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Watching Rome Burn & Hell Freeze
The fun physics of global cataclysmPosted in For Your Consideration
What do record fire seasons in the West, record hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, record winter storms in the South and the hottest years in history have to do with each other? Everything.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Schools in the Time of COVID
The Decision Will Ultimately Make ItselfPosted in Thoughts
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. Yes, schools are desperately important to kids. No, COVID-19 doesn’t care, and COVID is making the rules right now. Attempts to open schools this fall will fail of their own accord. The relevant question is how to meet the needs of children, families and the community in the face of that reality.
COVID-19 Arrives
The Humanitarian Disaster is HerePosted in Thoughts
Currently new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona are doubling every 7 days. ICU beds in the state are already full. The rest of the country isn’t that far behind us. You do the math.
Correctly Predicting Failure
It’s time for scientists to get loudPosted in Thoughts
Now is not the time for scientists to be circumspect and silent. We are on the short end of a battle over whether truth even matters. If scientists do not stand up for what is real, who will?
Typhoid Mary on Two Wheels
Spreading COVID one lap at a timePosted in Thoughts
The morning cyclist in my neighborhood may not be standing in the Michigan Statehouse carrying a gun and demanding her right to spread contagion far and wide, but she may as well be.
Pine Boxes
Invest now, the numbers are going upPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
You know those nice charts and graphs that make it look like we are over the hump of COVID-19 and that things are about to get better? Those predictions are dead wrong, with an unfortunate emphasis on “dead.”
Scientists Stuck Inside
Curiosity in the Time of COVIDPosted in For Your ConsiderationThoughts
Imagine three gregarious scientists, each with the gift of the gab, all coping with stay-at-home orders. Of course we started a livestream/podcast talk show! What else would we do? Welcome to the kickoff episode of Scientists Stuck Inside.
After COVID’s First Wave
No getting back to normalPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
Even after COVID-19 kills hundreds of thousands in the U.S. over the coming weeks, we will still be almost as vulnerable to the pandemic as we are today. We’d all love to “get back to normal” after that, but the price could be a second wave, worse than the first. Some see us facing either economic Depression or allowing vast numbers of preventable deaths, but that is a fool’s choice. There are better options if we have the will to find them.
COVID-19
Cutting through the confusionPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
There is a lot of information about COVID-19 out there, much of it misleading. When looking at the future, start with what the science really says.
Great Deceiverism 101
Explanation or Theory? Therein lies the rub.Posted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
If someone can’t tell you how they would know that they are wrong, they don’t have a clue whether they are right.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
One Step at a Time
The not-so-mysterious origin of lifePosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
Once seemingly incomprehensible, the origin of life no longer seems such a mystery. Most of what once appeared as roadblocks are turning out to be superhighways.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
The Mind’s Siren Call
Being certain is a primrose pathPosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
Being certain lights up our brains like a junkie’s next hit. Literally. Unfortunately, being certain and being right are two very, very different things.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
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Watching Rome Burn & Hell Freeze
The fun physics of global cataclysmPosted in For Your Consideration
-
Schools in the Time of COVID
The Decision Will Ultimately Make ItselfPosted in Thoughts
-
COVID-19 Arrives
The Humanitarian Disaster is HerePosted in Thoughts
-
Correctly Predicting Failure
It’s time for scientists to get loudPosted in Thoughts
-
Typhoid Mary on Two Wheels
Spreading COVID one lap at a timePosted in Thoughts
-
Pine Boxes
Invest now, the numbers are going upPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
Scientists Stuck Inside
Curiosity in the Time of COVIDPosted in For Your ConsiderationThoughts
-
After COVID’s First Wave
No getting back to normalPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
COVID-19
Cutting through the confusionPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
Great Deceiverism 101
Explanation or Theory? Therein lies the rub.Posted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
One Step at a Time
The not-so-mysterious origin of lifePosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
The Mind’s Siren Call
Being certain is a primrose pathPosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
What do record fire seasons in the West, record hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, record winter storms in the South and the hottest years in history have to do with each other? Everything.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. Yes, schools are desperately important to kids. No, COVID-19 doesn’t care, and COVID is making the rules right now. Attempts to open schools this fall will fail of their own accord. The relevant question is how to meet the needs of children, families and the community in the face of that reality.
Currently new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona are doubling every 7 days. ICU beds in the state are already full. The rest of the country isn’t that far behind us. You do the math.
Now is not the time for scientists to be circumspect and silent. We are on the short end of a battle over whether truth even matters. If scientists do not stand up for what is real, who will?
The morning cyclist in my neighborhood may not be standing in the Michigan Statehouse carrying a gun and demanding her right to spread contagion far and wide, but she may as well be.
You know those nice charts and graphs that make it look like we are over the hump of COVID-19 and that things are about to get better? Those predictions are dead wrong, with an unfortunate emphasis on “dead.”
Imagine three gregarious scientists, each with the gift of the gab, all coping with stay-at-home orders. Of course we started a livestream/podcast talk show! What else would we do? Welcome to the kickoff episode of Scientists Stuck Inside.
Even after COVID-19 kills hundreds of thousands in the U.S. over the coming weeks, we will still be almost as vulnerable to the pandemic as we are today. We’d all love to “get back to normal” after that, but the price could be a second wave, worse than the first. Some see us facing either economic Depression or allowing vast numbers of preventable deaths, but that is a fool’s choice. There are better options if we have the will to find them.
There is a lot of information about COVID-19 out there, much of it misleading. When looking at the future, start with what the science really says.
If someone can’t tell you how they would know that they are wrong, they don’t have a clue whether they are right.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Once seemingly incomprehensible, the origin of life no longer seems such a mystery. Most of what once appeared as roadblocks are turning out to be superhighways.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Being certain lights up our brains like a junkie’s next hit. Literally. Unfortunately, being certain and being right are two very, very different things.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Over his 30 year career as an internationally known astrophysicist, Dr. Jeff Hester was a key member of the team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. With one foot always on the frontiers of knowledge, he has been mentor, coach, team leader, award-winning teacher, administrator and speaker, to name a few of the hats he has worn. His Hubble image, the Pillars of Creation, was chosen by Time Magazine as among the 100 most influential photographs in history.

Big Meets Small
The Ouroboros of today’s physics
The Cosmos itself is the ultimate high energy particle physics experiment.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The December 2015 issue of Astronomy Magazine follows the journey taken in the 1977 short film Powers of Ten outward into the cosmos. Twenty-six powers of 10 separate the scale of the observable universe from the scale of the room that likely surrounds you as you read these words. Yet the trip outward is only part of the story. Instead of adding zeros to the left of the decimal point, we can add zeros to its right, taking us into an ever more microscopic realm. Each journey is as extraordinary as the other.
Moving inward and moving outward through 61 powers of ten
Ten steps outward from the center of the Sun, and we reach the size of our local star and its extended corona. Something like a hundred billion trillion (1023) stars inhabit the observable universe. Ten steps inward, and we reach the scale of atoms. To find a hundred billion trillion atoms, look no further than your thumb!
Expanding our cosmic scope by four additional powers of 10 swallows the Kuiper Belt and many of the hundreds of billions of comets that surround the solar system. Stepping in by four more levels brings us to atomic nuclei, with densities a hundred billion times that of water.
Twenty-four powers of 10 out, we find superclusters of galaxies. Twenty-four powers of 10 inward, we find the scale of the elusive neutrino. After 26 powers of 10, we have come to the end of the line in one direction, the scale of the observable universe. But in the other direction, there is still a long way to go. We have to shrink our gaze through 35 powers of 10 to finally arrive at the Planck length. This is the domain of string theory and may represent reality’s ultimate granularity.
The 61 powers of 10 spanned by today’s physics goes well beyond those discussed in 1977. One of the most profound discoveries of the last 40 years is that as we push to extremes in each direction, the snake eats its own tail!
Science advances when theories start to fail, but some theories prove very hard to break.
Fundamental advances in science typically do not happen because of a theory’s continued success. Breakthroughs come when the predictions of an important theory start to fail. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic radiation predicted that objects of even modest temperature should glow intensely with ultraviolet light. Sorting that out along with another “oops!” or three pointed the way to quantum mechanics.
After 200 years, the success of Newton’s physics had led some to declare that nothing remained of science but mopping up a few loose ends. All that gave way to relativity because a simple experiment failed to find expected variations in the speed of light.
The failed predictions of a powerful, successful theory are nature’s way of telling us where there are new things to learn. So it can be really frustrating when a theory stubbornly persists in making correct predictions. Such is the case with the standard model of particle physics. For four decades physicists have pushed on their particle accelerators, trying to break through to physics beyond the standard model, and for four decades they have failed.
Yet there are cracks in the edifice of the standard model. Those cracks were revealed not by particle accelerators, but by observations of the cosmos.
Challenges to particle physics have come from the cosmos moreso than particle accelerators.
The first hole in the dike actually predates the standard model itself. In the 1960s, scientists measuring neutrinos from the Sun found only a third of the expected number. We now know that all of the expected neutrinos are there; they just slosh around among three different forms. The standard model says that can’t happen!
Cosmology presents even deeper challenges. The standard model is a resounding success but for the niggling fact that between dark matter and dark energy, the standard model accounts for less than 5 percent of the stuff of which the universe is made. And when particle physicists use quantum field theory to try to explain dark energy, they get the wrong answer by 120 powers of 10. That has to go down as the worst prediction in history! Finally, it is Big Bang cosmology that breaks our understanding of gravity by squeezing it into too small a quantum box.
The cosmos itself is the ultimate particle physics experiment.
Powers of Ten was made to highlight the vast range of physical scales in the universe. But as the frontiers of cosmology and the frontiers of particle physics merged, our perspective on scale has changed. Viewed from one direction, the structure and fate of the universe hinge on as yet poorly understood particle physics beyond the standard model. Viewed from the other direction, the Big Bang is the ultimate high-energy accelerator, and the cosmos itself is the debris that we have to study from that most extreme of all particle experiments.
Big Meets Small ^ The Ouroboros of today’s physics ©
Dr. Jeff Hester
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