Open Yale courses: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics

[shernren]

http://open.yale.edu/courses/astronomy/frontiers-and-controversies-in-astrophysics/home.html

There are 24 50-minute lectures in this series, available in video, audio and HTML transcripts. The quality is good with just a little skipping when I accessed them due to my lousy bandwidth.

Right now I'm just in the beginning of lecture 5, so I can't vouch for the quality of the entire series, and I know everyone here who'll want to watch the series is really interested in the relativity and Big Bang sections. I haven't watched those and so obviously I have no idea how they are. However, if the first five lectures are indicative of anything, this is a wonderful series, beautifully honest about how science works and what scientists do. I'm right in the middle of a section on the demotion of Pluto - must-see! It's not just about astrophysics, but really about science at the frontier and really about how astronomy as a science works.

 

[Scotishfury09]

Awesome! I had seen that universities were providing free lectures on their websites, but the only one I had seen was one on MIT's site for engineering, and that didn't see very interesting.

 

[busterdog]

Enjoying the CBR presentation.

 

[shernren]

Just to add something I forgot yesterday - as far as I can tell the courses are fairly light on prerequisite knowledge. Science majors aren't allowed to take it, and computation is explicitly downplayed ("you can only use a calculator if I can't tell that you've used it!") for understanding. So all those people who didn't like science in school - fear not!

 

[Scotishfury09]

I've gone through the first four lessons and so far so good. Like Shernren already mentioned, it does give a good idea of how the scientific community collects and interprets the evidence they find.

I would also like to note that an intro to Old Testament course is also available. I haven't actually watched any of it, but I have taken plenty of classes on the OT myself and these sound fairly similar to what I've learned. I suggest taking a look at how archaeology, anthropology and even geology influence our interpretation of the Bible. The Intro to Old Testament course can be found here.

EDIT: Lesson three is specifically about Genesis 1-4 and its relation to the Ancient Near Eastern culture. Go go go!

 

[shernren]

Student: Why is the speed of light this magic number?


Professor Charles Bailyn: Why is the speed of light this magic number? Okay. So, the fact that there is a magic number comes out of this kind of equation. Because, when this quantity is equal to 1, bad things start to happen, and all the equations blow up. The fact that it is the speed of light that happens to be that, in that equation, is because light consists of particles with zero rest mass. And a particle at zero rest mass has to have this thing go to infinity or it doesn't exist at all.
Student: [Inaudible]


Professor Charles Bailyn: Why is the world this way?


Student: Well [inaudible]


Professor Charles Bailyn: That I--no, seriously, that's what you're asking, and it's a good question, and I can't answer it. You know, because this is where physics turns into--seriously, this is where physics turns into theology. You can't--all you can say from science is that this is the way it works. You can't answer the "why" question. You got to talk to my colleagues in some other department about that one. I'm sorry, because it's the question one would really like to know the answer to, right? But that one I can't cope with. Yes?



- from Transcript, Lecture 10 ( http://open.yale.edu/courses/astron...in-astrophysics/transcripts/transcript10.html )

So much for scientific arrogance ...

 

[shernren]

Student: So, what causes the expansion?
Professor Charles Bailyn: What causes the expansion? Oh, that's theology. No, no, seriously, it's an initial condition. Something at the start, at T equals 0, where this A is 0. So, you're starting with A of--with this scale factor of 0, but the derivative isn't 0. It's expanding, A is increasing.
Why? Why is it increasing by the particular amount it is? You have to think of that as being a parameter of the Universe. It's one of the things about the--sort of like the speed of light. Why is that the quantity it is? Or why is the gravitational constant the value it is? It's one of the parameters that governs our Universe. Why those particular parameters? That's not quite a science question, and we don't know.




......


