There are already approximately 13 telescopes atop Mauna Kea. The protests were a big deal here. Kanaka Hawaiians and their supporters blocked the access road leading up the mountain. Arrests were made. I am glad to see that the people in charge of the project realize that they need to get native Hawaiian support before they go forward. Hopefully, both sides come together.
Excellent interview, the view here is Kirshner & Perlmutter's teams' work is one of the best experimental universal tests since Eddington's ~ 105 years ago. To this humble universal observer, what has been discovered with their accelerating universe measurements is the increase, over time, of universal spacetime curvature. Besides expanding, the universal curvature has been identified, and it is increasing. This makes sense where bosons/photons traverse the universe in no time from their viewpoint, whereas fermions accelerate through the universe at sub- light speeds from a snail's to Planck's, along curved paths as they free fall en-masse or as individual particles, as witnessed, seen, by free-falling observers!
I seem to be known as the Eeyore of astronomy. When I was Vice President of the AAS, someone put a little Eeyore at my seat just before the meeting started. No one owned up to it. I figure it was Bob. It is now in my office. But to be more serious, I was not just an obsessive photometrist, and I get tired of that stereotype. I knew the physics and electronics of CCDs, some of it from Don Groom, who was on Saul's team and a friend. 1993 we were winding down the Calan/Tololo SN survey at CTIO - Mario, Mark, Jose, and me. Our goal was to calibrate Type Ia supernovae and measure the Hubble constant. We nailed the calibration and the Hubble flow, but the Hubble constant had to wait for the Cepheid distances published by Wendy Freedman et al. 8 years later. The obvious next step after the Hubble flow was to measure q0. David Spergel has suggested that z~0.3 was a sweet spot. I could barely reach that with the 24/36" Curtis Schmidt at CTIO, and I needed to build a prime focus CCD camera, which I did that year. Brian Schmidt came down in 1994 to CTIO. He had become a good friend by then, and in a discussion in April 1994, we decided that it would be more efficient to use the 4m Blanco to go to z~0.5 to find the supernovae. We could do this in a few nights, whereas the Curtis/Schmidt would take much longer because we had to search more sky. We should get about 1 SN per sq-deg on the 4m. So Brian and I combined our Chile Calan/Tololo team, Brian's collaborators, and ESO collaborators into the High-Z Team. The original application for telescope time can be seen on Wikipedia. When I was a Carnegie Fellow at Mt. Wilson, Allan Sandage told me that my quest in astronomy should be to measure H0 and q0. That's what I wanted to do, and our teams did exactly that. When Brian and I assembled the team, I wanted and Brian agreed, on two ground rules. (1) the team would be divided up geographically - Chile, Harvard, Washington, ESO, Berkeley, Hawaii, etc. Every six months, the team would work for that one geographical subgroup. I made a list of the subteams. (2) We would always put the intellectual leader of that 6-month effort as the first author. I wanted to avoid senior astronomers getting credit for what was a team effort. And in the end, almost all our papers had grad students or postdocs as first authors. In the second semester of 1997, the teams shifted to UC Berkeley, where Adam and Alex worked. And the rest of the story, you know. Is it fair that only two people on our team won the Nobel? No. But Brian and Adam are the right ones. Absolutely, if you have to choose two. But yet, it was a team effort. If the Nobel goes to the whole team, then that will dilute the impact of the prize. So, no solution is fair, really. A member of the Nobel committee did tell me, however, that they were very aware it was a team effort, and because of that, for the first time, a team was clearly mentioned in the Nobel description of the science. This was a controversial step for the Nobel committee at the time. Now, it is commonly done in the announcements.
