ESOF: The universe in an hour
Gerry Gilmore, an astrophysicst at Cambridge University, gave a lunchttime talk in the aviation hall of the Deutsches Museum today. He seemed unfazed by the breadth of his topic: the entire history and future of the universe. Then again, his job title suggests he´d be up for the challenge: He´s a professor of "experimental philosophy": http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~gil/.
For 50 minutes, Gilmore did his best to bring cosmology down to earth. Among the tidbits of his talk:
- "The top pop song in 1931 was about general relativity," he says. Check out the lyrics from "As Time Goes By," made famous in the movie Casablanca -- without the key references to Einstein in the early verses: http://www.reelclassics.com/Movies/Casablanca/astimegoesby-lyrics.htm.
- Isaac Newton predicted that the sun´s gravity could bend light, long before Einstein said the same thing.
- If you squashed the Milky Way galaxy down to be as flat as a sheet of paper, it would, remarkably, have the same density of that sheet of paper (around 80 grams per square metre). It would just be a really, really, really big shset of paper.
And the learning goes on...
Comments
If you squashed the Milky Way galaxy down to be as flat as a sheet of paper, it would, remarkably, have the same density of that sheet of paper (around 80 grams per square metre). It would just be a really, really, really big shset of paper.
Well, considering that sheets of paper have long been used as powerful tools for changing the universe ... should this surprise anyone? Just last year we were celebrating a Swiss patent clerk who repeately bent the universe using just 3 sheets of paper and a little ink.
Posted by: aidan karley | July 24, 2006 10:50 AM