Past Activities:
My long-awaited general relativity book
is finally finished.
Now I'll finally be able to afford that BMW
Jag.
I've also done a set of lectures for the Teaching Company, about dark matter and dark energy, not to mention more general topics in cosmology, gravity, and particle physics. The lectures are aimed at a slightly broader audience than the aforementioned textbook (anyone at all, really).
In addition to my respectable research, I have an interest in the relationship between science and religion. (Like Steven Weinberg, I don't think there should be one.) At a conference at Notre Dame I presented a paper on cosmology and atheism, and in Winter 2004 I co-taught (with Shadi Bartsch) a course on the history of atheism at the University of Chicago. There was a nice article in the Chicago Tribune from January 11, 2004.
Without really trying, I've also been pulled into exploring connections between science and literature. In March 2005 I gave a "literary lecture" for the performance of Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy for the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. Also in March, I visited the KITP in Santa Barbara for a conference on "Theoretical Physics in Drama and Narrative." See the roundup at my blog. In June I spoke about David Field's play Symmetry at the Victory Gardens Theater. Out of all this came an article entitled "From Experience to Metaphor, By Way of Imagination."
I spent Fall 2003 at the KITP in Santa Barbara, helping to organize a program on Superstring Cosmology.
In 2003 and again in 2004 I went on dinosaur expeditions to Wyoming with Project Exploration. (You don't believe me, I know. Here's proof.) I found an edmontosaurus, or at least part of one. Every paleontological outfit needs a team cosmologist.
Not even the federal government is brave enough to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on cosmology without consulting me first; thus, I served as a member of the Roadmap Team for NASA's "Structure and Evolution of the Universe" theme.
COSMO-02, the International Workshop on Particle Physics and the Early Universe, was a roaring success.
Home page for the Astro/Cosmo/Particle Working Group at Snowmass 2001.
Who says there is no connection between String Theory and Experiment? On October 26th 2001 we at least had the courage to ask the question.
In December 2001 we probed the dark energy at the University of Chicago. Nobody was injured. In 2005 I organized an AAAS Symposium on dark energy.
See also other writings and talks.
