This page collects some of my non-research writings from here and there;
for a more complete listing see my CV.
See also my talks.
Blogging
Like all contemporary deep thinkers, I've taken up blogging as a way to share my
free-ranging wisdom with the breathlessly waiting world. Since July 2005 I've
been a member of the group blog Cosmic
Variance; before that, starting in February 2004, I had been blogging solo
at Preposterous Universe.
I've collected some of my favorite blog posts here:
General Relativity Notes
The most useful thing here would be the Lecture Notes on
General Relativity. These are the record of a graduate course I taught in
1996, Physics 8.962 at MIT. If you are impatient and want the
condensed version, here is a tiny introduction
to general relativity (24 pages, postscript; also available
as pdf). If on the other hand you are
more ambitious and want a revised and expanded version, you can
buy the textbook,
Spacetime and Geometry:
An Introduction to General Relativity, published by Addison-Wesley.
Cosmology Primer
I wrote a cosmology primer for the
Kavli Institute for Cosmological
Physics. It covers the basic features of contemporary cosmology at
an accessible level.
Reviews
I've inflicted my opinions about the cosmology, dark energy,
and the preposterous
universe on an unsuspecting public in a variety of venues.
On the off chance that there is an interesting topic that I haven't
written a review about, I keep a page of interesting
reviews by other people.
Other writings
But I can't be confined to just reviewing stuff. Here are some other
scribblings:
- My take on the Y2K Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy measurements
(html, postscript,
pdf), also
for Matters of
Gravity.
- A talk on cosmology and atheism,
delivered at a conference on God and Physical Cosmology.
- Book review (for Physics Today) of Richard Gott's
Time Travel in Einstein's Universe.
- Book review (for Nature) of Robert Kirshner's
The Extravagant Universe (pdf).
- News and Views (Nature again) on results from the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (pdf).
- News and Views (Nature) on constraining violations
of Lorentz invariance from quantum gravity
using synchrotron radiation from the Crab nebula (pdf).
- Book Review (Nature) of Michael Lemonick's
Echo of the Big Bang (pdf).
- Time
Before Time, a brief piece for Seed about the
proposal by me and
Jennie Chen on how to explain the arrow of time via spontaneous
inflation.
- Is Our Universe Natural?,
a short essay for Nature on fine-tunings and the multiverse.
- Insignificance (pdf), another
short piece for Nature, this time on the implications of dark matter and
dark energy.
- From
Experience to Metaphor, by Way of Imagination (pdf), a talk on
the use of science in literature and drama. Originally given at a conference
in Santa Barbara, and purportedly to appear in an
upcoming issue of Poetics Today.
- The
Cosmic Origins of Time's Arrow, a popular-level article for Scientific
American on cosmology and the arrow of time.
Research Web Pages
Sometimes a journal article just isn't enough to convey all the
interesting info about a research project, and a web page is called
for. Pretty pictures are available concerning the
dynamics of
exotic textures, and trenchant commentary on the question of
cosmic
anisotropy in polarization data (a/k/a the "screwy universe").
For the lowdown on my less media-friendly work, here is an overview
of my research interests.
Sean Carroll
Self
Research
Teaching
Talks
Writings
GR Book
Activities
Blog