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Arno A. Penzias, 90, Dies; Nobel Physicist Confirmed Big Bang Theory
- muzamil2002 3y ago[dead]
- gumby 3y agoI worked with Arno about a decade ago and he was still sharp as a tack.
- jacquesm 3y agoWhat did you collaborate on?
- gumby 3y agoNot what you might expect: we were building small distributed solar thermal plants that stored energy in a tank of supercritical water (basically: inject steam into tank of water -> it condenses; open a valve on the top and it flashes out as steam). Since the pressure varies depending on solar flux and how much was in the tank we couldn't use a turbine (the shape of the turbine is tuned to a constant flow) so instead used multi-stage steam engines (the first new steam engine designed probably in 75 years. These were ordinary container-sized pressure vessels and the steam engines were built into a container too. Easy to repair; you could make your own parts, and last forever. Cheap PV and batteries killed it. Arno was full of good advice.
- elcomet 3y agoWhat's PV?
- phreeza 3y agoPhotovoltaics, aka solar cells.
- bookofjoe 3y agoThank you for asking. I'm always vexed by impenetrable acronyms here, as if everyone's expected to know them as part of a common knowledge base. Positive Q sign = lying in bed unconscious with tongue drooping down one corner of mouth; means either dead or will be soon. Source: Retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist (38 years in practice) My proof: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5DdrMc8AAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5DdrMc8AAAAJ&hl=en
- jacquesm 3y agoOh that sounds like a ton of fun. In the 90's I was working on solar concentrators because the panels were so bloody expensive. Funny how that got entirely obsoleted by economies of scale.
- parthianshotgun 3y agoIs there still a niche for concentrators? Like for cloudy weather or restricted space. Or does the economy of scale eclipse even that accessory market
- jacquesm 3y agoCloudy weather is harder, not easier when using concentrators (because it concentrates parallel rays of sunlight, not ambient light). Restricted space would still need to be covered with something and here you'll find that covering it directly with photovoltaic panels is more cost effective and will get you more power for a given area. As far as I'm aware concentrators are pretty much dead except for when you need lots of localized heat, for instance a solar oven. There they definitely work better than anything that is based off photovoltaics and because they tend to be totally passive probably more rugged and reliable too.
- gumby 3y agoTo my surprise there seems to be a small revival, though I don't quite understand the applications (not that I follow it closely). In general land is less expensive than the cost of trackers or concentrators (capital cost incl installation, plus op ex of maintenance & power) so you deal with your cosine loss by just installing more panels.
- blacksqr 3y agoThe Skinner Universal Unaflow? Fascinating! https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/terrajoule-unstealths-distributed-power-via-solar-and-energy-storage https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/terrajoule-unst...
- gumby 3y agoHa ha I’m glad my dog made it into that article.
- Gravityloss 3y agoAnother fascinating and refined mechanical contraption killed by solid state innovation
- gumby 3y agoDefinitely. Though being a 21st century mechanical device it was heavily instrumented and had an electronic control system. Amusingly, our electronic cylinder indicator showed a problem in one of the stages but the old-school mechanical one did not. The ME's told me "your instrument is bad" but when the stage was taken apart...sure enough the head gasket had a hole. The advantage of the mechanical system is that it would last indefinitely and could be repaired on site. People in India could make most of the spare parts themselves and do the maintenance themselves. But the advantages of the semiconductor + battery systems were: 1 - no moving parts and 2 - massive economies of scale due to mass factory production of highly uniform parts that could be used in lots of applications. Makes sense that it won -- our approach was superior only in certain applications.
- koblas 3y agoI have some good memories and little stories from my brief time working with him. Great guy.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoHe was the VP of research at Bell Labs during my postdoc 30+ years ago. Imposing in stature both as a scientist and as a person. RIP.
