (including by yours truly). And in some ways, it’s even true. But the reality of how relativity progressed to the point where people accepted that gravitational waves are likely to exist and could possibly be detected is considerably more complicated than the simple narrative described above. In this week’s Nature Astronomy, a group of science historians lays out the full details of how we got from the dawn of relativity to Read More ›

From John Saxbee at Church Times, reviewing Keith Eyeons’ The Theology of Everything: Renaissance Man joins the 21st century: … Yet scientists continue to pursue a theory of everything, and this irony is not lost on Eyeons, who sets out to reclaim this territory for theologians in general, and for Christian theology in particular. The subtitle channels Renaissance Man (sic) as the archetype of a mindset committed to a comprehensive and all-embracing account of reality. Modern dualisms that attribute what is physical or spiritual, objective or subjective, religious or scientific to separate silos need to be roundly challenged — especially when they are then co-opted to support atheism as the only respectable option for people today. More. People who insist on Read More ›

Plus a bunch of useful stuff. In a month when we have been heard hearing about all things alien, from everything from it’s good news that they probably don’t exist through to they might be hoarding stars… here is a book that has it all in one place: From Sophia Centre press: An anthology of works stemming from the ninth Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena conference. Editors: Nicholas Campion & Chris Impey Series: Studies in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology, Vol. 9 Publisher: Sophia Centre Press, 2018 Format: Paperback, 352 pp. ISBN 978-1-907767-11-1 Human beings have long imagined what other worlds are like. They have imagined travelling to them, have endowed them with meaning and mystery, and have fantasised about the beings Read More ›

From the University of Bonn: A new study found a way to determine whether the mysterious “star putty” really exists Researchers at the University of Bonn and the University of California at Irvine used sophisticated computer simulations to devise a test that could answer a burning question in astrophysics: is there really dark matter? Or does Newton’s gravitational law need to be modified? The new study, now published in the Physical Review Letters, shows that the answer is hidden in the motion of the stars within small satellite galaxies swirling around the Milky Way. Using one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the scientists have simulated the matter distribution of the so-called satellite “dwarf” galaxies. These are small galaxies Read More ›

“…stuck in an unproductive state of arrested development…” From Tim Collins at the Daily Mail: A rare galaxy stuck in a state of arrested development is providing scientists with a unique window into the early days of the universe. The unusual cosmic region has remained frozen for the past 10 billion years, producing no new stars in all of that time. Only one in a thousand galaxies is thought to be like NGC 1277, which comprises approximately a trillion stars in the central zone of the Perseus Cluster, started out very active but then just stopped. From astronomer Michael Beasley, ‘I’ve been studying globular clusters in galaxies for a long time, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen Read More ›

From theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at her blog BackRe(Action): The Large Hadron Collider hasn’t found evidence for any new particles besides the Higgs-boson (at least not so far), so now particle physicists are at a loss for how to proceed. Even if they find something in the data that’s yet to come, it is clear already that their predictions were wrong. She distinguishes between the currently popular top down (theory first) approach to particle physics and the bottom up (evidence first) one she recommends. About the latter, she writes, quoting particle physicist Ben Allanach, It’s an exceedingly unpopular approach because the data have just told us over and over and over Read More ›

From Daniel Sarewitz at the Weekly Standard, reflecting on Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, … What, then, joins Hossenfelder’s field of theoretical physics to ecology, epidemiology, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, biochemistry, macroeconomics, computer science, and geology? Why do they all get to be called science? Certainly it is not similarity of method. The methods used to search for the subatomic components of the universe have nothing at all in common with the field geology methods in which I was trained in graduate school. Nor is something as apparently obvious as a commitment to empiricism a part of every scientific field. Many areas of theory development, in disciplines as disparate as physics and economics, have little contact Read More ›

  From astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, reviewing Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at Forbes: The history of physics is filled with great ideas that you’ve heard of, like the Standard Model, the Big Bang, General Relativity, and so on. But it’s also filled with brilliant ideas that you probably haven’t heard of, like the Sakata Model, Technicolor theory, the Steady State Model, and Plasma Cosmology. Today, we have theories that are highly fashionable, but without any evidence for them: supersymmetry, grand unification, string theory, and the multiverse. … Yet unlike in the past, these dead-ends continue to represent the fields in which the leading theorists and experimentalists cluster to investigate. These blind alleys, which have Read More ›

Recently, we published a story on a recent research finding that globular clusters may be four billion years younger than previously thought. In a universe that is only a little over 13 billion years old (so far as we know) that seems to some of us like a large room for error. However, Rob Sheldon writes to say, This is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. Background From astronomy 101, we talk about the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. HR diagrams plot the stars in our galaxy on a 2D plot, where the vertical axis is luminosity or brightness, and the horizontal axis is temperature or color. Most stars are clustered around a straight line, with blue-white giants stars like Rigel Read More ›

From David Darling at New Scientist: But, as far as I am concerned, the fact that the Universe was an incredibly weird place 10-43 seconds after “time zero” is no big deal. What is a big deal—the biggest deal of all—is how you get something out of nothing. Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have not got a clue either—despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem. “In the beginning,” they will say, “there was nothing—no time, space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation from which . . . ” Whoa! Stop right there. You see what Read More ›

Yes (Robin Collins) or no ( Peter Millican)? Wintery Knight recalls the 2016 debate and offers a summary: Science has revealed that the fundamental constants and forces of the cosmos appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned to allow a universe in which life can develop. Is God the best explanation of the incredibly improbable odds of the universe we live in being a life-permitting one? … From ‘Unbelievable?’ on ‘Premier Christian Radio’, Saturday 19th March 2016. From Wintery Knight: Brierley [host]: What is the fine-tuning argument? Collins: the fine-tuning is structure of the universe is extremely precisely set to allow the existing of conscious, embodied agents who are capable of moral behavior. There are 3 kinds of fine-tuning: 1) the laws Read More ›

And Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, can just suck it up. From IAS director Robbert Dijkgraaf at Quanta: Scientists seek a single description of reality. But modern physics allows for many different descriptions, many equivalent to one another, connected through a vast landscape of mathematical possibility. The current Standard Model of particle physics is indeed a tightly constructed mechanism with only a handful of ingredients. Yet instead of being unique, the universe seems to be one of an infinitude of possible worlds. We have no clue why this particular combination of particles and forces underlies nature’s structure. Why are there six “flavors” of quarks, three “generations” of neutrinos, and one Higgs particle? Furthermore, the Read More ›

They used to be a regular stop for news of crackpot cosmology. From Dan Falk at NBC, discussing Sabine Hossenfelder`s new book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (June, 2018): But the new century brought a rough patch. Yes, there have been some remarkable findings, including the 2012 discovery of the Higgs Boson and the discovery of gravitational waves four years later. But those triumphs were based on theories developed decades earlier — a full century earlier in the case of gravitational waves. And new ideas like string theory (which holds that matter is made up of tiny vibrating loops of energy) remain unverified. “All of the theoretical work that’s been done since the 1970s has not produced a single successful Read More ›

A new book from astrophysicist Milan M. Ćirković, The Great Silence: Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox:  The Great Silence explores the multifaceted problem named after the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his legendary 1950 lunchtime question “Where is everybody?” In many respects, Fermi’s paradox is the richest and the most challenging problem for the entire field of astrobiology and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies. This book shows how Fermi’s paradox is intricately connected with many fields of learning, technology, arts, and even everyday life. It aims to establish the strongest possible version of the problem, to dispel many related confusions, obfuscations, and prejudices, as well as to offer a novel point of entry to the many Read More ›