Predicting Nothing and Next - to - Nothing: A Nobel Thought

Temperature fluctuations in CMB. Click to enlarge.John Mather and George Smoot were named winners of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics this past month.  Their work on the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) is primarily experimental.  The accuracy of their instruments and subsequent precision of their results are remarkable achievements.

What the measurements imply is even more remarkable, and is a great example of the deep interplay between understanding and prediction that happens when things break the right way, when theory and experiment mutually reinforce each other illuminating a deep secret about the universe.  ( Hence the Nobel prize...)

Mather and Smoot were checking on the two major predictions of inflationary Big Bang theory:

• The cosmic microwave background (CMB) - a measure of the intensity of radiation present in the universe as a function of wavelength.  Theory predicted that the measured radiation should follow an almost-perfect blackbody spectrum. (i.e. should follow the mathematical form first determined by Planck in 1900 - the beginning of Quantum Mechanics).  The major parameter used to fit CMB to a blackbody spectrum is temperature, hence finding an experimental blackbody curve can be a very accurate thermometer
• The temperature  of the CMB should vary very slightly for different portions of the sky, i.e. the universe.  It is only with these fluctuations that inflationary theory predicts the eventual clumping of interstellar matter to form stars, proto-galaxies and ultimately the solar system and planets.

Measured vs. Theoretical CMB. Click to enlarge.Click on the graph to the left to see a fit that's "almost perfect"  It is a graph of the experimentally measured spectrum superimposed on a black body function. The size of the data squares represent the uncertainties in measurement. The fit is astonishingly good - as perfect a fit as has ever been seen in an experiment as complex as the COBE. So the first piece of the puzzle came in as desired.  What about the temperature fluctuations?

The figure at the top of this post shows the temperature variation of the CMB over a certain region of the sky. Mather and Smoot measured incredibly tiny temperature variations - approx. 30 microkelvin, again, in line with theory.

So the Nobel goes to experimenters who measured "nothing" - i.e. no measurable deviation from a perfect black-body spectrum, and next-to-nothing - temperature variations so miniscule that a few clusters of atoms moving with slightly different velocities would throw off the results.

What to make of these results?  By themselves, the results are merely facts - interesting facts, to be sure, but simply facts.  It is only in coordination with theoretical predictions that these facts come alive - stating for all that there is something to the theory in the first place.  And, because of that very positive reinforcement, the data+theory yields an understanding about the universe that is much deeper, and stronger, than at any other stage in the history of the cosmological beliefs of Earth's inhabitants. 

Stem Cells as Lightning Rods

French lightning-rod experiment based on Franklin's ideas. Click to enlarge.The lightning rod is considered to be one of Benjamin Franklin's greatest inventions, combining basic scientific discovery, understanding, modeling, prediction and intuition in producing a truly life-saving device.  Certainly it is one of his most useful, and essential.  To produce such a device meant learning about the nature of lightning, which first had to be shown to be a manifestation of electricity - itself a poorly understood phenomenon in the 18th Century.  Franklin's work is part scientist, part engineer, and wholly practical - a homeowner trying to protect his house and family from the vicissitudes of electrical storms.

Some excellent sources on lightning rods and Franklin can be found in The Jan 2006 issue of Physics today (by E. Philip Krider) and at Answers.com. 

Interestingly, lightning rods were the subject of intense religious debate at that time.  In a manner not unlike the religious right's campaigning against -take your pick -genetic engineering, cloning, stem cells, etc. - research,  lightning rods were viewed as "presumptuous" because they interfered with the will of God.  Franklin had anticipated this reaction, but even his preface to the 1753 editi0n of Poor Richard's Almanac  describing the discovery of rods as a gift from God did not stem the cry.  Here's Franklin:

It has pleased God in his Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to them the Means of securing their Habitations and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder and Lightning.

Consider the argument against lightning rods, and what it implies about a Creator.  It is certainly a vengeful God who would not want us to protect ourselves if we could.  Given that churches  were often the sites of extreme lightning activity due to their soaring steeples and metallic bells, maybe it was natural for priests and clergy to occasionally wish that their place of worship,  rather than being a sanctuary of safety,  was instead a stage for manifestations of God's wrath. Note the paradox on the flip side of the picture, however -  God is powerful enough to cause lightning to punish earthly sinners, yet is so powerless that he couldn't come up with another method if lightning were not available?

