Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 APS April Meeting
Saturday–Tuesday, April 22–25, 2006; Dallas, TX
Session B5: Cosmology I |
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Sponsoring Units: DAP FHP Chair: James Ryan, University of New Hampshire Room: Hyatt Regency Dallas Pegasus B |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
B5.00001: Why Aristotle took so long to die Invited Speaker: Like young people looking askance at their parents, we often have trouble taking seriously the interests or even the intellects of ``scientists'' from centuries gone by (an attitude already betrayed by the urge to use quotation marks). After all, their theories were wrong. But the greatest wrong physicist of them all was Aristotle. The earliest thinkers we today classify as scientists (Bacon, Galileo, Newton) cut their teeth trying to show how he was wrong--but it wasn't easy. In order to see why it was so hard, we need to transport ourselves mentally back to the period between ancient Greece and seventeenth-century Europe and try to think like Aristotelians. That way we can catch a taste of the intellectual pleasures of Aristotelian physics and cosmology--including Aristotle's concepts of elements, cause, natural motion, and the ``two-storey'' universe. By becoming (temporary) Aristotelians, we'll be able to see better, for example, why Copernicanism took a hundred years to catch on. For the heliocentric ``celestial machine'' demanded a new physics that nobody had yet provided. Finally, to examine Aristotle's long monopoly on physics--based on what had grown to look like simple common sense--is also to stir up questions about how we might gain enough perspective on our present habits of thought to avoid getting stuck in our own orthodoxies. We may even find that those habits, as exemplified by modern astrophysics, still conceal unpurged remnants of Aristotle. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
B5.00002: The New Mysteries of the Cosmos Invited Speaker: From WMAP's precise measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to evidence for dark energy, to the ever-accelerating search for the early galaxies responsible for the reionization of neutral intergalactic hydrogen in the early universe and first light, the recent advances in observational cosmology present a number of serious challenges to our understanding of the physical universe. I will describe some of the leading puzzles posed by recent and ongoing observations. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
B5.00003: The Future of Cosmic Microwave Background Observations Invited Speaker: Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) have led to a remarkable picture of the origin, make-up and evolution of the universe. The measurements provide support for the inflation theory of the big bang. In the broadest sense, the measurements have allowed a full accounting of the stuff that makes up the universe, although we know few details beyond the few percent contributed by ordinary matter. Future measurements will focus on characterizing the temperature anisotropy on finer angular scales and the polarization anisotropy on all angular scales. These measurements can be used to constrain the neutrino mass and the equation of state of the Dark Energy. The most exciting future prospect, and by far the most challenging experiment, is the possibility of detecting the signature of inflationary gravitational waves generated in the first instants of time imprinted on the CMB polarization. After a brief review of the current status and ongoing experiments, this talk will focus on the expectations and challenges for future CMB observations. [Preview Abstract] |
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