Cosmology

Early life in New York and California, and decision to do undergraduate work in astronomy at University of California at Berkeley. Decision during army service, 1955-1957, on a career in astronomy; return to Berkeley, 1957, for graduate work. Professional career: work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 1961-1964; return to Berkeley as professor in 1964, and research in galaxy-related problems. General problems in cosmology. Also prominently mentioned are: Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, Jerry Brown, Armin Deutsch, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Louis Henyey, Alfred H. Joy, Lou Kaplan, Richard Kron, Gerard Peter Kuiper, Nicholas Ulrich Mayall, Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski, William Wilson Morgan, Guido Münch, George Preston, Ronald Reagan, Allan Sandage, Emanuel B. Spinrad, Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren, Otto Struve, George Wallerston, Joe Wampler, Harold Weaver, Albert Edward Whitford; California Institute of Technology, Hayden Planetarium, International Astronomical Union, Lick Observatory, San Diego State University, Sky and Telescope, United States Army Map Service, and Yale Conference on Cosmology (1977).

Covers the origins and development of a conference on the evolution of galaxies held at Yale University in 1977 and organized by a committee chaired by B. Tinsley. The topics discussed at the conference and their implications for cosmology are covered, as well as indications of problems yet to be solved. Also prominently mentioned are: Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, Pierre Demarque, Sandra Faber, George Brooks Field, Ken Freeman, Ivan Robert King, Richard Kron, Richard Larson, R. D. McClure, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Martin J. Rees, Edwin Ernest Salpeter, Allan Sandage, Wallace Leslie William Sargent, Gerard Henri de Vaucouleurs; Kitt Peak National Observatory, and Yale Conference on Cosmology (1977).

Interview covers Charles Misner's family background and childhood interest in science; influential chemistry teacher in high school; education at Notre Dame and mentorship with Arnold Ross; early interest in mathematics; encouragement of parents to go into science or to become a priest; graduate education at Princeton; work with John Wheeler on relativity and topology; introduction to cosmology by Jim Peebles in 1965; attitude toward the steady state model; Wheeler's preference for a closed universe; history of the flatness problem (the "Dicke paradox"); initial attitude toward the flatness problem; motivation for looking for mechanisms to isotropize the universe; the mixmaster model; history of the horizon problem; Misner's attempt to change the goals of cosmology from describing the universe to explaining it; Russian work on mixmaster type models; reaction of the community to the mixmaster model; change in Misner's view of the flatness problem after the inflationary universe model; attitude toward missing matter; problem of reconciling theory and observations with a flat universe; Misner's attitude toward the inflationary universe model; attitude of the community toward the inflationary universe model; attitude toward recent observations of large-scale structure; nature of the inhomogeneity of the universe; importance of Freeman Dyson's discussion of the fate of an open universe over very long time scales; role of visual pictures in science; relationship of theory and observation in cosmology; outstanding problems in cosmology; inflation, particle physics, quantum cosmology; ideal design of the universe; philosophy, science, and religion; necessity of the laws of physics; question of whether the universe has a point.

Reina Maruyama, Associate Professor of Physics at Yale, is interviewed by David Zierler. Maruyama discusses her appointments in the Yale Quantum Institute and her role as chair-elect for the Yale Women Faculty Forum. She recounts childhood in Japan and the circumstances of her family’s move to the United States and how her interests in science helped her acclimate to American culture. Maruyama explains her decision to attend Columbia as an undergraduate and she discusses a formative summer internship at Los Alamos where she worked on atomic physics. She describes her graduate work under the direction of Norval Fortson at the University of Washington in atomic lasers and optical communications. Maruyama discusses her postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley to join the CUORE experiment to look for neutrino-less double beta decays, which in turn led to her joining IceCube at Wisconsin. She explains how this worked served as an entrée into her interests in astrophysics and cosmology, and she describes the factors that led to her joining the faculty at Yale. Maruyama discusses building her lab and the diverse research she is pursuing including many exciting developments in quantum technology, and in the last part of the interview, she explains how she hopes to contribute to solving the mystery of dark matter.

