Talk Title: Inference from within the Monad: Reasoning about the Early Universe in Contemporary Cosmology
In many ways, early-universe cosmology has enjoyed a data deluge akin to those in many other scientific fields. International collaborations have produced enormous datasets filled with measurements of unprecedented accuracy of such physical phenomena as tiny anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which have helped to clarify and constrain various models of the earliest moments of cosmic history. On the other hand, according to the leading framework with which cosmologists try to reason about the very early universe – known as cosmic inflation – there is likely to exist an earliest era, before which no empirical data will be accessible for aeons. In this talk, Professor Kaiser will give a brief overview of some of the ways in which research in early-universe cosmology today is quite similar to other areas of scientific inquiry – with large datasets and modern techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyses – as well as some ways in which reasoning and inference in cosmology follow distinct paths.
David Kaiser
David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Physics at MIT. He also recently served as inaugural Associate Dean for Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing. He is the author of several award-winning books about modern physics, including Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (2005), which received the Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society for best book in the field; How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (2011), which focused on early efforts to understand strange phenomena like quantum entanglement and received the Davis Prize from the History of Science Society for best book aimed at a general audience as well as being named “Book of the Year” by Physics World magazine; and Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World (2020), which was honored as among the best books of the year by Physics Today and Physics World magazines and named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Kaiser co-directs a research group on early-universe cosmology with Alan Guth in MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics, and has also designed and helped to conduct novel experimental tests of quantum theory. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Kaiser has received MIT’s highest awards for excellence in teaching. His work has been featured in Science, Nature, the New York Times, and the New Yorker magazine. His group’s recent efforts to conduct a “Cosmic Bell” test of quantum entanglement, together with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger, were featured in the documentary film Einstein’s Quantum Riddle, which premiered on PBS in 2019.