Professor Charles Bailyn: Okay. So, this is another one of these un-questions. It's usually phrased as, well, what happened before the Big Bang, right? That's the equivalent question. And, again, that's a theological question. It's like asking the question: "What's going on inside an event horizon?" You can write down equations. You can talk about it. But it's un-testable by its very nature. And so, something–
This, by the way, is why the Catholics like the Big Bang Theory so much. In fact, the mathematics, the relativistic mathematics that describe the Big Bang and the expansion of the Universe, were worked out by a man named Lemaitre, who was a Catholic priest, who was a Jesuit. They love this because it gives you a creation moment. It kind of gives you a scientifically verified creation moment. John Paul was very enthusiastic about astrophysics. He used to throw big conferences in the Vatican, give after-dinner speeches. There's a thing called the Vatican Astrophysical Observatory. They have a bunch of Jesuits. They run a telescope in Arizona. They do research into this.
And so, you know, if you want to see science and religion converge, you want to run away from biology as fast you can and talk to us about cosmology. And what I don't understand is why the, sort of, fundamentalist type worry so much about biology, where all the science is dead-set against them. Whereas, in the case of astrophysics--now, of course, it is possible, if you take an atheistic point of view, to come up with all kinds of clever ways to avoid this creation event. But again, it stops being science at a certain point. It becomes another odd kind of theology, and we'll talk about that, perhaps, a little bit. But if you want a place where science turned out to be the congruent to, at least, certain kinds of non-fundamentalist religious beliefs, you're way better off in astrophysics than you are in biology. Yeah, go ahead.



http://open.yale.edu/courses/astron...in-astrophysics/transcripts/transcript17.html

 

[gluadys]

Professor Charles Bailyn:
This, by the way, is why the Catholics like the Big Bang Theory so much. In fact, the mathematics, the relativistic mathematics that describe the Big Bang and the expansion of the Universe, were worked out by a man named Lemaitre, who was a Catholic priest, who was a Jesuit. They love this because it gives you a creation moment. It kind of gives you a scientifically verified creation moment. John Paul was very enthusiastic about astrophysics. He used to throw big conferences in the Vatican, give after-dinner speeches. There's a thing called the Vatican Astrophysical Observatory. They have a bunch of Jesuits. They run a telescope in Arizona. They do research into this.
And so, you know, if you want to see science and religion converge, you want to run away from biology as fast you can and talk to us about cosmology. And what I don't understand is why the, sort of, fundamentalist type worry so much about biology, where all the science is dead-set against them. Whereas, in the case of astrophysics--now, of course, it is possible, if you take an atheistic point of view, to come up with all kinds of clever ways to avoid this creation event. But again, it stops being science at a certain point. It becomes another odd kind of theology, and we'll talk about that, perhaps, a little bit. But if you want a place where science turned out to be the congruent to, at least, certain kinds of non-fundamentalist religious beliefs, you're way better off in astrophysics than you are in biology. Yeah, go ahead.



http://open.yale.edu/courses/astron...in-astrophysics/transcripts/transcript17.html

Interesting comments on biology vs. astro-physics. I believe surveys of religious belief among scientists typically show the lowest rate of theism among biologists particularly as compared to theoretical physicists.

Most of the classic works on faith and science are written by people like Polkinghorne whose science background is theoretical physics and cosmology.

 

[shernren]

Interesting comments on biology vs. astro-physics. I believe surveys of religious belief among scientists typically show the lowest rate of theism among biologists particularly as compared to theoretical physicists.

Most of the classic works on faith and science are written by people like Polkinghorne whose science background is theoretical physics and cosmology.

Methinks it's because physics is so used to abstractions and grand cosmic visions, playing so close to the edge of science that God isn't really so strange an idea any more. It's really easy to look up at the night sky and wonder who made all of that. A bit harder when your field of study includes ichneumon wasps and necrophiliac homosexual ducks.

 

[shernren]

I'd better restrain myself before I turn into one of those quote-diarrhea people I always complain about. Go read Lecture 18: http://open.yale.edu/courses/astron...in-astrophysics/transcripts/transcript18.html if you haven't yet watched the video. There's a cute little section on atheists and the Steady State theory, and some on unconventional science and the supposed establishment bullying.