The Trenches of Discovery

Helsinki at midnight. OK, that's not Helsinki, and the photo wasn't taken at midnight. But it is in Finland (Kemiö) and was taken after 11:30pm. Image credit either Chris Byrnes or Michaela D'Onofrio, I'm not sure, although because I got it off facebook, I guess it belongs to Mark Zuckerberg now. I'm very sorry. As I wrote last week, we just hosted a conference here in Helsinki. I wanted to cover it as the conference happened and I just didn't have the combination of time and mental […]

This is a continuation of posts about the Cosmological Perturbations post-Planck conference being held in Helsinki this week. You can see my introduction post here and my first post from the conference here. If you're a member of the general public and want to understand more, please ask. If you're a cosmologist and want to add anything to what I've written, please add a comment. The Curvaton Yesterday I tried to introduce what the curvaton is. We had a few talks yesterday that related to […]

This week Helsinki is hosting a conference on the theoretical implications of the recent results from the Planck satellite. The official theme of the conference is cosmological perturbations post Planck. This is alluding to the fact that on large distance scales and at early times, the universe is very homogeneous (it is almost the same everywhere) but has small perturbations in things like its temperature and its density. Planck measures the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) […]

Helsinki, as it looked when the Planck data was released, less than three months ago. (Image credit: Samuel Flender's facbook photos) Hello people reading this (present and distant future). Next week, we're hosting a conference here in Helsinki. On balance, I enjoyed covering the last conference I attended (it was demanding, but rewarding). So, I'll cover this one too. This means, each day I'll try to write a summary of what I found interesting during the day's talks. The last conference […]

It's been a divisive issue for as long as it's existed, but the topic of human embryonic cloning has been thrust back into the spotlight this week with the news that researchers in the US have successfully produced human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from adult cells for the first time. This is big news because hESCs have the potential, in theory, to become any type of adult cell - opening the possibility for repairing damaged tissues in previously unthinkable ways. Neatly, this was […]