Marc Kamionkowski: Cosmologists Cope With Tensions, Crises and Anxieties | INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast
In this week’s episode of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast I chat with my good friend Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University. (Why isn’t there an apostrophe on the ‘s’ in Johns?? Were there more than one of them??)
We discussed the tensions and anxieties in cosmology. Marc delved into the numerous anomalies and disagreements present in the field, where theorists tend to focus on a narrow range of problems. The lack of efficient allocation of resources causes researchers to work on certain tensions at the expense of other, more important, issues.
Marc spoke about several exciting discoveries, including the detailed images of Pluto and Charon captured by the New Horizons spacecraft. Researchers were surprised by their findings, as the measured cosmic optical background was twice what was expected from known galaxy populations in the universe. An exotic physics explanation is the decay of an axion particle, which the SPHEREx project hopes to verify or disprove.I’ll have a lot more to say about axions soon.
We examined the ongoing debates and claims regarding the validity of cosmological models and the age of stars and galaxies. One of the key takeaways was that while there may be uncertainty about how supermassive black holes are formed, there are potential explanations that do not violate fundamental physical laws.
In the middle of the chat, I couldn’t resist talking about my first book called “Losing the Nobel Prize,” which contains many passages dedicated to Marc, inspiring the BICEP series of experiments. And while it would turn out to get my fired from my first postdoc at Stanford, his Polarization Pursuers’ Guide inspires me to this day. And speaking of jobs, in this episode Marc and I discuss some killer advice to young researchers.
I couldn’t resist invoking Isaac Asimov’s famous quote,“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then you’re wronger than both of them put together” , a guiding principle for good science.
Inflation remains a hot topic in cosmology, with effective field theory descriptions of inflation being important for mathematical consistency and symmetry building in inflation model building. To Marc, inflation has exceeded expectations in terms of experimental observations, with measurements of the first acoustic peaks in the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectrum coming earlier than anticipated and solidifying it as a dominant paradigm for our field.
I always love talking to Marc. He’s a mensch and I have learned more about the complexities and challenges of cosmology from him. Be sure to tune in, 👍, and leave a comment and don’t forget to subscribe!
Best regards,
Brian
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