Something from Nothing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Discuss Cosmology, Origins of Life & Religion Before a Packed Crowd

in Physics, Video - Science | May 6th, 2012

Richard Dawkins needs no intro­duc­tion. Lawrence Krauss bare­ly needs an intro­duc­tion — although we’ll tell you that he’s a lead­ing voice in the­o­ret­i­cal physics and the author of the recent book, A Uni­verse from Noth­ing: Why There Is Some­thing Rather than Noth­ing. (We rec­om­mend watch­ing this lec­ture to get famil­iar with his work.) In Feb­ru­ary, the two sci­en­tists met up at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty and spent two hours in a free­wheel­ing con­ver­sa­tion, touch­ing on evo­lu­tion, cos­mol­o­gy, reli­gion, and oth­er top­ics. They spoke before a packed house, but Shirley Films was good enough to post the video online, and you can watch it above. Anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion — this one record­ed at The Aus­tralian Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty on 10 April 2012 — can be viewed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

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The Higgs Boson, AKA the God Particle, Explained with Animation

in Animation, Physics | April 27th, 2012

Ever since the Large Hadron Col­lid­er (LHC) went online in 2008, physi­cists have been con­duct­ing exper­i­ments, hop­ing to final­ly prove or dis­prove the exis­tence of The God Par­ti­cle, oth­er­wise known as the Hig­gs Boson. CERN (which oper­ates the LHC) gives this basic intro­duc­tion to the the­o­rized par­ti­cle:

A major break­through in par­ti­cle physics came in the 1970s when physi­cists real­ized that there are very close ties between two of the four fun­da­men­tal forces – name­ly, the weak force and the elec­tro­mag­net­ic force. The two forces can be described with­in the same the­o­ry, which forms the basis of the Stan­dard Mod­el. This ‘uni­fi­ca­tion’ implies that elec­tric­i­ty, mag­net­ism, light and some types of radioac­tiv­i­ty are all man­i­fes­ta­tions of a sin­gle under­ly­ing force called, unsur­pris­ing­ly, the elec­troweak force. But in order for this uni­fi­ca­tion to work math­e­mat­i­cal­ly, it requires that the force-car­ry­ing par­ti­cles have no mass. We know from exper­i­ments that this is not true, so physi­cists Peter Hig­gs, Robert Brout and François Englert came up with a solu­tion to solve this conun­drum.

They sug­gest­ed that all par­ti­cles had no mass just after the Big Bang. As the Uni­verse cooled and the tem­per­a­ture fell below a crit­i­cal val­ue, an invis­i­ble force field called the ‘Hig­gs field’ was formed togeth­er with the asso­ci­at­ed ‘Hig­gs boson’. The field pre­vails through­out the cos­mos: any par­ti­cles that inter­act with it are giv­en a mass via the Hig­gs boson. The more they inter­act, the heav­ier they become, where­as par­ti­cles that nev­er inter­act are left with no mass at all.

That quick state­ment sets the stage for watch­ing the video above. Here we have Daniel White­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at UC Irvine, giv­ing us a fuller expla­na­tion of the Hig­gs Boson, mer­ci­ful­ly using ani­ma­tion to demys­ti­fy the the­o­ry and the LHC exper­i­ments that may con­firm it soon­er or lat­er. H/T Metafil­ter

Look­ing to bone up on physics? Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

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Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

in Education, K-12, Physics, Science | April 26th, 2012

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Richard Feynman Presents Quantum Electrodynamics for the NonScientist

in Physics, Video - Science | April 9th, 2012

In 1979, the charis­mat­ic physi­cist Richard Feyn­man jour­neyed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land (New Zealand) and deliv­ered a series of four lec­tures on Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics (QED), the the­o­ry for which he won his Nobel Prize. It’s some heady mate­r­i­al, but Feyn­man made a point of mak­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts intel­li­gi­ble to a crowd not nec­es­sar­i­ly trained in sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. If you’ve nev­er seen Feyn­man lec­ture before, then you won’t want to miss these lec­tures avail­able in four parts (find Part 1 above, and the remain­ing parts below), or his longer lec­ture series, The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law, deliv­ered at Cor­nell in 1964. (Find it here, or in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.)

As for the Auck­lund lec­tures on QED, they lat­er became the basis for Feyn­man’s pop­u­lar 1988 book, QED: The Strange The­o­ry of Light and Mat­ter. 

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Richard Feyn­man: The Like­li­hood of Fly­ing Saucers

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Albert Einstein Archive Now Online, Bringing 80,000+ Documents to the Web

in Physics, Science | March 20th, 2012

It’s not hard to jump online and learn about Albert Ein­stein’s intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions. Thanks to Yale, you can get a 60 minute primer on Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. It’s called Ein­stein for the Mass­es. Or you can embark upon a longer, 10-lec­ture explo­ration of Ein­stein’s ground­break­ing ideas (iTunes – YouTube) with Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor known for his own ground­break­ing work on String The­o­ry.

