Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
Search
Some Criticisms of the New Cosmos
March 9th, 2014
I watched the premiere of the new Neil de Grasse Tyson-hosted version of Cosmos tonight on Fox.
The goal was to update the science of Carl Sagan’s show — we have learned a lot in the last 30+years — and present it in as entertaining way as possible. Tyson says:
“The goal is to convey why science matters to the person, to our society, to us as shepherds of this planet. It involves presenting science in ways that connect to you, so Cosmos can influence you not only intellectually but emotionally, with a celebration of wonder and awe,” says Tyson. “Science should be part of everybody’s life. The prerequisite is not that you become a scientist. It’s that at the end of the series, you will embrace science and recognize its role in who and what you are.”
I strongly agree with those goals, and the show was for the most part visually striking and fun. While I had some concerns about the animated sequence showing Bruno’s execution for proposing a view of the universe that the Catholic Church did not agree with, the story was largely correct.
Where I want to criticize is in some scientific and technical details that the show just got wrong. I can forgive other kinds of errors, but this is really a show that needs to get these correct. If you see inaccuricies here, you can’t really trust anything, can you? This isn’t a professor answering a question off the cuff in public in realtime; this is an expensive, polished show with plenty of time and cause to be factually accurate.
Here are three points I thought were largely or totally wrong that need correction. I’ll take this opportunity for a teaching moment.
1. The graphics showing the asteroid belt, and the Kuiper belt, did not reflect reality. It showed a high density of large objects that would appear to crash into each other regularly. This is the same misconception that The Empire Strikes Back fell into. While there are systems of gravitationally bound asteroids (e.g., binaries, “rubble piles,” etc.), the general case is that you could fly a spacecraft through them a thousand times and not only not hit anything, you’d not be likely to even see anything. This was just an error and reinforces misconceptions.
2. Tyson referred to using night vision technology to see into the (thermal) infrared — cool objects in the universe. Wrong. While night vision does see slightly into the near-infrared (about 1 microns), it is primarily a light amplification technology. Thermal imagers are what we use to see cool dust, gas, and the coolest stars. Compare both technologies here.
3. Tyson, discussing the Big Bang, repeats a commonly held misconception that is wrong. He said that the entire universe came from a point smaller than an individual atom. If he’d used the modifier “observed” or “observable” in front of universe, I’d have given him a pass. But after making such a big deal about infinity earlier in the episode and bringing up the point of only part of the universe being observable, I can only call this a significant error. The reality is that if the universe is infinite today (and indications are that it is, and that is the adopted standard model), and therefore could never have been finite in size. Think about it. How do you change something from a finite size to an infinite size? The answer is that you don’t. A better way of thinking about the Big Bang was that the universe approached infinite density, but without approaching zero size.
So while I am pleased to see a show like Cosmos back on network TV in a good timeslot, I am worried that the quality control is lacking. I don’t know who gets input into the scripts and graphics, or who gets final say, but they’re not doing a good enough job in my opinion. If I were teaching astronomy 101 or cosmology this semester, I’d be discussing these points in my class — as well as assigning the show as homework.
P.S. Starlinks in the next day or two…
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Some (fair, I think) nitpicks on #Cosmos by @ProfBrotherton at http://t.co/ldH6wnHG1q #CosmosAfterParty
#1 is a dumb mistake by the animation department. Bad.
#2 “Night Vision” is not an official name for the technology you described. It actually encompasses thermal vision technologies. The US Armed Forces primarily uses thermal imaging for vehicle combat.
#3 You simply don’t know that the Big Bang did not start from a finite point. It’s a theory. Just like the alternative you posited.
@jrindyk:
1. Possibly, but who is telling the graphics department what should be portrayed and how? And who has oversight when they provide something incorrect?
2. There are a lot of people who make the distinction, as do I, an owner of both gen 3 night vision goggles and a thermal imager. Many viewers were surely misled, thinking of the green images seen on many tv shows like “Finding Bigfoot” today.
3. Saying all “theories” are acceptable is not acceptable these days. We have a standard cosmology today, which I teach, and Tyson’s statement would get marked wrong on an exam. See, for instance: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html
“How do you change something from a finite size to an infinite size? The answer is that you don’t.”