Well, I think it is money well spent exactly because telescopes often challenge the science. Science often resets ( or at least should) after new observations. Or at least used to. Point and case; take water. Only 50 years ago, the consensus amount our great cosmologists at the time was that only Earth had water. Why? Because water is essential to life. And since no other signs of life were detected in the universe, the conclusion was drawn water is likely unique to Earth. besides we landed on the moon and that turned out to be dry. Case closed. We may laugh it this now, but this WAS the actual conviction of the theoretical scientists at the time. It took the launch of spacecraft like the fantastic voyagers to discover water is present nearly everywhere. Ganymede is even estimated to have an outer layer of over 500 km of water and ice!!! Astronomers are at a loss how that could form (answer; all terrestrial planets and moons actually form inside so called Herbig Haro knots where star purged volatiles and debris get heated into magma and magnetized via its collimated H+ charged jets, after which they fall back via the stars magnetic field lines). But that aside; our cosmologist now have a new ' water' moment to overcome. Now their challenge is to overcome their ' redshift' theory. They need to understand redshift of furthest galaxies is NOT cause by an external doppler effect, but an internal Milky Way optical illusion, where redshift only suggests DISTANCE of furthest galaxies. So we need to built bigger telescopes and maybe then they will revise their hopless dark energy failure, just like the water failure....
This was a great interview and a phenomenal guest. And while I’m a fan of this science and understand the value, spending money like this on overlapping projects is flat out irresponsible. Too many got without food, shelter, education and other necessities- in our own country. This needs to be deprioritized for the betterment of people now, not academic discovery that doesn’t help real people. I will be glad when we can put science like this first. It’s just not now, and not when other related science is already happening or on its way.
So I like best when Robert stresses we should be more openminded and tolerant of new ideas. Well indeed, but this should not be understood as add-on ideas only. This should first and foremost apply to the things we take for granted and then we will find academia far from openminded. Point and case: the vacuum energy being off by a factor or 10^120. !! Well it is only because we ASSUME the observed redshift of furthest galaxies is caused by an extra galactic doppler effect in which case spacetime expansion and thus dark energy are follow-up assumptions. But how sure are we this redshift of incoming photons isn't caused by a Fraunhofer-like diffraction effect INSIDE our own galactic plane? Much like a fish looking at the outside world through its curved glass, our vision would NOT reflect reality. And Lord knows we got a warning with the EHT telescope recently showing our sag A* BH getting an optical 90 degrees diffraction distortion. This 90 degrees distortion would also cause the light it bends to appear yellowish (i.e. the central galactic bar]. This is due to the light tangent to its kerr singularity rotating event horizon will get its virtual arc speed pointed away from us, making it appear more redshifted as it is further away from sag A . The same likely happens at the edge of our galactic plane. So redshift would be a Milky Way optical illusion, where redshift it is indeed a sign of DISTANCE, not speed of furthest galaxies. Cosmologist should rejoice getting rid of the 10^120 vacuum energy, right? They haven't thought this option through for 100 years. We all make mistakes. time to correct some now and have some of that self-declared humility and open mindedness…we need progress now gentlemen.
Thank you so much for this discussion! I enjoy hearing the state of the art in astronomical instruments as well as current thought in the theroretical realm. And of course with the experimentalists!
Doc, I have a fun tidbit of intellectual hobbyists. I just saw a brand new movie involving our impossible communions underpinnings. The movie is, The Imitation Game, and if you have not enjoyed this production you might want to on your leisure time. Alan Touring is the subject and it is a version of his story in Cinema form. I found it inspiring in many aspects for humanity and impossible tasks.
In a multiverse interpretation could not dark energy expansion of one universe be attributed to merging with a larger universe and pressure differential? Seems like other interactions would not produce an outcome of expansion.
It should have been put in space. It would have been much cheaper, gone forward faster, not need adaptive optics, work in more frequencies and work 3-4 times more hours per day. That's even before you consider the occupational and oppression aspects involved in crushing the local people.
Reconciliation of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The story which I have learned is that is defined as a point source of Energy revolving around a True vacuum (Permittivity of Space) {Learned it as the standard of Capacitance in electronics}, in a false vacuum with angular momentum of Z. Apologies if I am wrong.
