{"id":12120,"date":"2011-10-18T02:14:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T01:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=12120"},"modified":"2012-10-06T16:51:45","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T15:51:45","slug":"lawrence-krauss-sprinkles-stardust-at-the-school-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2011\/10\/18\/lawrence-krauss-sprinkles-stardust-at-the-school-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence Krauss Sprinkles Stardust at the School of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d heard of Alain de Botton’s School of Life<\/a>\u00a0 and its\u00a0 “good ideas for everyday living<\/em>“; I just hadn’t been to one of their ‘Sunday Sermons’.<\/p>\n

\"Lawrence<\/a>
Krauss 2.0 ?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So arriving at Conway Hall<\/a> yesterday to hear theoretical physicist and all-round science communicator Professor Lawrence Krauss talk about Cosmic Connections, it was an unexpected but not disagreeable surprise to find David Bowie<\/a> and a seven foot spandex-clad devil stirred into the mix.\u00a0 I for one can’t think of a better preparation for contemplating one’s insignificance in a miserable futureless universe than a good singalong to Space Oddity.<\/p>\n

\"Conway<\/a>
Conway Hall (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lawrence<\/a>
“You are stardust; it is literally the most poetic thing I know about in all of science”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the face of it, Krauss’s ultimate message is a bit grim: that our expanding, accelerating, universe will eventually dilate into cold, empty, blackness.\u00a0 But, more positively, he’s saying we should take all that as read and concentrate on our perspective: understand what we really are and how we connect with the universe.\u00a0 Then the journey to oblivion doesn’t look so miserable afterall; it looks fascinating – even poetic.<\/p>\n

\"Lawrence
Stardust meets Starman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Krauss’s consciousness-raising \/ cheer-up therapy centred around three less than obvious connections we have with the cosmos:<\/p>\n

First off – we are the universe.\u00a0 We’re made of stars. \u00a0 The heavy elements that make us up could only have been made in stars, and they could only end up as part of us if they were blasted out of exploding stars: the supernovae.<\/p>\n

\"Crab<\/a>
You were here…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Call me a romantic, but I like the imagery.\u00a0 Bits of me: hands and feet, arms, legs, head, brain – they didn’t just pop up a few decades ago, but have been flying around for billions of years and will be around for billions more.\u00a0 I’ve been inside an exploding supernova – several most likely.<\/p>\n

\"Lawrence<\/a>
Straight on at purgatory, then right at the second circle….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"devil<\/a>
What the….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next came the connectedness of life, with a nice story of Krauss sitting to write a physics paper, aware\u00a0 he’s breathing the very atoms breathed by Einstein as he formulated his own theories (inspired inhalation?).\u00a0 We’ve all got a bit of Julius Caesar in us it seems – literally.\u00a0 And on the larger scale of the solar system, the exchange of possible life-bearing rocks between the Earth and other planets, including Mars, could mean we’re all extra-terrestrials without even knowing it.<\/p>\n

\"Lawrence<\/a>
“The future is miserable”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Krauss’s final illustration challenges our perception that aspects of reality we normally consider outlandish and irrelevant to our day-to-day life do indeed have a direct influence on us.\u00a0 The mundane activity in question is navigation by Global Positioning System (GPS), where the consquences of not correcting for satellite speed (Special Relativity), and height above the Earth (gravity effect\/General Relativity), on measurement of the requisite nano-second scale signal transit times, would in only a day be sufficient to put ground track navigation out by several kilometres.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
“Ground control to Major Tom”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lawrence<\/a>
“Bits of Mars are falling on Earth all the time”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I really like this GPS example and the way Krauss presented it.\u00a0 There was no such thing as GPS when I was at school, so all we got were stories of atomic clocks losing time when they were shot round the world on fast planes, or hypothetical astronauts of the future going on fictional journeys.\u00a0 To be able to relate relativistic effects to a very real navigational error that normal folk can recognise and care about is brilliant.<\/p>\n

Who’d have thought Sunday sermons could be such fun?<\/p>\n

\"Lawrence<\/a>
It’s important to help struggling authors….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Photographs copyright Tim Jones.<\/p>\n

Final photo: Thanks Sven Klinge.<\/p>\n

Update 4th Dec. 2011 Video of the event:
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