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January 16th, 2011

steuard: (Default)
Sunday, January 16th, 2011 09:01 pm
Thursday, Jan. 6:
This was our day in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands. Kim and I took a semi-submersible boat tour (like a glass-bottomed boat, but a bit spiffier) of the coral reefs and shipwrecks in the harbor, which included some nifty facts (did you know that something like 70% of the lovely white sand on Caribbean beaches comes from parrotfish ingesting bits of coral rock and then, um, excreting them?).

While waiting with some other JoCo folks for our shuttle bus to take us back to the port, a woman a bit older than us commented that she liked my "Aperture Laboratories" shirt. We chatted a bit, and at some point I mentioned that we taught at Alma College. That prompted a startled "What?!!!" from a younger girl and guy also waiting with us. Another awesome coincidence: it turns out that they're from Ithica, MI, which is just fifteen minutes from us, and that half of her family had gone to Alma. Further conversation also revealed that her grandmother was from my home town of Lincoln, NE. Small world! Eventually, we all got tired of waiting for our bus and just walked back to the port (it really wasn't far). After lunch, Kim took a nap while I went up to the top deck and read a book in the sea air for a while.

The JoCo show for the night was a really wide range of people and styles. David Rees did a terrible job of spoiling movies as "The SPOILER". Peter Sagal read some neat personal stories. Stephen "Stepto" Toulouse talked about working as the Xbox "banhammer" at Microsoft. Peter Sagal reappeared and did his great "Dr. A's Henchman" sketch. And finally, John Roderick of The Long Winters played a fantastic set of sad but funny/geeky songs. (Check him out!) Sadly, with all that going on, the show went way over time and Roderick had to leave the stage before he finished his set. We had dinner with some very cool people (including Famous Tracy from Monday's Q&A session). After that, Kim headed to bed and I went down to watch some JoKaraoke again before joining her. All in all, another great day.


Video evidence: David Rees as The Spoiler was odd. Peter Sagal did lots of stuff; here's his first segment. Stepto's stuff is online (right after Peter's final remarks), too. EDIT: Here's a recording of Peter Sagal's "I, Henchman". And several of John Roderick's songs are up, starting with "Stupid", then "Scared Straight", "Seven", "Gimme all your lovin'", "Ultimatum", and "Not Moving to Portland" (this one's for you, [livejournal.com profile] 175560 :-) ). I quite liked Honest, too.
steuard: (physics)
Sunday, January 16th, 2011 09:22 pm

Brian Greene wrote a NY Times op-ed about the implications of the accelerating expansion of the universe. As he says,

Because of this, when future astronomers look to the sky, they will no longer witness the past. The past will have drifted beyond the cliffs of space. Observations will reveal nothing but an endless stretch of inky black stillness.

If astronomers in the far future have records handed down from our era, attesting to an expanding cosmos filled with galaxies, they will face a peculiar choice: Should they believe “primitive” knowledge that speaks of a cosmos very much at odds with what anyone has seen for billions and billions of years? Or should they focus on their own observations and valiantly seek explanations for an island universe containing a small cluster of galaxies floating within an unchanging sea of darkness — a conception of the cosmos that we know definitively to be wrong?

I'd thought before of the implications for scientists from future races that never had the chance to see other galaxies at all. Before reading this I'd always just assumed that we humans would be okay (assuming we survived that long) because we'd been lucky enough to see the truth. But now I worry that he has a point: assuming we survive that long, how much will those future scientists really trust our observations, so at odds with what they can see for themselves?

That's related to one of the philosophical realizations I've had about studying things like string theory and cosmology: Some true things are simply impossible for us to observe or measure, and many more are just not the sort of thing one can predict. It's hard to be comfortable with that: I'd like to imagine that I live in a universe that's not just understandable but verifiably so, but there is no guarantee that our universe will cooperate with that desire. The thought that it might cooperate for a while and then stop is especially uncomfortable: what might we miss if we don't develop the technology to observe it fast enough?