Dark matter, cosmology, etc.

[Robin Bignall]

BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
thinking on these matters.

You can hear it on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml

--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England

[Andy Guthrie]

"Robin Bignall" > wrote in message
...
> BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
> Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
> thinking on these matters.
>
> You can hear it on
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
>

I love this series. Melvyn Bragg constantly teetering on the edge of total
bewilderment, and today, the slight personality clash between a couple of
the guests. A previous edition about the Higgs field was a classic.

[Phil Stovell]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:49:38 GMT in uk.sci.astronomy, "Andy Guthrie"
> wrote:

>
>"Robin Bignall" > wrote in message
...
>> BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
>> Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
>> thinking on these matters.
>>
>> You can hear it on
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
>>
>
>I love this series. Melvyn Bragg constantly teetering on the edge of total
>bewilderment, and today, the slight personality clash between a couple of
>the guests. A previous edition about the Higgs field was a classic.

I like Melvyn's "oh wow" childlike enthusiasm for all things scientific.
--
Phil Stovell, Hampshire, United Kingdom

I do not reply to usenet posts containing ad hominems.
Except in uk.politics.misc, of course, which is nothing but.

[Tim Auton]

John Stolz > wrote:
[snip]
>I didn't hear this, but I always like to hear Rees talk. As the
>astronomer royal, I kind of expect him to be a bit fuddy duddy, but he's
>really at the cutting edge of wierdness. I particularly like one version
>of the multiverse hypothesis which he has expounded in which quantal
>events cause a splitting off of multiple universes. One amusing
>extrapolation of this is that if you play Russian roulette you'll never
>die because there is always a finite chance that you won't fire the
>chamber with the bullet and you'll only ever experience the version of the
>universe in which you don't die. A further extrapolation is that
>regardless of how many cigarettes you smoke *you* will still end up as the
>oldest person on the planet.
>
>Funny old world eh?

Funny old many worlds, surely :)


Tim
--
I was not a helicopter.

[John Stolz]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:40:30 +0000, Robin Bignall wrote:

> BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
> Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
> thinking on these matters.
>
> You can hear it on
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
I didn't hear this, but I always like to hear Rees talk. As the
astronomer royal, I kind of expect him to be a bit fuddy duddy, but he's
really at the cutting edge of wierdness. I particularly like one version
of the multiverse hypothesis which he has expounded in which quantal
events cause a splitting off of multiple universes. One amusing
extrapolation of this is that if you play Russian roulette you'll never
die because there is always a finite chance that you won't fire the
chamber with the bullet and you'll only ever experience the version of the
universe in which you don't die. A further extrapolation is that
regardless of how many cigarettes you smoke *you* will still end up as the
oldest person on the planet.

Funny old world eh?

[OG]

"Robin Bignall" > wrote in message
...
> BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
> Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
> thinking on these matters.
>
> You can hear it on
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml

Not listened to the tape yet; but did go to a fascinating talk last
Friday at the CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory by Dr P Evans. "Mined over Dark
Matter" was a summary of the evidence for Dark Matter - from 1930s
galaxy rotation studies to 1990s analysis of gravitational lensing; and
a description of the experiments Dr Evans is involved in the Boulby Mine
Dark Matter detector.

If you hear that he's doing a talk in your area I can thoroughly
recommend it.

[Andy Guthrie]

"Andy Guthrie" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Robin Bignall" > wrote in message
> ...
> > BBC Radio 4's "In our time" had an interview today with Martin Rees,
> > Roger Penfold and Carolin Crawford, who summarised the current
> > thinking on these matters.
> >
> > You can hear it on
> >
> > http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
> >
>
> I love this series. Melvyn Bragg constantly teetering on the edge of total
> bewilderment, and today, the slight personality clash between a couple of
> the guests. A previous edition about the Higgs field was a classic.
>

From the "In Our Time Newsletter" )

"The big thing about this morning for me was that I was faced with three
extraordinary intellectuals whose knowledge of the subject in question is
formidable. That subject - physics - was one I left behind at the age of
14. How to break down that subject without myself breaking down was the
first problem. It's not too difficult, given the help and input from
Charlie and James, to ask the questions. The real problem is to be able to
follow the answer given in order to ask the next question. One way to do
this is to set out the questions in regular, not to say sometimes rigid
order. All was going well until question three. Roger Penrose, who had
been pleaded with not to question the phrase 'dark energy' until we'd at
least broken it in and who had been asked by me that something called 'the
cosmological constant' was best left until half past nine, brought
everything up at once, brilliantly (he is, after all, considered by some to
be the leading mathematician in the pursuit of the Theory of Everything),
and for a few moments, as I listened agape, I realised that in one way I
could wrap up the programme at then about thirteen minutes past nine and
call it a day. However, I managed to plough on. Superficially you can get
some sort of handle on it, even if you are as big a non-physicist as
myself. The forces at work - expanding universe, kinetic energy, dark
matter, dark energy, gravity - can at some level be blotted up in the
swotting. What really irks me is how much will I remember next Monday.
Sometimes those programmes are like a colossal drinking bout. Absolutely
wonderful at the time, but in the morning you can't remember a blind thing,
save for a few giddy moments of insight and certain passages of
embarrassment.

I think I ought to add here that their Lordships are mustard keen
commentators on this programme - a straw poll in ermine - but the remark of
the morning has just been made by a particularly eminent Lord who has just
passed by and said "enjoyed your programme this morning. Didn't understand
a bloody thing."

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg"