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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.

Not Science Fiction
Three cheers for multiverses!
Reality need not conform to our preferences. To complain that multiverses are “outlandish” or “unscientific” is to ignore the history of scientific discovery.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
When quantum mechanics was young, scientific giants of the day went toe to toe over the unquestionably bizarre, almost preposterous new theory. For Albert Einstein, wave functions and indeterminate outcomes just didn’t smell right. He famously declared, “God does not play dice!” Niels Bohr is said to have responded with equal bravado, “Albert, stop telling God what to do!”
Multiverses may seem outlandish, but then so did quantum mechanics.
For those acquainted with the tumultuous birth of quantum mechanics, today’s debates over the existence of multiple universes might inspire a feeling of déjà vu. Physicists like Stephen Hawking and Max Tegmark see multiverses as unavoidable. Others like Peter Woit counter that the idea is not only wrong, but a threat to science itself. To multiverse or not to multiverse — that is the question. This is fun stuff!
Multiverses may seem outlandish, but they are hardly misbegotten brainchildren of demented theorists. From the physics of the Big Bang, to the flatness of the observable universe, to the mass of the Higgs boson and a paucity of particles seen at the European particle physics lab CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, to the ambiguous fate of Schrödinger’s cat, multiverses arise from promising efforts to fill gaping holes in the foundations of physics and cosmology.
If multiverses are such a powerful idea, why do some people wish them a speedy and ignominious death? While there are certainly outstanding scientific questions, some of the most passionate critics focus on more philosophical concerns. In particular, some insist that absent falsifiable predictions, multiverses have no place in science at all.I understand that concern. If you’ve read my past columns, you know that falsifiability is a really big deal with me. Scientific knowledge is built on testing falsifiable predictions. But that is not the same thing as saying that everything we know can be or needs to be tested directly.
Multiverse theories do not “break” science.
Quoting Alfred North Whitehead: “There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” When it comes to falsifiability, like it or not, gray areas exist. Scientists routinely accept necessary consequences of well-tested theories, regardless of whether those consequences are independently testable. Cosmology is a case in point.
The cosmological principle is the bedrock of our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe. Simply put, the cosmological principle says that there is nothing special about our place in the universe. Yet that statement is patently absurd. We live in a very special place in the observable universe; we are right at its center.
The whole science of cosmology rests on the untestable claim that our observable universe lies buried within a vastly larger universe filled with stars and galaxies that we can never see. We know those galaxies are there because well-tested theories rely on them. Multiverses may be different in degree, but they are no different in principle. Sorry, but if you want to restrict science to things that we can directly observe, you are out of luck. That ship has sailed.
The fact that we can’t see multiverses doesn’t mean they don’t exist, nor is talking about them a threat to science. Karl Popper, the father of falsifiability himself, noted that unfalsifiable statements can still be true, and even if not true can still be scientifically useful.
David Deutsch is a pioneer in the emerging science of quantum information. He says that everything he does depends on one particular multiverse, Hugh Everett’s “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics. Regardless of whether it exists, without the idea of Everett’s multiverse, quantum computers, quantum encryption, and quantum teleportation might have yet to be invented.

The universe has a habit of ignoring human ideas about what is reasonable and what isn’t. Even Albert Einstein hated the counterintuitive non-deterministic universe of quantum mechanics, insisting, “God does not play dice!” But in a way, Einstein might yet turn out to have been correct, because according to some multiverse theories, every possible outcome of the rolled dice is as real as any other. God may not roll dice, but neither does he choose.
The lesson of cosmology has always been, “There is more out there than we thought there was.”
Certainly the philosophical implications of multiverses are profound. From the moment that Copernicus dislodged Earth from the center of creation, scientific progress has gone hand in hand with an ever-expanding concept of the cosmos. Multiverses represent the ultimate culmination of that journey.
In most multiverse theories, every universe that can exist does exist, has always existed, and always will exist. The question of, “why this universe” is meaningless. Of course we find ourselves in a universe suspiciously well suited for life. Where else could we be? Einstein could be right. Perhaps God does not play dice, but neither does he choose!
Demanding that existence limit itself to what humankind can directly observe is pretty egotistical, a bit like the medieval insistence that Earth is the center of all things.
Scientifically, the statement “multiverses exist” deserves to be on equal footing with the statement “multiverses do not exist.” There is no a priori reason to prefer one statement over the other.
Can we observe multiverses? That’s the wrong question. The right question is whether theories that rely on multiverses are more or less successful than theories that do not. Putting it differently, the statement “multiverse theories will make more interesting and correct predictions than theories without multiverses” is itself a testable prediction. On that basis, the scientific case for multiverses could prove very compelling, indeed.
Not Science Fiction ^ Three cheers for multiverses! ©
Dr. Jeff Hester
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