Standard of Capacitance. Yep, 100% legit electronics! That was when I started charging capacitors and leaving them in out capacitor bins at electronics class, pre Navy training.
The issue with QM and GR is that a particle, say an electron, has gravity associated with it. QM say it is inherently uncertain in it's location. GR says it must follow the physical location of said electron. If there is no definite location, where is the gravitational potential pointed. It can't be pointed at multiple locations in GR.
I really enjoy your podcasts Dr Keating , there always interesting, but unlike a large % of your science colleagues you give your guests "the floor" lol
Great to hear! Can you do me two fast favors? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast! On Apple devices, click here, scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it’s here spoti.fi/3vpfXok Thanks!
University of Hawaii, birthplace of alohanet, the direct predecessor of ethernet and the technology basis for all modern wireless packet networks, including GSM.
Albert was right, the cosmological constant is a fudge factor. A deeper understanding of gravity gives you a deeper understanding of the universe. The earth is flat locally the same as the speed of light is the same locally but not on a larger scale. The earth is round on larger scales and the speed of light depends on the measures of time and distance which change depending on the amount of gravity in the surrounding area. This means that distant starlight arrives instantaneously from distant galaxies which aren’t as far away as they appear to us to be with our measures of time and distance and the time is also passing by at a much faster rate since there’s no matter between us and distant galaxies to slow down time or shorten distance according to general relativity which is now an observation and not just a theory. …and the converse of things approaching a black hole look stopped to us because of how slow they are moving. The changes in time and distance compound the changes in the speed of light as observed from our frame of reference. Do a thought experiment. Hold your hands a foot apart representing 186,000 miles saying “one thousand and one” representing one second while pretending to see an imaginary photon going from one hand to the other. Now expand the distance saying “one thousand and one” as fast as you can. You should notice that the speed of the imaginary photon increases the more distance expands and the more time speeds up just same as the farther away from the center of the galaxy it is. The opposite is also true. Someone moving in the direction of a black hole will seem to us to be stopped. *If you change the size of a cubit you will change the size of the house that you build with it.* 🏡🏠
So light, not the photon, but the traveling wave is in a coherent state, when it is detected it is detected as a photon. The thing about coherant states is that they are time reversible. To me this means that the physics of light can assume an infinitely number of paths and wavelengths, but whose probabilities are going to assume the path of least action, at least until something disturbs it and it undergoes decoherance. As such light is a wave exemplified by all the possibilities. So imagine a photon in its own local universe while in flight but spacetime is this really dodgy at the level of the purturbation, the light is just not acting, as you stated, it is traveling at c, its not aging, but the media its moving through is a dynamic equilibrium of things also moving at c. But we can imagine that the light is, while not acting, not changing (theoretically). So why is the light shifted. The lights wavelength shifts because while light is in a coherant state, we are not. And the momentum imparted on matter because of the energy imparted on comoving spacetime at the inflaton/inflation boundary was able to cool and condense by roughly slowing down relative to the comoving position projected forward from the boundary. Theoretically all points in that universe (about the size of a baseball or whale, things far away now were very close to each other then) were moving away from each other. Simplistically Matter condenses (exotic matter becomes normal matter) and normal matter deionizes when energy densities drop, the energy density that drops is relative to spacetime. When deionization occurs light can travel large distances in coherant states. So the spatial expansion is real in the sense that the universe went from a condensed exotic esoteric state to a normal visible state and the CMBR is the boundary of clarity, not the state boundary of the quantum universe. We can imagine that for instance that the comoving centers of two galactic clusters today say 100 million light years apart were at that inflation boundary say an imaginary millimeter apart. So that space is expanding any particle that leaves point X has a horizon that is about the imaginary radius of the inflaton (or smaller) at age of universe times c. Beyond this light cannot travel far enough to reach. Because light has momentun, as things recede from light so their different energy decreases and in light E = hv, and since the speed of light is constant in all reference frames then the frequency must decrease as the wavelegth increases. There are large questions about the boundary, but the largest of these open question is what was the role of spacetime (quantum gravity) in the quantum universe that preceded inflation. Because if gravitational physics differs from modern physics then our ability to understand the early universe will not be easily modeled and the Universal expansion constant might not be constant. Let me put it like this, at the boundary, there was more than adequate energy in the universe to create a black hole, but the comoving sufaces were spreading rapidly and energy was uniformly distributed in a way as to prevent it but why? why was energy tied to the inflation metric, how did energy translate into the universe.
