The Nobel Prize winning cosmologist who thinks we continue to misunderstand the universe.
- sciart0
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Excerpt: "By doing the work that led to the discovery of dark energy, Riess had helped add the final piece to what has since come to be called the “standard model of cosmology.” Indeed, few people played a larger role in establishing the standard model as the field’s dominant theory of how the universe began, how it organized itself into galaxies, and how it will end. But in recent years, cosmologists, the people who study the universe on the largest scales of space and time, have begun to worry that this story, and particularly its final act, might be wrong. Some talk of revolution. A growing number now say that the standard model should be replaced.
Adam Riess is among them.
Whenever a big theory of the universe is teetering, the old guard tends to close ranks; hence, the classic joke about science progressing one funeral at a time. Riess easily could have joined the old guard. He could have been its commanding officer. When he returned from Stockholm with his prize in 2011, he found that his academic life had changed. People around him started to behave oddly, he told me. Some clammed up. Others argued with him about trivial things, he said, perhaps so they could boast of having dunked on a Nobel laureate. Riess was besieged with invitations to sit on panels, give talks, and judge science fairs. He was asked to comment on political issues that he knew nothing about. He told me he was even recruited to run major scientific institutions.
Riess wondered about that path—being the big boss of a NASA mission or gliding around a leafy university as its chancellor. He could see the appeal, but he hated fundraising, and unlike other, older Nobel laureates, he said, Riess still felt that he had scientific contributions to make, not as an administrator, but as a frontline investigator of capital-n Nature. “Scientists sometimes tell themselves this myth: I’ll go lead this thing, and then I’ll come back and do research,” he told me. But then, by the time they’ve finished up with their administrative roles, they’ve lost touch with the data. They become clumsy with the latest software languages. “The science passes them by,” Riess said."