See Franklin's Unholy Lightning Rod for more details on religious efforts to thwart the lightning rod, and the ultimate victory of Franklin's method and device.

It is natural for opponents of new, cutting-edge science to resort to scare tactics, and gloomy prognostications of the calamitous effect of unleashing unseen forces.  But conjuring up a God who will do even worse - by asserting that God will bring on Armageddon because of scientific attempts to understand nature and use it for our own well-being brings us all back to the 18th Century and before.

Without a rod, and without a reason to do all that we can to improve our health and safety.

There must be strongly enforced safeguards in all research that involves the human condition - not outright bans in the name of a vengeful creator.  As we have seen,  this stance only leads to paradoxical results about the powers, or lack thereof, of such a creator.

Science by Blogging

Particle Physics Tracks in a Bubble Chamber. Click to enlarge.Blogs are normally thought of as more personal diary/opinion vehicles, but  I have believed in the potential for blogs as an exciting teaching tool ever since my small success with blogging in the Fall 2005 Chaos and Fractals course. 

This potential is taken to the nth degree in a very informative article by  Sean Carroll in APS News (May 2006).   There Carroll describes his own view of blogging as "a great opportunity for physicists to exchange ideas more readily with each other, and to let the rest of the world share the thrill of the process by which science truly progresses." 

Carroll, is a a member of the Cosmic Variance group blog whose physicist/astrophysicist contributors write about "science, art, politics, culture, technology, academia"  (the similarity to FractaLog is not intentional - but I am heartened to see all of these scientists out there willing to place their science in the context of life itself.)

Read Carroll's article for ideas of how blogging helps him, and how it might help you - in teaching, research, and, everything else.

Carroll describes a number of interesting blogs.  I list them here as a resource.

Click to read more ...

Art and Science Transvergence: Glowing Bunnies

Updated on Monday, February 12, 2007 by R.A. DiDio

Albo, the GFP Bunny

On first glance, the intersection of art and technology should have a much more complicated boundary than the intersection of art and mathematics, or even art and science. Mathematics and the sciences are relative newcomers in terms of their effect on the arts; available technologies have been used to produce art forever. Here I am using a broad definition of technology as formulated by Edward Tenner, author of Our Own Devices - The Past and Future of Body Technology. For Teller, technology is the "human modification of the natural world" - a definition that encourages us to view fundamental objects such as the shoe, chair, and eyeglasses as transformative technologies.

By extension, then, the technologies of the paintbrush, paints, and perspective -invented to create visual art- are inextricably mixed with art. There really is no boundary.

Until very recently, I didn't believe that the same statement could be made about science and art. What got me thinking was coming across some very provocative art/technology essays in a fascinating journal of art and technology called SWITCH...

Click to read more ...

Copenhagen, Quantum Mechanics, and a Shot of Glen Livet

The tag line for this blog, indeed the overarching theme of the Chaos and Fractals course is the fuzzy three-legged monster of Modeling, Understanding, and Prediction. Fuzzy because the boundaries are never clear; they are themselves fractal-like. Suffice it to say that the non-linear dynamic modeling of most systems is used for both the understanding the models provide about why something happens the way that it does as well as the prediction of future states.

Which brings me to quantum mechanics - a field where models routinely predict experimental results with extraordinary accuracy, yet there is still debate on what it all means. Taking this to an extreme, if there is disagreement among physicists on the meaning of quantum mechanics (specifically, the meaning of the quantum mechanical wave function and the nature of observation) then there is a lack of understanding. Whether one considers this "good prediction, no understanding" scenario unsatisfying or not comes down to one's proclivity for philosophizing.

Actually, for me I developed a "proclivity for philosophizing" because of Quantum Mechanics.

I remember as a physics student being totally mystified at and angry with quantum mechanics. Sure I could do the mathematics, but I really had no clue as to what a stationary state was, or what it meant for a wavefunction to collapse. Even after getting very good grades in both semesters of quantum, I really couldn't articulate the connection between the mathematics and reality in a reasonable way, or at least not in the tangible way that I could describe the (apparent) reality of Newtonian physics.

Click to enlarge the Quantum CatGrad school and a post-doc in solid state physics finally did bring some aha! quantum moments; I could finally talk-the-talk of quantum mechanics interpretation as well as theory. Like most students, I was taught the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as promulgated by Bohr and Heisenberg in the 1920's. I adopted it whole heartedly, and soon Schrödinger Cats and Wave-Particle Duality were common topics of late-night sessions, often fueled by single-malt ...