@@Darisiabgal7573 Yes, inflation does violate or contradict the effects of gravity. we keep seeing galaxies as far as we look. They don't seem to be disappearing. Keep in mind that the inflaton hasn't been verified and dark matter hasn't been detected. They are still hypotheticals. We should be looking for other reasons for the redshift and the faster than expected motion of the things we observe. We know the main cause of redshift is due to light leaving a large gravitational well the same as blue shift is due to light entering a gravitational well. Distant starlight has an accumulation of gravity over large distances that causes the redshift. We also know that gravity slows down causation because it slows down time and shortens distance. The opposite is true outside of galaxies. Causation speeds up because time speeds up and distance is stretched compounding the effect of speeding up causation.
@@JungleJargon .. Sorry, but any light that has made it in and out of a gravity well cancels out the frequency shift (as you actually implied without realising it). Tired Light theories are even more problematic than accelerating universe expansion. Light and gravity waves seem to travel at the same speed (C) over vast distances so whatever 'tires light' tires gravity waves too. Expansion would effect both equally. If you have 'tired light' you need 'tired gravity' too and that breaks gravity as we know it.
@@PrivateSi You didn’t seem to realize that light from distant galaxies originates from a deeper gravitational well compared to our smaller galaxy to begin with and there’s a lot more gravity out there than there is here. The farther away the light source is, the more accumulated gravity the light has to pass out of.
@@JungleJargon .. I can accept much more massive stars would emit more red-shifted light, but it would also be brighter. If average star / galaxy mass reduced over time brightness would as well but as expected, closer galaxies are brighter than more distant ones on average in the way astronomers expect, and we can now measure their masses much better. -- I can't accept travelling both in then out of a gravity well will cause overall redshift. The same well is entered then left so blue and red shift cancel. Gravity fields bend light and extreme wells in front of distant objects cause a lensing effect, this is well proven enough for me (unlike many aspects of the Standard Model(s))..
The solution to the Hubble tension is in a little Euclidian based geometry based equation:- 2 X one Mpc X C, divided by Pi to the power of 21 = 71k/s/Mpc. This equation "fixes" Ho to its EXACT UNCHANGING value of 71. Could NOT be simpler. Be open minded,, David Hine
Kirshner: "...it's not good to have things in the universe that are older than the history of cosmic expansion..." Keating: "That's like when your stepmother is younger than you." Me: [Spits out water laughing]
Hi Brian, I've listened to over 30 of your interviews and there's always a mention of you losing the Nobel prize or some sort of Nobel prize talk. It's becoming predictable which isn't helpful, my suggestion is put aside the talk about Nobel prize in future interviews. You might never win the Nobel prize but that shouldn't be what defines you as a scientist and science communicator.
The energy of the universe is in the black holes that are growing whether they absorb matter or not because they are absorbing space time causing the vacuum of space. The universe isn’t expanding into oblivion for no reason. The redshift is because there’s more matter out there than there is in our universe. The farther away the more matter there is compared to the mass of our universe. Of course there’s no need for dark matter when the amount of gravity determines how fast things move in space including light.
Still prefer the personal one I was working on. Site selection "Up in the Air". Pair of telescopes mounted on a "Hotrod" Laser collimated of course. Double use as a collision avoidance system.
