Talking Universe Blues, Part 2

By: | February 25, 2011

“What can we do about high school physics textbooks?”

The question, I admit, stumped me. Not in the way that a question about whether gravity exists in other universes would stump me. That question I wouldn’t be able to answer because there isn’t an answer; the existence of other universes is speculative. This question, however, I couldn’t answer simply because I didn’t know that there was anything to be done about physics textbooks. I admitted my ignorance, said I would have to educate myself, and called on another raised hand.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the question. It came during a Q&A session after a talk I gave last month at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I had just spent 45 minutes explaining to an auditorium full of about 150 physicists the methodologies I use in trying to make science accessible to non-specialist readers, and I had been reading passages from my new book to illustrate my points. That whole discussion, I now realized, was predicated on the assumption that readers come to astronomy or cosmology knowing basically nothing about the physics of the universe, much like I do before I start my research. This ignorance isn’t exactly a given; questions about Newtonian dynamics or antimatter occasionally arose during my book tour. But if my overall experience was any indication, ignorance is a safe bet. Continue reading →

A drop of treasure, lost in an ocean of debt

By: | February 24, 2011

Let’s get this out of the way first: Ancient Alexandria, it’s not.

Still, the library of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San Diego, is the closest thing the marine sciences have to a central repository of books, periodicals and documents. And like that original Alexandria, this one is threatened by, if not quite catastrophe and destruction, then certainly barbarism of a more modern sort.

That’s right, state budget shortfalls. In California this year, the gap between income and expenditures comes to more than $25 billion, about $500 million of which will come out of the statewide University of California budget. Many of the resulting cuts will be painful, highly visible and much discussed. The impending closure of the world’s foremost oceanographic library almost certainly won’t be, and that’s a shame. Continue reading →

Long, Tough Road to Stroke Recovery

By: | February 23, 2011

brainlith2-322x430January 3rd was a bad day for Cee. That morning she had a colonoscopy. The procedure went smoothly. But afterward, Cee felt ill. Something wasn’t right. She had a bite to eat, poured a glass of milk, and told her husband she was going to lie down. She set the milk on her nightstand. Then she collapsed.

At the hospital, doctors determined Cee was having a stroke. They found a clot blocking a major artery in the left side of her brain, so they gave her a clot-busting drug called tPA and airlifted her to the stroke center at Swedish Medical Center in Denver. By the time she arrived at Swedish, the clot was gone — a good sign, the doctors said.

The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. Cee was awake, but her entire right side was paralyzed. She couldn’t speak, nor was she responding to simple commands. But when she saw her husband and daughter, she smiled and started to cry. Continue reading →

What’s in a Footprint?

By: | February 21, 2011

I love unguarded moments, those brief seconds when someone on stage or in front of a camera finally gives way to nervousness and says or does something completely unplanned and unrehearsed, something that just spills out like a stream overtaking its banks. For a moment, we see something that we weren’t meant to, something revealing, something truthful, something charming, and we smile in delight at this most human of connections.

It may sound strange but I look for traces of unguarded moments all the time when I am wandering prehistoric sites. So much of archaeology is the public face of our human ancestors: the carefully planned stone wall, the polished sherd, the delicately chipped edge of a projectile point. But every once in a while archaeologists catch a glimpse of something else, something that has the spark of life. And often it’s where you might least expect it–running along on the ground in the humble indentations of human footprints.

Just last week, the British press carried a wonderful story about the discovery of a Roman child’s footprints in a site in northern England destined to become part of an upgraded A1 highway. Continue reading →

Talking Universe Blues, Part 1

By: | February 18, 2011

(This post is the first in a three-part series. “Talking Universe Blues” will continue over the next two Fridays.)

“Does gravity exist in other universes?”

The question, I admit, stumped me. Did she—fourth row, on the aisle—mean that gravity might be leaking into our universe from a parallel universe? Unlikely. Her puzzled, perhaps lost, expression didn’t suggest that she was coming to the subject bearing an appreciation of brane theory. So, did she want to know whether gravity is universal in the sense that it would, by an extrapolation of the definition of “universal,” apply to other universes? Again, unlikely. Her tone didn’t suggest she was trying to tease out linguistic subtleties. No, something seemed to be missing from the equation—the one that always exists between the Q and the A during a Q&A session. On one side of the equation is the knowledge the questioner wants to acquire. On the other side is the knowledge I can (I hope) provide. In this case, though, something wasn’t adding up.

Think, Richard, think. What does she want to know?

What if what she wanted to know was exactly what she said she wanted to know: whether gravity exists in other universes? I couldn’t answer that question—an inability suggesting that what was missing from the equation was on the answer side, the A side: my side.

It happens. Someone asks a question, and I don’t know the answer. The answer exists; it’s just not in my brain. In which case I simply say, “I don’t know.”

But in this case, what was missing from the equation wasn’t only on the A side. The problem wasn’t that the answer wasn’t in my brain. It was that the answer doesn’t exist. Other universes are a matter of speculation, not knowledge. Yes, something was missing from the equation on the A side, but only because something was missing from the equation on the Q side—her side. I had to ask myself, I realized, not What does she want to know? but the more fundamental What does she know? Or, because I was looking for what was missing on her side of the equation: What does she not know?

Got it.

“Well,” I said, “we don’t even know if there are other universes.”

Continue reading →

Message: Re-sign Up for RSS Feed

By: | February 17, 2011

Not resign, re-sign.  Some electrons went wrong and our RSS feed broke and our subscribers washed away in the flood.  Is that enough metaphors for now?  We’ve got a new and improved RSS feed but please, if you’ve subscribed in the past, could you kindly and patiently re-subscribe?  With love, from the People of LWON

Credit:  MBZ1

Science Metaphors (cont.): Standard Candle

By: | February 17, 2011

Nothing is entirely trustworthy.  Friends are inconstant; presidents and professors are making it up; your grandmother didn’t always know what she was talking about; your very senses can fool you; and one of these fine days even the sun will blow up. Where is the touchstone, the standard, the fundamental reference frame? Where is the truth in which you can believe and by which everything can be judged? Astronomers have the next best thing. They call it the standard candle. Continue reading →