This has been a bad year for contrarian cosmology. First Geoffrey Burbidge died, at the age of 84, on January 26. And now comes the news that Allan Sandage, also 84, died last Saturday. I’ll let other obituaries explore Sandage’s monumental scientific biography at length and in depth: apprenticing under Edwin Hubble; assuming Hubble’s observing […]
Richard
About ten years ago I was killing time in the sprawling Barnes & Noble on Union Square in Manhattan. I had pushed my chair away from a little table, crossed my legs, and opened a book on my lap. I don’t remember which book. I can’t even remember whether it was one I’d grabbed off […]
If you listen, you can hear them talking. Sometimes the conversation is loud and clear. In On the Heavens, Aristotle argues that the Earth has no motions. It neither orbits the Sun nor turns on an axis. Just under two thousand years later, Galileo upbraids him. In Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he […]
Q: What happened before the Big Bang? Mr. Cosmology: If I told you, God would have to kill you. Q: What is time? Mr. Cosmology: Is 9:30. Q: I just bought a telescope. Do you have any advice for a first-time sky watcher? Mr. Cosmology: What happens in Vega, stays in Vega. Q: How many […]
In his October 8 New York Times op-ed column, David Brooks offered his assessment of the character of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network: “It’s not that he’s a bad person. He’s just never been house-trained. He’s been raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct.” This […]