I confess I don’t have a good intuition for what PHYSICAL infinity would mean, but MATHEMATICALLY you can certainly transform between finite and infinite sizes, e.g. transform the bounded real interval [0, 1] to the unbounded real interval of all reals >= 1 by the function f(x) = 1/x.
Or to give a discrete instead of continuous example, we can transform the finite alphabet {a, b} to the infinite language of strings {a, b}* of all strings of 0 or more instances of a & b.
Etc. Generating infinite objects from finite objects is quite normal in math.
If it’s inherently impossible in physical terms, OK, but that’s not a priori clear to me (nor is it a priori clear to me that “infinite” even has physical meaning – but of course as I admit, I don’t know about cosmology.)
Is this a general consensus, i.e. would most/all cosmologists agree that it’s NOT possible to generate a physical infinite object from a physical finite object, analogous to how most/all mathematicians would agree that it IS possible to generate a mathematical infinite object from a mathematical finite object?
“Infinity” is tricky business in any case… Normal language and intuition fails us and one must be very precise…
Nitpicker! (and yes, I agree with your observations)
After sleeping on this, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no idea what anything is anymore. I’ve always accepted the idea of the universe being unbounded, existing in infinite space, but the idea of infinite matter/energy baffles me and even seems to invalidate the basics of the Big Bang. It’s also a widely disputed notion that I find hard to accept. I’ve always thought the universe, in its definite amount of mass/energy, was just expanding into the infinite void. If the universe has infinite matter that came/comes from an infinitely expanding point, then that implies no real beginning to the universe, that the Big Bang never really “happened”, but instead has always been happening. Forever into the past. But then now it’s done? Or is it not? If not, then that sounds like the now obsolete steady-state theory.
God I’m confused. This is shaking the foundation of my understanding of the universe.
I am afraid that your interpretation of the Big Bang is wrong. If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, then it cannot be infinitely large and can be at most 27.6 billion light years across. All prevailing Big Bang theories require an initial phase of the universe where it is supercompact, i.e. smaller than anything we can see. This was originally thought to be an initial singularity—a point, having no actual size. Whle there are problems with this model it explains why the universe seems to be expanding everywhere.
@russ, to the limits of our physics, we can’t make anything grow from finite size to infinite size in finite time. The equations do allow for exponential growth, which is fast, but you know that infinity is not the same as really big.
@George, you seem to be thinking about the observed universe rather than the actual universe. I discussed this, with links, some years back: http://www.mikebrotherton.com/2008/09/19/just-how-big-is-the-damn-universe-anyway/ You may find it of interest.
@Rocko, it is hard! I think you would enjoy wrapping your head around these issues at Ned Wright’s cosmology tutorial page: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm
I (from an interested layperson’s viewpoint) have a problem with describing the universe as infinite. How can anything with any physical dimensions be described in that way? If the universe is infinite it implies that it always existed. Also, how can infinity be inferred from observation? So if time is rolled back 13.8billion years to the precise beginning of the observable universe, then what surrounds it?
Sorry, lots of questions, but now I’m confused! Perhaps that’s why it makes more sense to the general public if they’re told about “the universe” rather than using the modifier “observable”. I have watched the UK equivalent of Cosmos – The Wonders of the Universe and don’t remember any mention of an infinite universe (although in a lecture on youtube Prof Brian Cox describes the universe as being much larger than the observable but avoids the i-word). From what I understand, everything began from a quantum singularity and expanded initially faster than light (which is why photons beyond a certain distance never reached us). So is that model outdated?
Adrian, it is tough! You might start with the two links in my other comment.
FWIW, here is apparently a different error.
http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/the-mistake-no-one-noticed-about-cosmos/
” the mistake no one noticed was that the idea of infinite space does not belong to him, but to Nicholas of Cusa, a German philosopher who lived one century before Bruno. “
I like Tyson but they have him doing this so Self Conscience and Precious, over dramatic statements. And it often comes across as silly.
Just annouce what you are saying like you are speaking to people, Not trying to combine how actors portray Shakespeare in the park.
@maddog, That’s just how the guy is…haven’t you seen anything else he has ever done?? Besides, how are they supposed to appeal to the layman if he is speaking in monotone? It would turn into a crappy science class film from our youths