Does anyone/anything ever really live up to expectation? Having been to one too many movies with excitement brimming, only to be let down and curse the precious two hours lost from my life, I would say, generally, no, it is not a frequent occurrence. So imagine my surprise today, when I saw a talk given by Sean Carroll. Yeah, sure he can write and write well, but that doesn't portend he actually gives good talks too, even though I am sure we all secretly assumes that he does. Well, let me be the person to put your mind at rest, he lives up to expectation. He gave an excellent talk at Caltech on Dark Energy – anyone who can explain the slide at right must be a good speaker. He even threw in a few clever little jokes, you know, the kind that irritate you because you know you wouldn't be so clever. And finally, the whole "preposterous universe" thing makes sense (FYI: a little riff off of Greene's Elegant Universe and the universe being not so elegant from a cosmologist's point of view). On a side note, I always felt bad for cosmologists knowing how often they must explain at cocktail parties that no they do not study make-up.
So after Sean's talk, I feel a little bit more at ease with a physics topic that is well outside my research, which, when you think about it, is exactly what a colloquium is supposed to do. Why does it seem like so few speakers got that memo?
rick, is that a limit or a root?
Posted by: m.visaya | November 04, 2005 at 07:21 AM
Question: did he get at all into the question of distinguishing between the existence of dark matter/dark energy and our equation of gravity being wrong?
If you think you're outside your field of expertise, I'm a biochemist (among other things).
Posted by: Rob | November 04, 2005 at 04:25 PM
...is that some dark matter passing in front of one of the slides? Hmmm.....
-cvj
Posted by: cvj | November 04, 2005 at 05:12 PM
As for the "smart jokes", after giving the same talk two dozen times you learn to tell your jokes right.
Posted by: skeptic | November 05, 2005 at 11:05 AM
Loved the bit about cosmologists and make-up
Posted by: Brewtus | November 05, 2005 at 09:32 PM
In the '50s a famous female physicist (I think it was Lise Meitner) was scheduled to give a talk at MIT (or was is Caltech?) on Cosmology. The talk was advertised as one on Cosmetology.
Sorry about mussing up the details but I read this somewhere in passing.
Posted by: citrine | November 06, 2005 at 02:57 PM
Rob: Exactly. A nice overview of possible scenarios to explain the abundance of dark energy.
cvj: Dark matter in human form no less! Me being sneaky with the camera does not make for pretty pictures.
Brewtus: Thanks.
citrine: My favorite was when a dean from Harvard wrote a whole article on the school's advances in astrology, instead of astronomy - for the *whole* article.
Posted by: Caolionn | November 06, 2005 at 08:05 PM
Have you seen the latest info on the SuperNova Legacy Survey (SNLS)" results?
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12767.html
It appears the cosmological constand is actually a constant, which defeats a lot of theories. They only examined 71 of the distant supernovas, and as more data is evaluated, the uncertainty can be reduced by up to a factor of 3 from the current 10%.
Posted by: Rob | November 23, 2005 at 05:54 PM
No, Rob, I hadn't seen it. I will read the press release and hope to understand it (or, at least, a part of it). Thanks for the info.
Posted by: Caolionn | November 27, 2005 at 08:07 PM