Dark Energy is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up – and not to slow down as everyone expected. This discovery overturns astronomers’ ideas about the history and the fate of the universe. Professor Brian Schmidt describes the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.
KurtL / collective / tags / physics
Tagged with “physics”
(43)
-
Allison-Levick Memorial Lecture: The accelerating universe
Tagged with science dark energy dark matter universe cosmology supernova physics astronomy
-
Big Ideas: The Importance of the Higgs Boson
The recent discovery of a new subatomic particle, believed to be the long-sought Higgs boson, was hailed as one of the biggest announcements in physics for a century - as a human achievement which will be known 300 years from now. The Higgs Boson is the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics. This model describes the fundamental particles from which every visible thing in the universe is made, and the forces acting between them. Listen to the scientists at the level of the experiments which led to this discovery.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/higgs-boson/4246954
-
Cosmos: It’s Big, It’s Weird
It’s all about you. And you, and you, and you and you… that is, if we live in parallel universes. Imagine you doing exactly what you’re doing now, but in an infinite number of universes.
Discover the multiverse theory and why repeats aren’t limited to summer television.
Plus, the physics of riding on a light beam, and the creative analogies a New York Times science writer uses to avoid using the word “weird” to describe dark energy and other weird physics.
Also, people who concoct their own theories (some would say fringe) of the universe: is all matter made up of tiny coiled springs?
Guests:
Brian Greene – Physicist and mathematician, Columbia University, and author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos Dennis Overbye – Reporter, New York Times Simon Steel – Science educator at University College London Margaret Wertheim – Science writer, author of Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything
-
Deepak Chopra and physicist Leonard Mlodinow: Science And The Spirit
Deepak Chopra and physicist Leonard Mlodinow join us to talk science and spirit.
America was built on science. America was rooted in religion. For 200 years, both thrived. In the last quarter-century, they’ve clashed. And the clash has been costly.
Can we settle this? Maybe. We’ve got two big figures with us today who have taken on the war of worldviews.
Man of spirit, Deepak Chopra. Man of science, Leonard Mlodinow. One a giant in the realm of spiritual guidance. One a Stephen Hawking-scale master of physics and the scientific way.
Both ready to hash it out.
-
David Deutsch And The Beginning of Infinity
Quantum computing genius and Oxford don David Deutsch is a thinker of such scale and audaciousness he can take your breath away. His bottom line is simple and breathtaking all at once.
It’s this: human beings are the most important entities in the universe. Or as Deutsch might have it, in the “multiverse.” For eons, little changed on this planet, he says. Progress was a joke. But once we got the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, our powers of inquiry and discovery became infinite. Without limit.
-
Singularity University Lectures: Science Searches for ET by Seth Shostak
Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals.
He has written several hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at Stanford and other venues in the Bay Area, and for the last six years, has been a Distinquished Speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Study Group. Every week he hosts the SETI Institute’s science radio show, “Are We Alone?”
Seth has edited and contributed to a half dozen books. His most recent tome is Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
-
Mustang Physics, April 2011: Sonifying Subatomic Physics
On this episode of “Mustang Physics,” Matt Bellis (Stanford University) discusses his spontaneous collaboration with both physicists and non-physicists that has turned particle collision data into music with the goal of giving new communities an experience with physics data. “Mustang Physics” is your gateway into the world of physics and the lives and thoughts of physicists.
Matt Bellis is a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University. He works on the BaBar Experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He presented the SMU Physics Department Seminar on March 7, 2011, where he discussed his work on the search for fundamental symmetry violations that might explain our asymmetric cosmos. He spoke with me about his effort to use particle physics data to produce music. This effort would allow whole new communities to experience and use particle physics data.
http://blog.smu.edu/mustangphysics/2011/04/30/episode-005-sonifying-subatomic-physics/
Tagged with science hackday physics sound
-
Richard Panek: ‘Let There Be Dark’
Everything that we know and can sense may only account for a measly 4 percent of the universe. Everything else? It’s dark. Either dark matter or dark energy. It can’t be seen or even sensed by any instrument that we’ve been able to design. So how do we know it’s there?
Richard Panek answers that question in his book "The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality." Panek’s not a scientist, he’s a creative writer, meaning he focuses on the human narrative behind the discovery of the other 96 percent of the universe.
Richard Panek teaches creative writing at Goddard College in Vermont. He’s also a New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature fellow and has received an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant from the National Science Foundation. He came to Town Hall on January 25, 2011. His talk focused on the story of who discovered the hidden universe, as well as the science itself.
-
Why Not to Fear Black Holes with Astronomer Ian Morison
Black Holes seem to have bad press that is largely undeserved. This lecture with professor Ian Morison explains what Black Holes are, and how we can discover them even through they can’t be seen.
This program was recorded in collaboration with Gresham College, on October 27, 2010.
Gresham Professor of Astronomy Ian Morison made his first telescope at the age of 12 with lenses given to him by his optician. Having studied Physics, Maths and Astronomy at Oxford, he became a radio astronomer at the Jodrell Bank Observatory and teaches Astronomy and Cosmology at the University of Manchester.
Over 25 years he has also taught Observational Astronomy to many hundreds of adult students in the North West of England. An active amateur optical astronomer, he is a council member and past president of the Society for Popular Astronomy in the United Kingdom.
At Jodrell Bank he was a designer of the 217 KM MERLIN array and has coordinated the Project Phoenix SETI Observations using the Lovell Radio Telescope. He contributes astronomy articles and reviews for New Scientist and Astronomy Now, and produces a monthly sky guide on the Observatory’s website.
-
Brian Greene: A Physicist Explains ‘The Hidden Reality’ Of Parallel Universes : NPR
It is possible that there are many other universes that exist parallel to our universe. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, explains how that’s possible in the new book, The Hidden Reality.
Page 1 of 5Older