Abhay Ashtekar, Evan Hugh Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos at Penn State, is interviewed by David Zierler. Ashtekar recounts his childhood in the Indian state of Maharashtra, and discusses his early fascination with physics and the universe. He describes his undergraduate interests in general relativity and the opportunities that led to his enrollment at the University of Texas to join the Center for Relativity. Ashtekar discusses the culture shock when he arrived in Austin and Bob Geroch’s mentorship in quantum gravity, and his decision to follow Geroch to Chicago. He describes his interactions with Chandrasekar and his graduate research on quantum field theory in curved space-times and the asymptotic nature of space-time. Ashtekar discusses his postdoctoral appointment at Oxford to work with Roger Penrose, and he explains the moral origins of his commitment to making his field visible and therefore richer in opportunity for junior scholars. He explains his reasons to return to Chicago for a second postdoc, his decision to join the faculty at Syracuse, and a formative visiting appointment he had in Paris. Ashtekar describes the attraction in joining the faculty at Penn State, and his increasing focus on loop quantum gravity and the intellectual origins of the Ashtekar variable. He explains these developments as part of the broader effort to merge quantum mechanics and general relativity and the implications this will have on our understanding of the Standard Model. Ashtekar surveys the field of loop quantum cosmology and its relation to both inflation and string theory, and he conveys the enjoyment he felt with the detection of gravitational waves. At the end of the interview, Ashtekar explains why he does not like the phrase “theory of everything,” he reflects on the lessons he has learned from the luminaries who have mentored him, and he explains why the field still does not fully understand quantum mechanics.

In this interview, Mark Wise, John A. McCone Professor of High-Energy Physics at the California Institute of Technology, is interviewed by David Zierler. Wise recounts his childhood in Toronto, his early difficulties in school, and his interests in physics, which he studied as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and was mentored by Nathan Isgur.  He describes the circumstances leading to his graduate admission at Stanford and how he became Fred Gilman’s student at SLAC where he worked on weak radiative hyperon decays and QCD corrections for effective Hamiltonian CP violating processes. Wise describes his postdoctoral work as a Harvard fellow and his excitement about SU(5) grand unification, his close collaboration with Joe Polchinski and how he developed an interest in cosmology. He explains his decision to join the faculty at Caltech, where he started to work with David Politzer, and his involvement in heavy quark effective theory and weak radiative B meson decays. Wise discusses the durability of the Standard Model and what advances might push physics, and in particular, astrophysics and cosmology, beyond the Standard Model. He discusses his hobby pursuit of finance and investing and he muses on the similarities in model-building in physics and financial economics. At the end of the interview, Wise reflects on his contributions and why particle physics allows the possibility for repetitious experiments in a way that astrophysics and cosmology do not, he describes his current interests in conformal Fermi coordinates, and he describes the moral obligation he feels to his graduate students to be the best mentor he can be. 

More discussion of the reasons why particle physicists began working on cosmology in the 1970s; importance of theoretical work by Kirzhnitz and Linde in 1972 on broken symmetries and phase transitions; current unreality of work on the very early universe; attitude toward the inflationary universe model; successes of the inflationary universe model; aesthetic attraction of a flat universe; acceptability of postulating that we live in a flat universe; introduction to and attitude toward the horizon problem; attitude toward the inflationary universe model; incidences of being worried about scientific problems that no one else is worried about; the anthropic principle and Dirac's large number hypothesis; reaction to de Lapparent, Geller, and Huchra's work on large-scale inhomogeneities; Weinberg worried that perhaps we have misinterpreted the cosmic background radiation; Weinberg's philosophy about strategy in science; the role of consensus in science and the importance of "standard" models; outstanding problems in cosmology: distance scale of the universe, value of the deceleration parameter, origin of structure; failure of theory to explain the observed large-scale structure; possible importance of WIMPs; prematurity of work on the early universe; ideal design of the universe; preference for universes in which initial conditions do not have to be specified; Weinberg's statement in The First Three Minutes about the lack of point to the universe.

Awareness in high school of the Sandage Program to observe the rate of expansion of the universe and awareness of the impending operation of the Mt. Palomar telescope; early reading in cosmology; prejudice toward the steady state model in graduate school because of its definite predictions; the reality of cosmology as a legitimate science; Weinberg's early interest in cosmology: influence of Herman Bondi's book; concern in the early 1960s over limited contact between theory and observations; early work in the 1960s on the neutrino version of Olber's Paradox and the possibility of a degenerate sea of neutrinos; preference for an oscillating universe as the next best thing after a steady state universe because you don't have to specify initial conditions; design of an experiment to search for degenerate neutrinos; Weinberg didn't take seriously his own work in cosmology in the 1960s; the importance of the discovery of the cosmic background radiation for making cosmology a legitimate science; the origin of Weinberg's book Gravitation and Cosmology; Weinberg's regret that he spent 1969-1971 working on a textbook when he should have been working on gauge theories in particle physics; history of the application of particle physics to cosmology.

Childhood in Germany and family background — competitive spirit; war years — internment and radar work with Bondi and Hoyle (1942-1945) at Cambridge — development of theory of hearing and steady state theory; at Greenwich (1952-1956) — research on lunar surface and terrestrial dynamics; positions at Harvard and Cornell — involvement with Arecibo; involvement with governmental agencies including NSF and NASA — changes in government funding. A major part of the interview covers the development and reception of the steady date theory.

Telephone interview aired on WFMU and live on the internet. Popular-level discussion with brief comments on various contemporary topics in particle physics and cosmology, along with reminiscences of incidents in Glashow's youth and his work on quark theory.