Upcoming on Aug 14
Added 2021-08-12 05:48:02 +0000 UTCScience communication is difficult. One thing that I see a lot is that physicists settle on an easy-to-understand explanation that, unfortunately, doesn't really explain anything and leaves people more confused than enlightened. One such explanation is that dark energy is created by quantum vacuum fluctuations. On Saturday I'll do my best to clear up this confusion.
Comments
On “vacuum energy”—how come it only operates outside gravitationally bound groups of galaxies? It sounds like a “just so” story by Kipling, an untestable hypothesis driven by the inconvenient fact that the “cosmological constant” isn’t. Is it substantially different from the big inflation? Didn’t the rate slow before the current acceleration? (Cosmologist Mark Whittle, U. Va., claims it did.) If all we say is “vacuum energy” equals “the rate of cosmic expansion” is there any explanatory power there or is it just a tautology? Also, is it just me, or do we really overemphasize the spatial side of expansion, at the expense of the temporal, even though we know spacetime is one thing? I watched your “Everything Vibrates” right after “Vacuum Energy” and came away thinking vacuum energy is just human storytelling. A story told in math, which gives it the trappings of respectability, but with nothing holding it up.
Jonathan Reel
2021-08-22 01:49:54 +0000 UTC@Sabine: No but seriously, I need 'Nonplussed Physicist - Triptych' in my house and on my wall. Those images sum up my inner mental state whilst appealing to my personal aesthetic sense. How much for a set of prints? 😄
2021-08-14 14:22:46 +0000 UTCHi, Jonathan! It's a variation of the Irish Gaelic 'Cailin' meaning 'girl'. But it's also still 'light-speed'. 🙂
2021-08-12 19:46:39 +0000 UTCHi C Thompson, Well, I guess that I know what the C stands for now.
2021-08-12 19:32:17 +0000 UTCSee you in the Mesosphere sometime next year, or sooner.
D Brown
2021-08-12 06:08:57 +0000 UTC
