In 2018 the Boulder Cosmology Group met at 6PM for DVD lectures on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month and reading discussions on third Mondays at the Main Library. (Monday discussions were usually in the second-floor Flatirons Room and Wednesday lectures in the first-floor Boulder Creek Room). Changes from the normal pattern are noted below.
See http://www.sackett.net/cosmologyAll.htm for a list of all meetings of the Cosmology Group since it began in 2003.
2018 Second and Fourth Wednesdays, selected DVD lectures from Professor Don Lincoln's course “The Quest to Explain All Reality”. This series of 24 half hour lectures gives the background for discovering a Theory of Everything. For a full description of the series, with descriptions of each lecture, visit http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-theory-of-everything-the-quest-to-explain-all-reality.html.
We will watch the 30 minute lectures using an “interruptus” format: at any point during the lecture anyone in the group can say stop and ask a question and the rest of the group will attempt to answer the question before proceeding. We will attempt to cover two lectures in each meeting. If we don't have time the next DVD lecture meeting will start with the second lecture (and this schedule will be adjusted).
Schedule with Monday book discussions flagged in bold:
January 10, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 12: Conservation Laws and Symmetry: Emmy Noether,
and 13: Theoretical Symmetries and Mathematics.
January 22, 2018 Book Discussion: Ripples in Spacetime by Govert Schilling. Chapters 10 to 16.
Note: This ^^^^ discussion is a week later than usual because of Martin Luther King Day.
January 24, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 14: Balancing Force and Matter: Supersymmetry,
and 15: Why Quarks and Leptons?.
February 14, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 16: Newton's Gravity Unifies Earth and Sky,
and 17: Einstein's Gravity Bends SpaceTime.
February 26, 2018 Book Discussion: The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality, by Dave Goldberg. Chapters 1 to 5.
Note: This ^^^^ discussion is a week later than usual because of Presidents' Day.
February 28, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 18: What Holds Each Galaxy Together: Dark Matter,
and 19: What Pushes the Universe Apart: Dark Energy.
March 14, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 20: Quantum Gravity: Einstein, Strings, and Loops,
and 21: From Weak Gravity to Extra Dimensions.
March 19, 2018 Book Discussion: The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality, by Dave Goldberg. Chapters 6 through Appendices.
March 28, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 22: Big Bang and Inflation Explain Our Universe,
and 23: Free Parameters and Other Universes.
April 11, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Don Lincoln's course on
“The Quest to Explain All Reality”,
Lecture 24: Toward a Final Theory of Everything.
April 16, 2018 Book Discussion: The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger. Chapters 1 to 6.
April 25, 2018
DVD Lecture - Perimeter Institute Public Lecture by Robert Spekkens, “The Riddle of the Quantum Sphinx” (74 minutes).
Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvZ5m3UMer4.
May 9, 2018
DVD Lectures - Richard Feynman, “The world from another point of view.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNhlNSLQAFE (36 minutes)
and “Best of Richard Feynman debates, lectures, arguments, and interviews.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVbKepMA_Dw (25 minutes).
(For an example of one of Feynman's more famous points of view, see Chapter 19 of Volume II of
The Feynman Lectures on Physics: “The Principle of Least Action”.)
May 21, 2018 Book Discussion: The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger. Chapters 7 to 11.
May 23, 2018
DVD Lecture - Frank Wilczek, “Symmetries of Time.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50q0oOHGHq4 (52 minutes).
Note: The next 5 Sean Carroll lectures were viewed and discussed by the group in 2013.
You can view the lectures at your convenience at http://cds.cern.ch/record/794317/.
June 13, 2018
DVD Lecture - A Sean Carroll Cosmology for Particle Physicists lecture at CERN on “Our Homogeneous and Isotropic Universe” given on May 9, 2005.
June 18, 2018 Book Discussion: The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger. Chapters 11 and 12.
June 27, 2018
DVD Lecture - A Sean Carroll Cosmology for Particle Physicists lecture at CERN on “Dark Matter” given on May 10, 2005.
July 11, 2018
DVD Lecture - A Sean Carroll Cosmology for Particle Physicists lecture at CERN on “Dark Energy” given on May 11, 2005.
July 16, 2018 Book Discussion: The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger. Chapters 13 to 16.
July 25, 2018
DVD Lecture - A Sean Carroll Cosmology for Particle Physicists lecture at CERN on “Thermodynamics in the Early Universe” given on May 12, 2005.
August 8, 2018
DVD Lecture - A Sean Carroll Cosmology for Particle Physicists lecture at CERN on “Inflation and Beyond” given on May 13, 2005.
August 20, 2018 Book Discussion: The Philosophy of Physics by Max Planck.
August 22, 2018
DVD Lecture - Emily Levesque “The Weirdest Stars in the Universe”.
September 12, 2018
DVD Lecture - David Tong “Quantum Fields: The Building Blocks of the Universe”.
September 17, 2018 Book Discussion: Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality by Anil Ananthaswamy. Chapters 1 to 5.
September 26, 2018
DVD Lecture - Premala Chandra “The Inner Universe of Quantum Materials”.
October 10, 2018
DVD Lecture - Sam Gralla “Rethinking Reality: Space, Time and Gravity”.
October 15, 2018 Book Discussion: Through Two Doors at Once by Anil Ananthaswamy. Chapters 5 and 6.
October 24, 2018
DVD Lecture - Leonard Susskind “Inside Black Holes”.
November 14, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Steven Gimbel's course on
“Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science”,
Lecture 1: Metaphysics and the Nature of Science,
and 2: Defining Reality.
November 19, 2018 Book Discussion: Through Two Doors at Once by Anil Ananthaswamy. Chapter 7 to end.
November 28, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Steven Gimbel's course on
“Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science”,
Lecture 3: Mathematics in Crisis,
and 4: Special Relativity.
December 12, 2018
DVD Lectures - Professor Steven Gimbel's course on
“Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science”,
Lecture 5: General Relativity,
and 6: Big Bang Cosmology.
December 17, 2018 Book Discussion: Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics, by Bruce Schumm. Chapters 1 to 5. Study guide from Jeff.
Note: Jeff flagged a number of unanswered questions in red that we should try to answer. I'll update the document as we go.
For more information, e-mail group leader Jeff Grove: jeff1.grove@gmail.com.
This is http://www.sackett.net/cosmologySchedule2018.htm, last updated January 15, 2019.