And then there’s this: Start­ing this week, the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem is bring­ing online an exten­sive archive of papers and let­ters belong­ing to the great human­ist and sci­en­tist. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly fea­tures 2,000 doc­u­ments and will even­tu­al­ly sur­pass 80,000. And it all gives a round­ed view of Ein­stein’s life and work. The doc­u­ments shed light on his per­son­al rela­tion­ship with his moth­er, wife and many mis­tress­es; his views on the Arab-Israeli con­flict; and his work on physics itself. A quick way to sam­ple the archive is to enter this gallery, where, among oth­er things, you’ll find Ein­stein’s man­u­script intro­duc­ing his famous equa­tion, e=mc2.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Free Physics Cours­es: 28 Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

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Michio Kaku: We’re Born Scientists But Switch to Investment Banking (and More Culture Around the Web)

in Physics | March 12th, 2012

Physics of the Future: How Sci­ence Will Shape Human Des­tiny and Our Dai­ly Lives by the Year 2100 — That’s the new book by the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, best-sell­ing author, and unabashed pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence Michio Kaku. And, here’s one pre­dic­tion he makes. The U.S. won’t play as promi­nent a role in sci­ence dur­ing the years ahead. The rea­son why he explains in The Wall Street Jour­nal.

Fifty per­cent of Ph.D. physi­cists are for­eign-born, and they’re here com­pli­ments of the H1‑B visa. There’s a brain drain into the Unit­ed States; that’s why we’re still No. 1. But it can’t last for­ev­er.

And indeed while Chi­na and India start to lure their best tal­ent home, the best Amer­i­can stu­dents are leav­ing the hard sci­ences for lucra­tive careers, such as invest­ment bank­ing. Kaku goes on to say:

I have noth­ing against invest­ment bank­ing, but it’s like mas­sag­ing mon­ey rather than cre­at­ing mon­ey. If you’re in physics, you cre­ate inven­tions, you cre­ate lasers, you cre­ate tran­sis­tors, com­put­ers, GPS. [If you’re an invest­ment banker, on the oth­er hand] you don’t cre­ate any­thing new. You sim­ply mas­sage oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey and take a cut.

More Cul­ture Around the Web:

Paul Gra­ham’s Ambi­tious Star­tups Ideas: #3 Replace Uni­ver­si­ties

World’s Old­est Charles Dick­ens Film Dis­cov­ered

How To Be Cre­ative. Jon­ah Lehrer on Why Any­one Can Inno­vate

Josef Skvorecky on the Nazis’ Con­trol-Freak Hatred of Jazz

Author Neil Gaiman Talks about His Trust­ed Foun­tain Pens

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Sen­ate Tes­ti­mo­ny from this Week on the Past, Present, & Future of NASA

Beat poet Allen Gins­berg Inter­viewed by Con­ser­v­a­tive Colum­nist John Lofton, 1990

Intro­duc­ing The Curator’s Code: A Stan­dard for Hon­or­ing Attri­bu­tion of Dis­cov­ery Across the Web

The Day the World Took Off. Cam­bridge Doc­u­men­tary on the Ori­gins of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion

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The Most Astounding Fact According to Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | March 8th, 2012

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by a read­er of TIME mag­a­zine back in 2008, “What is the most astound­ing fact you can share with us about the Uni­verse?” Here’s his answer, set to a new­ly-designed video. If you want to see the orig­i­nal TIME Q&A, you can revis­it it on YouTube here. H/T Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Remem­bers His First Meet­ing with Carl Sagan

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The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene: Watch the Complete NOVA Series Online

in Physics, Television, Video - Science | March 7th, 2012

For­get about inclined planes and pul­leys. In this series from the PBS pro­gram NOVA, physics is pre­sent­ed as an exot­ic, mind-bend­ing realm.

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, first broad­cast in Novem­ber, fol­lows up on the 2003 Peabody Award-win­ning The Ele­gant Uni­verse. Both series are adapt­ed from the best-sell­ing books of host Bri­an Greene, a math­e­mati­cian and physi­cist at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Like the ear­li­er series, which was cen­tered around String The­o­ry, The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos deals with ideas that are on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry. “This is a report from the fron­tier of cos­mic thought,” wrote Den­nis Over­bye last Novem­ber in The New York Times, “as fresh as last mon­th’s Nobel Prizes, uncom­pro­mis­ing in its intel­lec­tu­al ambi­tions and dis­cern­ing in its choice of com­pelling sci­en­tif­ic issues. The action ranges from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, from bowl­ing lanes and bil­liard tables to the lim­its of the imag­i­na­tion.”

The series is arranged in four parts of approx­i­mate­ly 50 min­utes each. The episodes are called “What is Space?;” ‘The Illu­sion of Time,’ ‘Quan­tum Leap,’ and ‘Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?’

 

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