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Does Art Make the Scientist?

Underwater silica streamers in New Zealand. Click to enlarge.

I recently came across an interesting quote by Robert Root-Bernstein, a MacArthur Fellowship "genius" teaching physiology at Michigan State, and the controversial author of Rethinking AIDS.

The quote is from a letter to the editor in the July 2006 Physics Today written by Kent Eschenberg

Most eminent scientists agree that nonverbal forms of thought are much more important in their work than verbal ones. This observation leads me to propound the following hypothesis. The most influential scientists have always nonverbally imagined a simple, new reality before they have proven its existence through complex logic or produced evidence through complicated experiments.

...I suggest that this ability to imagine new realities is correlated with what are traditionally thought to be nonscientific skills—skills such as playing, modeling, abstracting, idealizing, harmonizing, analogizing, pattern forming, approximating, extrapolating, and imagining the as yet unseen—in short, skills usually associated with the arts, music, and literature.  (Click here for full quote.)

Root-Bernstein investigates creativity and is a champion of the essential nature of the art-science interface.  (He himself is something of a digital artist.) In his Music, Creativity and Scientific Thinking, he goes even further than the above quote, clearly putting scientists and artists at the same level:

Click to read more ...

Scientific Methodology vs. Prayer: And the winner is...

A fractal-like prayer rugMy post on March 19, 2006, described the Templeton Foundation, whose mission is to

"pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science through a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology."

The Templeton Foundation appears to do a creditable job in following their mission. But what happens when scientific methodology meets faith-based belief and science wins (or appears to win)? The clash between religion and science, most recently in full view during the Dover evolution vs. intelligent design imbroglio, is much more subtle, but still inescapably present.

A case in point is the recent "rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused study" funded by the Foundation attempting to find the effect of prayer on healing. Titled STEP (Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer) , researchers studied the effects of prayer on 1,800 patients recovering from heart bypass surgery. The results, published in March 2006 and published in the American Heart Journal did not find any statistically significant effects.

Click to read more ...

On Science & Religion - John Barrow Wins the 2006 Templeton Prize

John Barrow, mathematician/physicist from Cambridge University, has been named the winner of the 2006 Templeton Prize.

The Templeton Prize is awarded "for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities." The judges who award the prize favor those whose work leads to communication between scientific and religious spheres. Barrow, a prolific writer (17 books and 400+ articles) often writes about the mysteries of the universe, the nature of physical laws, and mathematical truth. From the Templeton Prize announcement:

The hallmark of his work is a deep engagement with those aspects of the structure of the universe and its laws that make life possible and which shape the views that we take of that universe when we examine it. The vast elaboration of that simple idea has lead to a huge expansion of the breadth and depth of the dialogue between science and religion.

In particular, Barrow's engagement with frontier science and mathematics, developing multidisciplinary perspectives on subjects such as the mysteries of nothingness and infinity, and the potentially intelligible realms of the laws of Nature and the limits of scientific explanation, has jarred religious and scientific perspectives in such a way as to open pathways of understanding which may allow both to comprehend each other more fully.

Barrow is the author of The Mathematical Universe - a 1989 article that I have used as one of the main readings for the Chaos and Fractals course. This article usually generates very strong student opinions because Barrow describes major philosophy of mathematics movements of the 20th century: realism, formalism, inventionism, and constructivism. The students then write a reflective journal piece on how they would classify their mathematical stance. This is often followed by a lively seminar session whose themes reverberate throughout the semester. (Not surprising, most students have never considered this, and, while most claim to be mathematical realists, there are always one or two each semester that are intrigued by inventionism.)

I've read 3 of Barrow's books - The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with FJ Tipler), The World Within the World, and Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation - and they have all been memorable for their depth and extraordinary range of topics. Barrow is an excellent and provocative writer.

Barrow has been richly rewarded for his work - The Templeton Prize award is $1.4 million - more than the Nobel prize. Sir John Templeton is a mutual funds pioneer, and is described as "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" by Money Magazine.

There is also a local angle to this story: the Templeton Prize is administered by the Templeton Foundation, based in West Conshohocken, Pa. The Foundation does much more than just the Templeton Prize, funding other awards, special projects, and lecture series around the world. (See the web site for details, including grant opportunities and application procedures.)

