Benoit Mandelbrot passes away at 85, RIP

From the New York Times,

"In the 1950s, Dr. Mandelbrot proposed a simple but radical way to quantify the crookedness of such an object by assigning it a “fractal dimension,” an insight that has proved useful well beyond the field of cartography.

Over nearly seven decades, working with dozens of scientists, Dr. Mandelbrot contributed to the fields of geology, medicine, cosmology and engineering. He used the geometry of fractals to explain how galaxies cluster, how wheat prices change over time and how mammalian brains fold as they grow, among other phenomena.

His influence has also been felt within the field of geometry, where he was one of the first to use computer graphics to study mathematical objects like the Mandelbrot set, which was named in his honor.

“He doesn’t spend months or years proving what he has observed,” said Heinz-Otto Peitgen, a professor of mathematics and biomedical sciences at the University of Bremen. And for that, he said, Dr. Mandelbrot “has received quite a bit of criticism.”

“But if we talk about impact inside mathematics, and applications in the sciences,” Professor Peitgen said, “he is one of the most important figures of the last 50 years.” "

See also "The Thumbprint of God".

I'm not the only one who doesn't like Big Bang theory

Shaw prize awarded for determining the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years

Last week it was announced that Charles Bennett won the prestigious Shaw prize for his work on WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) which mapped in high resolution the CMB (cosmic microwave background radiation). Bennett had also worked on COBE (COsmic Background Explorer), the first such mapping and is somewhat credited with this facet of Big Bang evidence. To quote an article I came across on this award:

"Bennett's claim to fame, and what some thought might win him the Nobel Prize in Physics this year, was his work on a monumental project called WMAP - the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The project has been focused for almost a decade on collecting the data necessary for Earth-bound physicists like Bennett to more accurately verify all sorts of statistics about the universe: its age, its composition and even its shape. We now know, for example, that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and that dark energy makes up some 72 percent of it.
Data from the WMAP also verified that the universe started out as a sub-atomic sized pinprick which "exploded" (as in expanded rapidly, not actually exploded, as Bennett was quick and adamant to point out in a phone interview with The News-letter) into an astronomical size in mere fractions (trillionths of a trillionth) of a second." See the full article here.

Those of you who know me well know that I am a staunch believer in a static universe and think that this talk of the "age of the universe" and the first "trillionths of a trillionth of a second" is just nonsense. As far as WMAP, I don't doubt the experiment or the data, but I do strongly doubt some of the conclusions. I think the evidence for the Big Bang is rather weak and can likely be explained in a much simpler relatively static universe. Actually, the low temperature black body CMB spectrum is given as one of the three main pieces of evidence for the Big Bang. Essentially, it is said that the CMB is the after glow of the event that started our universe and thus these photons are the oldest in existence. The universe was supposedly a very hot place as the Big Bang occurred but has cooled off since as space expanded. In the cooling the universe now has an effective temperature (given by the black body spectrum of the CMB) of about 2.7 Kelvins.

Despite my doubts about the Big Bang, kudos to Dr. Bennett. It was a very cool experiment they conducted with he WMAP satellite and regardless of the conclusions you want to make from it, the data is quite fascinating. I remember COBE and recall being very excited about WMAP when they first launched it. It took a couple years to get the data after the launch in 2001 but but it was well worth the wait. The images produced by WMAP are just stunning (see top). I will say that I don't think it would be appropriate at all for the Nobel prize to be awarded for this as the quoted article suggests. To me the Nobel prize in physics should be awarded to theorists and experimentalists who predicted (former) and then proved (the latter) some new physics. The big bang is inherently unprovable. The Big Bang supposedly happened 14 billions years ago so cosmologists must rely on very indirect evidence to make their claims. Further, I think that in 50-100 years we will look back on these times an laugh not unlike how we look back on the Copernican era today and laugh. It would be a sad state of affairs for the nobel prize to be awarded for debunked science. In the next few months I will make my case against the Big Bang and hopefully you will see why some doubt is warranted.

py's proof

Click here if the animation does not play for you.

Underwater Base Jumping (Awesome)

I love google (pacman homepage)

Time Machine