A Thousand Invisible Cords Binding Astronomy and High-Energy Physics

The traditional realm of astronomy is the observation and study of the largest objects in the Universe, while the traditional domain of high-energy physics is the study of the smallest things in nature. But these two sciences concerned with opposite ends of the size spectrum are, in Muir's words, bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken. In this essay I propose that collaborations of astronomers and high-energy physicists on common problems are beneficial for both fields, and that both astronomy and high-energy physics can advance by this close and still growing relationship. Dark matter and dark energy are two of the binding cords I will use to illustrate how collaborations of astronomers and high-energy physicists on large astronomical projects can be good for astronomy, and how discoveries in astronomy can guide high-energy physicists in their quest for understanding nature on the smallest scales. Of course, the fields have some different intellectual and collaborative traditions, neither of which is ideal. The cultures of the different fields cannot be judged to be right or wrong; they either work or they don't. When astronomers and high-energy physicists work together, the binding cords can either encourage or choke creativity. The challenge facing the astronomy and high-energy physics communities is to adopt the best traditions of both fields. It is up to us to choose wisely.Comment: Why "Fundamentalist" Physics Is Good for Astronomy (in response to the paper of Simon White, arXiv:0704.2291

Particle creation in the expanding universe

The big bang has often been called the ultimate particle accelerator, and physicists have used the enormous temperatures of the early universe as a laboratory for the study of new particles and new interactions. Less explored is another source for creation of particles in the big bang: gravitational production. I will discuss the production of particles from the vacuum caused by the expansion of the universe

The Quantum and the Cosmos

Fermilab physicists, Dr. Rocky Kolb and Dr. Joe Lykken team up to explain the connection of the physics of the very small to the physics of the cosmos and their discovery of a fundamental contradiction regarding how these mysteries have led to the development of new ideas: string theory, inflation, extra dimensions and Wimpzillas, as well as Higgs boson, and other mysteries that cosmologists care about, like dark energy. Dr. Rocky Kolb is the founding head of the NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is also a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas. Postdoctoral research was performed at the California Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was the J. Robert Oppenheimer Research Fellow. In addition to over 200 scientific papers, he is co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology. His new book for the general public, Blind Watchers of the Sky (winner of the 1996 Emme award from the AAS) is the story of the people and ideas that shaped our view of the universe. Dr. Joseph D. Lykken is a theoretical particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and a professor in the Physics Department and Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. After receiving his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1982, he migrated to the University of Texas, where he worked with Steven Weinberg on the first realistic theoretical models of supersymmetry. In 1984 he joined the stampede of particle theorists into superstring theory, and spent the next decade wrestling with deep issues of how strings are related both to quantum gravity and to particle physics. In a 1996 paper he was the first to suggest that superstrings and quantum gravity might appear directly in the next generation of particle physics experiments. Since joining the theory group at Fermilab in 1989, he has been involved in planning experimental searches for supersymmetry. the Higgs boson, and for extra dimensions

Whose Mass is it Anyway? Particle Cosmology and the Objects of Theory

Physicists in different branches of the discipline were puzzled by the problem of mass during the 1950s and 1960s: why do objects have mass? Around the same time, yet working independently, specialists in gravitational studies and in particle theory proposed that mass might arise due to objects’ interactions with a new (and as yet undetected) field. Although the questions they posed and even the answers they provided shared several similarities - and even though both proposals quickly became ‘hot topics’ in their respective subfields - virtually no one discussed one proposal in the light of the other for nearly 20 years. Only after massive, unprecedented changes in pedagogical infrastructure rocked the discipline in the early 1970s did a new generation of physicists begin to see possible links between the Brans-Dicke field and the Higgs field. For the new researchers, trained in different ways than most of their predecessors, the two objects of theory were not only similar - some began to proclaim that they were exactly the same. Charting the histories of these two objects of theory illuminates the complicated institutional and pedagogical factors that helped to produce a new subfield, particle cosmology, which today ranks at the very forefront of modern physics