- nxobject 3y agoWould that have been in the late 80s-90s? I wonder how Bell Labs was doing then, after the AT&T breakup.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoYes. I was there from late 1990 to late 1993. The Labs were struggling to adjust after the breakup which was many years before. AT&T had Bell Labs, the Regional Bell Operating Companies had BellCore. Both were paid by taxing business orgs who were struggling to compete with MCI, Sprint, and other communication companies that did no research. None of the business orgs liked paying the tax and wanted results to show for whatever they did pay. Penzias had put Bell Labs on notice that it would have to get more applied while still maintaining the research excellence. There wasn't much direction on how to do both. The philosophy regarding any problem was, "You're smart, figure it out." Additionally, he felt the future was in software so the physical and materials science orgs where I resided felt the pinch that much harder. Nevertheless, my management pressed the case for physical sciences hard and at often substantial personal and professional cost. The postdocs were well shielded from all this. No matter what was playing out at the higher levels, the doors stayed open and just about everyone was up for a discussion of whatever was on our minds. Go in with a middlin' idea, come out with three better ones.
- dolmen 3y agoLooks like people there had much fun: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/labscam.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/labscam.html
- vmurthy 3y agoNot to take away anything from Mr Penzias but here’s how I remember his name :-) “Although Penzias and Wilson had not been looking for cosmic background radiation, didn’t know what it was when they had found it, and hadn’t described or interpreted its character in any paper, they received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics. The Princeton researchers got only sympathy. According to Dennis Overbye in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, neither Penzias nor Wilson altogether understood the significance of what they had found until they read about it in the New York Times” - Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything RIP Mr Penzias
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoWithout aspersion on Penzias and Wilson, Robert Dicke should have been recognized in due time. He was a supremely gifted experimentalist on top of everything else. Credited with inventing the lock-in amplifier, he graciously deferred to others. His radiometer and switch also had great impact. Stockholm should hang its head for this oversight.
- blawson 3y agoOT but this book is so incredible. The breadth of information covered is amazing, even for being ~20 years old at this point. The audiobook at .7 speed is my sleep aid.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sizzzzlerz 3y agoHave any other Nobel Prizes been awarded to someone who only discovered some phenomena but didn’t do any further research to advance our understanding of it? It seems to me that that falls in the category of blind luck rather than research and shouldn’t qualify for the Prize.
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Allan_Penzias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Allan_Penzias
- nevster 3y agohttps://archive.is/8Ekg6 https://archive.is/8Ekg6
- _kst_ 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVBu6i6Qwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVBu6i6Qwk
- elashri 3y agoThe title could be about Cosmic Microwave Background radiation instead of talking about Big Bang Theory. Yes, he and Wilson discovered it.
- johnwheeler 3y ago[flagged]
- sebzim4500 3y agoWho cares? There is no reason why the universe needs to be elegant.
- johnwheeler 3y agoOh yes the hell it does.
- gitaarik 3y agoBut there is nothing else more elegant that works as good
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nabla9 3y agoIn early 1960s statistical evidence from radio astronomy ruled out the steady-state model.
- vijayr02 3y agoRIP Arno. Here's the video and write up of the gag Dennis Ritchie and Rob Pike pulled on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxMKuv0A6z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxMKuv0A6z4 https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/labscam.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/labscam.html Edit: just wanted to say the hum of the universe dulled a little bit with his passing
- dang 3y ago[stub for offtopicness]
- ken47 3y agoThe semantics of the title seem off and written by a non-scientist. A scientific theory cannot be proven, so the significant word choice of “confirm” is poor.
- Jensson 3y ago> written by a non-scientist Yes, journalists aren't scientists.
- ken47 3y agoShame that instead of highlighting one of the many great things that this man did, they use incorrect phraseology to claim he did something he didn’t do.
- Gimpei 3y agoWhy not? Are you making some oblique reference to Popperian refutationalism or is your point just that it’s very difficult to 100% prove something, so often it’s more a matter of a significant updating of priors? If it’s the latter, using “proof” doesn’t seem like the worst shorthand to me. Anything more involved would go over the head of the average nytimes reader.
- ken47 3y agoI assumed the average New York Times reader is above average in intellect and could appreciate an irrefutable word choice, like “advanced” in place of “confirmed.” I could be wrong.
