Voyages of Discovery: Copernicus to the Big Bang http://edu-observatory.org/olli/VD-C2BB/Week8.html Cosmology & Gravitational-Wave Astronomy http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060323.html http://edu-observatory.org/eo/cosmology.html No Center http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/nocenter.html http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html Also see Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html WMAP: Foundations of the Big Bang theory http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html WMAP: Tests of Big Bang Cosmology http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest.html Origins: Back to the Beginning 58:30 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/program-3114.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3114_origins.html DAVID SPERGEL: "The microwave background has encoded in it a tremendous amount of information about the properties of the universe: how old it is, what it's made of, how many atoms are in the universe, how fast it's expanding. "The really remarkable thing that WMAP found was that the universe was incredibly simple. I think we're now close to the right story for how the universe evolved from a second or so after the Big Bang 'til today. "It was as if we were basically assembling this puzzle, and all of a sudden you look down at the puzzle and you realize you've got it. The pieces are there". Background on Dark Matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter Background on Dark Energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy Cosmology & Gravitational-Wave Astronomy http://edu-observatory.org/eo/cosmology.html NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: "For almost all of human history, the heavens have been beyond our reach. For our ancestors, it was a place where the gods lived, or else simply a vast, untouchable realm of lifeless beauty. But now, the study of cosmic origins tells a different story. "It tells us that the story of life, of us, extends far beyond earth. It tells us that the emergence of the conditions for our kind of life was no accident. Instead, it was a natural outcome of almost 14 billion years of cosmic evolution, a chain of connections that links the birth of the universe to us, right here, right now". Interview with Physicist Steven Weinberg http://www.meta-library.net/transcript/wein-body.html QUESTION: You have written that the more comprehensible the universe becomes the more pointless it seems. Could you explain what you mean by that? DR. WEINBERG: Years ago I wrote a book about cosmology, and near the end I tried to summarize the view of the expanding universe and the laws of nature. And I made the remark - I guess I was foolish enough to make the remark - that the more the universe seems comprehensible the more it seems pointless. And that remark has been quoted more than anything else I've ever said. It's even in Bartlett's Quotations. I think it's been the truth in the past that it was widely hoped that by studying nature we will find the sign of a grand plan, in which human beings play a particularly distinguished starring role. And that has not happened. I think that more and more the picture of nature, the outside world, has been one of an impersonal world governed by mathematical laws that are not particularly concerned with human beings, in which human beings appear as a chance phenomenon, not the goal toward which the universe is directed. And for some this has no effect on their religion. Their religion never looked for any kind of point in nature. For others this is appalling, the idea that all of the stars and galaxies and atoms are going about their business, and it's just by accident that here on this solar system the peculiar chemical properties of DNA acting over billions of years have produced these people who have been able to talk and look around and enjoy life. For some people that picture is antithetical to the view of nature and the world that their religion had given them. QUESTION: Do you believe then there is no overall point to the universe? DR. WEINBERG: I believe that there is no point in the universe that can be discovered by the methods of science. I believe that what we have found so far, an impersonal universe in which it is not particularly directed toward human beings is what we are going to continue to find. And that when we find the ultimate laws of nature they will have a chilling, cold impersonal quality about them. I don't think this means [however] there's no point to life. Usually the remark is quoted just as it stands. But if anyone read the next paragraph, they would see that I went on to say that if there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that -- in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play. swormley1@mchsi.com