Thursday, April 22, 2010

Cosmological Revolution



The Revolution for the Rest of Us

Opening Remarks in a Talk Presented by George Musser at MENSA:

In the time-honored tradition of essayists and papergivers
everywhere, I’d like to question the premise of
my own title. Is the revolution in cosmology really a
revolution? There are good reasons for thinking it isn’t.
By “revolution,” people generally refer to two broad
developments since the late 1990s: (1) a new level of
precision in measurements of cosmic expansion, the
cosmic microwave background radiation, and largescale
structures, and (2) a “concordance” model that
accounts for all these observations. It is a strange
revolution that endorses the status quo, but this one
did: the model was already cosmologists’ favorite, and
even its strangest aspect, dark energy, had been
mulled for decades. So it isn’t a paradigm shift like the
discovery of the expanding universe in the 1920s.
Moreover, the supposed revolution hasn’t had the
broad cultural ramifications of, say, the Copernican
revolution. Cosmology these days is likelier to be
ignored than put on trial.
 

I think these developments have the potential to be
revolutionary in scientific and cultural senses.
Cosmology has become part and parcel of efforts by
fundamental physicists to unify quantum mechanics
and Einstein’s general theory of relativity into a single
theory. The universe is both a testing ground for
theoretical ideas & a source of new research questions.
The unified theory, in turn, could reveal whole new
principles on which the natural world is based. We
might glean some hints of these principles from the
remarkable properties of the universe revealed by
modern cosmology: the way order has emerged from
randomness, the hierarchy of scales, the possibility of
multiple universes, the special role played by
information. In short, the revolution in cosmology may
not strictly be one, but could herald the start of one.

3 comments:

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

I’m a huge fan of the Hubble and have paid close attention to its ups and downs through the years. The one thing that has me disturbed is they plan no replacement for it as the telescopes they launch are now concentrating on wavelengths other then the optical to increase the utility of the data they gather. The sad thing is after the latest repair mission it will see no further service and will not be replaced. I guess this is all in respect to progress yet how can you place a value to images as you have displayed here.

Best,

Phil

Steven Colyer said...

Hi Phil,

You wrote:
I’m a huge fan of the Hubble and have paid close attention to its ups and downs through the years. The one thing that has me disturbed is they plan no replacement for it as the telescopes they launch are now concentrating on wavelengths other then the optical to increase the utility of the data they gather. The sad thing is after the latest repair mission it will see no further service and will not be replaced. I guess this is all in respect to progress yet how can you place a value to images as you have displayed here.

I suppose it's impossible to place any value, other than priceless? :-)

As far a visual satellite replacement is concerned, well, the James Webb observatory to be launched in 2014 does have "some" visual spectrum range, but alas you are right, it will be mostly in the infrared. And good luck servicing that one! It will be located at L2 1.5 million miles beyond earth, roughly 7 times farther away than the moon!

I guess it's up to the Canadian Space Program to save the world! No, I'm not joking. Once gas hits a certain value the Alberta Tar Sands will become so valuable, Canada will be one of the richest countries in the world, and the stars will be yours! It's already once of the most civilized of nations, save for a few adult bars in Windsor, right Phil?

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

I think it would be a good idea for Canada perhaps to build and finance the launch of a space telescope, yet hardly see the point in creating our own space program, independent of the US. The fact is we have been a junior partner of your program almost since its inception in terms of technology and funding. As for being a resource nation this is at best a fleeting advantage, with the value of human resource something more to be concentrated on and cultivated.

That is to acknowledge in the end I’m a globalist, who understands our greatest challenges rest within ourselves and our relation to others. So that has more of us needing to know ourselves better, as to understand what it is we share in common interest, rather then what we hold only as valuable for ourselves. So then I find the Hubble as a symbol of such common interest, which relates to having to come to know the unknown and to expanding our horizons, to realize we are stuff of the stars and the cosmos, rather than the product of this one insignificant rock we currently happen to find ourselves living on.

As for those bars in Windsor, I regret I will never see the day that anyone I would happen to encounter there would not be able to distinguish themselves as a local or visitor:-)

Best,

Phil