The Foundation takes a carefully-worded stance on intelligent design, attempting to find a middle-ground that is not politically or ideologically compromised. (Click here for the statement.) I'm not sure that the statement succeeds - I believe that it is much more inviting for intelligent-design supporters because of the following claim:

Thus while it is our judgment that the general process of
biological evolution is well attested by many lines of research, it is not clear to what extent the process of evolution or the study of the history of life on earth may reveal hints of broader cosmic, perhaps even divine, purpose and intention.

Nevertheless, the entire Templeton effort is a much-needed attempt to bridge the science-religion divide, rather than use the natural division as a polarizing wedge between the two camps. Choosing John Barrow is good evidence that the Templeton program lives up to its stated goals.

Politics and Framing Science

One of the best "teaching moments" I experience teaching the Chaos and Fractals course is when students get enmeshed in BIG issues and start linking the concepts presented in their readings and discussed in seminar to the various uses - good and bad, utilitarian and political, of modeling in the world.

In the past two versions of the course, the science and politics of climate change has been one such issue. This is mainly because both courses were done while the Kyoto agreements were very much in the news - I taught two versions of the course that straddled the change in presidency changed from Clinton to Bush, with the concomitant refusal to sign Kyoto and strong attempts to dismiss the science of global warming predictions and causes. The class discussions that term indicated to me that students were starting to grasp the full impact of how we come to learn about scientific issues from the media and, in turn, how the media's presentation is ultimately channeled by prevailing political ideology and efficient spin doctors.

Until recently, I didn't have a really good context and source for helping out these class discussions, other than my own bristling at what I saw as clear anti-science stance taken by the current administration. I have since been reading about the work of Matthew Nisbit, in the Communication Department of Ohio State. Nisbit is a communication theorist who specializes in what he terms Framing Science (also the name of his blog) In his words:

At FRAMING SCIENCE we track how political strategists, scientists, and the news media selectively define science in ways that shape policy decisions, public opinion, and political culture. We apply "framing analysis" to understand the social meanings behind technical controversies (and sometimes we will look at other areas of politics.) Frame analysis is an incredibly useful invention of the social sciences, diffusing across a number of academic disciplines. Frames are used on an everyday basis by political operatives, journalists, and average citizens (though they may not realize it.)

I could have really used this blog as a resource this past semester, when the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Debate was clearly being "framed" from all sides of the political spectrum.

So add the Framing Science blog to the must-subscribe-to list (especially in conjunction with the science/politics blog The Intersection, described in my previous post.). At the very least, it will give me, and my future students, a special resource to "frame" our own discussions and understanding of whatever the scientific/policy debate happens to be during that term.

Collaborative Science/Culture Blogs

I've come across a number of very interesting blogs that are non-linear mixtures of science/culture/politics/everything else. Some are solo efforts, while others are collaborations among scientists - something I hope that FractaLog can become...

In the meantime, there are some fascinating, and provocative posts. Please visit ...

RealClimate

"RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science."

ScienceBlogs
This is a collection of blogs hosted by Seed Media Group (they publish Seed magazine, a magazine devoted to science and culture). From the ScienceBlog site: "ScienceBlogs is the web's largest conversation about science. It features blogs from a wide array of scientific disciplines, with new voices coming on board regularly. It is a global, digital science salon."

As of this posting, there are 15 blogs hosted at ScienceBlogs. My favorites:

• Cognitive Daily (with timely reports on advances in cognition theory and practice)


• The Intersection (On the intersection of science and politics


• Uncertain Principles ("Ramblings about life as a physicist on the tenure track at a small liberal arts college.")


• Adventures in Ethics and Science


• Pharyngula ("Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.")

The Panda's Thumb
As the name suggests, TPT is dedicated to evolutionary matters. From the main page: "The Panda's Thumb is the virtual pub of the University of Ediacara. The patrons gather to discuss evolutionary theory, critique the claims of the antievolution movement, defend the integrity of both science and science education, and share good conversation."

Now you may not have heard of the University of Ediacara. U of E is an "online virtual University dedicated to the study of the origins of life in the cosmos" that has the the most impressive faculty list ever assembled. (including a Professor of Meaningless Calculations, a Professor of Creative Non-Sequitur Engineering, and a Visiting Professor of Mostly Invisible Organisms.)

Cosmic Variance
This blog is maintined by a group of physicists and astrophysicists... from different universities. Although dedicated to science, the bloggers do post regularly on " arts, politics, culture, technology, academia." Note that there is also a good list of Physics blogs.