- somenameforme 3y agoEvidence of [x] is not proof of [x], but in this specific case the claim is particularly unreasonable. Because while a cosmic microwave background radiation is something that would be expected from a Big Bang, its actual reality is weird and contradicted previous expectations. It has to do with casual connectivity. "A" can only possibly influence "B" if A could reach B at the speed of light. But the relative homogeneity of our universe is suggestive that parts of the universe which should not be casually connected, are causally connected. So this discovery quickly led to the invention of cosmic inflation [1] whereby the early expansion of the universe is said to have dramatically accelerated well beyond the speed of light, and then slowed down - in order to enable these regions of space to become causally connected. No possible means or mechanism have been suggested, so it remains nothing but a rather inelegant hack to try to make what we observe fit a preexisting hypothesis that it largely contradicted. As experiments to try to provide supporting evidence for inflation have also turned up negative, it's also becoming one of those contemporary model driven hypotheses that requires ever more exotic physics to even make it possible, as each failed prediction gets assimilated into the model to make it keep fitting what we see. Just add more epicycles. [2] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)#Motivations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)#Motivati... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis
- abrarsami 3y agoRIP Arno
- notso411 3y agoConfirmed how. It is a theory. CMBR discovery is not confirmation of anything other than the existence of CMBR
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- YesThatTom2 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoYou can't attack another user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules this badly, so please don't do it again. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- nabla9 3y ago“it’s just a theory” slur is misleading and conflates two separate meanings of the word theory. There is lots of mysteries related to big bang, but steady-state model of cosmic evolution has been falsified. In early 1960s statistical evidence from radio astronomy ruled out the steady-state model.
- bleeprot 3y agoBut isn't saying that the big bang theory has been "confirmed" also misleading? That seems like a fair critique to me. Not to dismiss anybody's work, but it is important to express scientific accomplishments and advancements accurately (especially to a public that is vulnerable to manipulation by sources they deem to be authoritative).
- nabla9 3y agoAll words are misleading without appropriate knowledge and reading level. If the meaning is constantly lost for you when reading science or economics, it's not because the writers are bad, but because your reading level and general knowledge level are not high enough to read those articles. Human language has syntax, semantics and pragmatics. HN comment section has disproportionate number terminology nitpickers and misunderstanders who somehow have problems with semantics and pragmatics. They represent a small minority of HN users. I suspect many of them are teens or young adults and improve over time.
- seoulbigchris 3y agoI went to one of his lectures in Atlanta in the early 1980s. I wasn't sure what to expect, but he was very interesting and approachable. Wonderful stories and explanation of his research, and afterwards he just sat on the stage and a bunch of us Ga Tech geeks surrounded him and we had an impromptu Q&A session. Very memorable experience.
- tpmp313459 3y ago[flagged]
- snakeyjake 3y agoThe Big Bang was first theorized by a Belgian priest.
- throw0101d 3y ago* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
- tpmp313459 3y agoI'm mentioned Seeking Truth. You just sharing some priests link. What If I am a Buddist, Hindu or Just Juda. Think yourself how you are fooled by modern cult groups.(They address themself science community). A truth needs evident or at least proper supporting documents. Big bang and evaluation theories aren't have ANY VALID DOC. It's about to hallucinate peoples by the domonitating cult groups pushing their own stories in the name of science.
- mr_mitm 3y agoPlease leave this website and don't come back.
- tpmp313459 3y agoBetter for me too... Lot of dumbs..
- mr_mitm 3y agoAnd even the pope has endorsed the big bang theory: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-evolution-big-bang-theory-are-real-n235696 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-evolution-bi...
- Jemm 3y ago"settled a debate over the origin and evolution of the universe." Really?
- odyssey7 3y agoYeah… it’s a eulogy given to the general public. Sometimes they say nice things even if they aren’t 100% accurate.
