Today I had the opportunity to listen to Prof. Brian Schmidt, Nobel Laureate in Physics in the year 2011. Being (relatively) a very young student of Mathematics and Physics I did not understand the involved, mathematical (and most probably the juiciest) part of his one hour long talk; however even without that, it was quite fascinating.
Instead of the usual impersonal presentations we were greeted by a simply formatted and edited presentation with lots pictures which were threaded together to provide a narrative of his research interwoven with the pressing questions in the field. Almost all of the things he talked about were quite new to me; I still practically have no grasp over most of them.
He talked about the shape of the universe and how depending on a differential equation (Friedmann Equations) dealing with scale factor a, how the shape of the universe can be closed, flat or open, how it can be expanding and how the expansion can be accelerating or not. Another interesting term that cropped up was the density of the universe in terms of matter, dark matter, photons etc and how they behave.
It is also quite humbling to see that he has been working on the same thing for almost 20 years and had to work for a long time to get the results and conform them. It was even more humbling to see him calling himself an observer not a theorist and an astronomer and not a physicist. For all of us who heard him, he has opened a new window into this wonderful world.
Instead of the usual impersonal presentations we were greeted by a simply formatted and edited presentation with lots pictures which were threaded together to provide a narrative of his research interwoven with the pressing questions in the field. Almost all of the things he talked about were quite new to me; I still practically have no grasp over most of them.
He talked about the shape of the universe and how depending on a differential equation (Friedmann Equations) dealing with scale factor a, how the shape of the universe can be closed, flat or open, how it can be expanding and how the expansion can be accelerating or not. Another interesting term that cropped up was the density of the universe in terms of matter, dark matter, photons etc and how they behave.
It is also quite humbling to see that he has been working on the same thing for almost 20 years and had to work for a long time to get the results and conform them. It was even more humbling to see him calling himself an observer not a theorist and an astronomer and not a physicist. For all of us who heard him, he has opened a new window into this wonderful world.
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