Cosmic Horizons

As promised, I'm going to put down some thoughts on academic careers. In doing this, I should put my cards on the table and point out that while I am a full-time professor of astrophysics of the University of Sydney, I didn't really plan my career or following the musings given below. The musings come from take a hard look at the modern state of play in modern academia. I am going to be as honest as possible, and surely some of my colleagues will disagree with my musings. Some people have a romantic view of many things, including science, and will trot out the line that science is somewhat distinct from people. That might be the case, but the act of doing science is clearly done my people, and that means all of the issues that govern human interactions come into play. It is important to remember this. Now, there may be some lessons below for how to become a permanent academic, but there is no magic formula. But realising some of these lessons on what is at play may help. ...

Still struggling with grant writing season, so another post which has resulted in my random musings about the Universe (which actually happens quite a lot). In second semester, I am teaching  electricity and magnetism to our First Year Advanced Class . I really enjoy teaching this class as the kids are on the ball and can ask some deep and meaningful questions. But the course is not ideal. Why? Because we teach from a textbook and the problem is that virtually all modern text books are almost the same. Science is trotted out in an almost historical progression. But it does not have to be taught that way. In fact, it would be great if we could start with  Hamiltonian and Lagrangian  approaches, and derive physics from a top down approach. We're told that it's mathematically too challenging, but it really isn't. In fact, I would start with a book like  The Theoretical Minimum , not some multicoloured compendium of physics. We have to work with what we have! ...

I need to take a breather from grant writing, which is consuming almost every waking hour in between all of the other things that I still need to do. So see this post as a cathartic exercise. What makes a scientist? Is it the qualification? What you do day-to-day? The association and societies to which you belong? I think a unique definition may be impossible as there is a continuum of properties of scientists. This makes it a little tricky for the lay-person to identify "real science" from "fringe science" (but, in all honesty, the distinction between these two is often not particularly clear cut). One thing that science (and many other fields) do is have meetings, conferences and workshops to discuss their latest results. Some people seem to spend their lives flitting between exotic locations essentially presenting the same talk to almost the same audience, but all scientists probably attend a conference or two per year. In one of my own fields, namely cosm...

Wow! It has been a while, but I do have an excuse! I have been finishing up a book on the fine-tuning of the Universe and hopefully it will be published (and will become a really big best seller?? :) in 2015. But time to rebirth the blog, and what a better way to start that a gripe. There's been some chatter on the interweb about a recent story about the speed of light in a vacuum being slowed down.  Here's one .  Here's another.  Some of these squeak loudly about how the speed of light may not be "a constant", implying that something has gone horribly wrong with the Universe. Unfortunately, some of my physicsy colleagues were equally shocked but the result. Why would one be shocked? Well, the speed of light being constant to all observers is central of Einstein's  Special Theory of Relativity.  Surely if these results are right, and Einstein is wrong, then science is a mess, etc etc etc. Except there is nothing mysterious about this result. Nothing s...

What's old is new again? Over at  Business Insider Australia  we are told (with some lovely language) that  Scientists have figured out what colour the Universe is . You've got to love a new and interesting astronomy story, but alas, the result is rather, well, beige (I refuse to say latte). But that's not the point of this post. Now, I am not a young man any more, and my memory is not what it was, but I know I had heard this story before, somewhere in the past. The story doesn't name any scientists or cite an original article, and so I turned to google. Hmmm - virtually the same story appeared in the UK Telegraph in  2009!  Unsurprisingly, the  Daily Mail  carry very similar stories. So this "news" is at least 5 years old! But now we have some names! Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry! A little more detective work leads to New Scientist article entitled  The Universe is not turquoise – it's beige . This story from 2002!!!!!!!! corrects a...

Things are crazily busy, with me finishing teaching this week. Some of you may know, that I am writing a book, which is progressing, but more slowly than I hoped. Up to just over 60,000 words, with a goal of about 80 to 90 thousand, so more than half way through. I know that I have to catch up with papers, and I have another article in  The Conversation  brewing, but I thought I would write about something interesting. The problem is that my limited brain has been occupied by so many other things that my clear thinking time has been reduced to snippets here and there. But one thing that has been on my mind is tests of cosmology. Nothing I post here will be new, but you might not know about it. But here goes. So,  the universe is expanding.  But how do we know? I've written a little about this previously, but we know that almost 100 years ago,  Edwin Hubble  discovered his " law ", that galaxies are moving away from us, and the further away they are, ...

Wow!!! Where has time gone! I must apologise for the sluggishness of posts on this blog. I promise you that it is not dead, I have been consumed with a number of other things and not all of it fun. I will get back to interesting posts as soon as possible. So, here's a couple of articles I've written in the meantime, appearing in The Conversation One on some of my own research:  Dark matter and the Milky Way: more little than large And the other on proof (or lack of it) in science:  Where’s the proof in science? There is none There's more to come :)