- mr_mitm 3y agoYes, until that discovery the consensus was pretty much that it could be either big bang or steady state. Penzias' discovery was a smoking gun that put all but the most stubborn critics (Fred Hoyle was arguably the most prominent) of the big bang theory to rest. These days there is not a single professional cosmologist that doubts the big bang theory as far as I am aware. (Note that by "big bang theory" we mean the theory of the evolution of the universe a fraction of a second after the singularity event.)
- throwawaymaths 3y agoI do think there is recently a model that the CMB is not the echo of thd big bang (without necessarily disclaiming the big bang itself). Cosmology will have to answer that one in the next decade. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018MNRAS.478..283V/abstract#:~:text=A%20cosmological%20model%2C%20in%20which,redshifts%20z%20%3E%202%2D3 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018MNRAS.478..283V/abstra....
- SiempreViernes 3y agoOh yeah, a assuming a universe that is cyclically expanding and contracting is so much better than the one time expansion of the big bang: > Obviously, the idea of the universe oscillating within a given range of redshifts is a mere hypothesis full of open questions. The primary question is: which forces drive the oscillations. Without proposing any solution, we can just speculate that [gravitational collapse] might play a central role in this model [p 16, ibid]
- bedhead 3y agoHasn't the big bang basically been disproven as a theory?
- SiempreViernes 3y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blinking-white-guy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blinking-white-guy You'll have to provide more context for why you say that.
- Supermancho 3y ago> Hasn't the big bang basically been disproven as a theory? No. That isn't to say that there aren't issues with it. Notably that it explains many of the observable qualities of the universe today with high accuracy, with our current instruments. Due to some inconsistencies with what is observed across great distance (and time) and the need to violate a number of principles (thermodynamics and speed of light) during the inflation, there are other theories[1]. It is recognized that the BB theory has serious problems that cannot be empirically tested. Therefore, the theory holds as long as it continues to be useful in describing our local space. [1] I prefer the idea of a localized small bang as opposed to a universal big bang
- aoeusnth1 3y agoDo you information on localized small bang theory? I thought that the way the Big Bang avoids being a black hole is by having gravity pull in all directions (isotropy). Wouldn’t a local bang just be a black hole?
- gitaarik 3y agoThe speed of light is not violated with inflation. Space can expand faster than the speed of light without matter needing to travel faster than speed of light.
- Supermancho 3y ago> Space can expand faster than the speed of light There's no basis for that assumption, other than it fits the model.
- ErikAugust 3y agoRead in plaintext: https://trimread.org/articles/209/text https://trimread.org/articles/209/text
- vages 3y agoCool page, but would like the header to remain in the article.
- acyou 3y agoThough the title is copied from the article, the title is needlessly inflammatory. Given the replication, practical application and self-admitted quantum physics vs. standard model crisis/failures of modern particle physics, astronomy, and cosmic theory, declaring victory around the Big Bang Theory is, and may always be premature, despite the surrounding dogma. Would anyone who knew him personally agree that he claimed to have "confirmed the big bang theory", and that he would want to be remembered in that way?
- cryptonector 3y ago> Would anyone who knew him personally agree that he claimed to have "confirmed the big bang theory", and that he would want to be remembered in that way? Almost certainly not, at least not the scientists who knew him. The scientific method does not involve proving (or "confirming") theories; it only involves falsifiable theories and attempts to falsify them.
- throwaway_ls 3y ago> it *only* involves falsifiable theories and attempts to falsify them. Your view is needlessly narrow. Coming up with new theories, collecting new data, verifying how theories fit that data is also part of the process even if it doesn't falsify them. To quote wikipedia it's on going process: "The process in the scientific method involves making conjectures (hypothetical explanations), deriving predictions from the hypotheses as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments or empirical observations based on those predictions."
- cryptonector 3y agoThe scientific process only involves falsifiable theories. The process does allow refining theories to fit new evidence, for sure, but a refined theory is a new theory, with the old one disproven, but this only works when theories are falsifiable. Therefore we never speak of "proven" or "confirmed" theories.
- 3y ago
- the_doctah 3y agoHow do you confirm a theory?
- SpaceManNabs 3y agoWe cannot confirm Big Bang theory until we figure out inflation more.