Greetings from Palmia Observatory,
While I was deciding whether or not to go to the AAS 248 meeting in Pasadena, I also enjoyed watching Neil Turok plan to simplify the understanding of the universe,
First, I finally, after dithering for weeks, elected to attend the AAS 248th meeting in Pasadena. Initially, after attending maybe 10 previous AAS meetings in the past, I thought I was done with going to these meetings, but, no, I’ll try to get through one more. I’m not sure how many sessions I will make it but I might bump into some of you adventurers there.
Second, I wanted to be a bigger part of the SpaceX universe, so I signed up to buy some shares of the IPO. Shares were initially priced at $135/share, but after the market finally opened after several hours of back-room discussion, the first market transaction was $150, which is when my order was placed. The shares on that first day of trading closed at $160+. So, now the future for SpaceX is wide open for more growth.
Ok, now back to Neil. Wow, his new approach, is just classic Neil, after seeing how physics has sort of got lost in inventing new particles, new dimensions, new fields, etc., has an opportunity to just return to simplicity.
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| ADCM starts off with simple description of the Universe (Source: Neil Turok) |
He goes on to explain how in his view physics has sort of lost its way by inventing all sorts of new particles and fields. In this next slide we see how his expansion of the CPT concept so vital to the Standard Model might already provide a description of the beginning of the universe.
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| CPT and what it means if The Universe respects CPT (Source: Neil Turok) |
What? You mean maybe dark matter is just the Standard Model right-handed neutrino, and no need for new stuff.
What? You mean the big bang might just be part of the connection with CPT, as seen in the Standard model, and before the big bang is just again CPT, with negative time.
What? No need for inflation. It’s just correlation and thermodynamics.
And more, but he doesn’t neglect to identify how this new simplistic description can be kept real by identifying possible future observations to verify it.
For me, I’ll listen and wait, but as he was going over the prevailing theories, I just remembered how much of those theories I had forgotten already. For instance, why does the stress energy tensor have to be traceless with trace equal zero?
Anyway, check it out and see where you fit on this trajectory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlP-12yc2f8
In the meantime, I'm reminded by my friends out in the dark skies of Julian who work to maintain dark skies for astronomical observing.
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| Let's help keep the dark skies going (Source: Julian Dark Sky Network) |
Besides dark skies another challenge that might be coming up on us this year is the meteorological El Nino atmospheric event.
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| Looks like a wetter year for us here in Orange County (Source: WMO) |
So clear skies, keep dry Until next time,
Resident Astronomer George
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