Episodes
Monday Nov 26, 2018
Episode 035 - Anne Hofmeister Shakes Up Earth Science
Monday Nov 26, 2018
Monday Nov 26, 2018
TSSM goes heavy: hard-hitting journalism from one of science's great controversialists, Anne Hofmeister. Intrigued? Disagree? Write me an email (giesting@alumni.nd.edu) or look her up at Washington University in St. Louis' EPS department website.
The times below are keyed to the start of the interview and ignore my opening (just over 2 min).
0:00 Introduction
1:00 Anne's background (sorry, this part Anne was talking so quietly that I can't seem to fix it with Audacity, but bear with us; we moved the microphone and figured some things out and it gets better)
2:00 Spectroscopy and heat transfer
3:00 Thermal conductivity experiments and their pitfalls
5:00 Criticism of the history of thermodynamics and heat transfer; identification of light and heat
6:00 Problems with equilibrium and elastic collisions in theories of thermodynamics
8:00 Criticism of phonon theory
10:00 Electron and vibrational transfer of heat decoupled; metals and heat transfer
13:00 Garnet
14:00 Earth's interior: convection, the Rayleigh number
15:00 Viscosity
16:00 The Earth's mantle: nearly all solid
17:00 Plate tectonics without mantle convection
18:00 An even more radical idea: heat is being trapped inside the solid Earth
19:00 [there was a distortion I had to cut]
20:00 Implications: heat generation is in the crust (this part is widely known!)
21:00 Implications: the core is melting, not solidifying?
22:00 The geodynamo and magnetic field
23:00 The core: buffered at the temperature of melting high pressure iron
24:00 Magnetic modes diagram for the planets: spin and magnetic field
Monday Nov 19, 2018
Episode 034 - Stephen Barr on Why to Be a Religious (and Catholic) Scientist
Monday Nov 19, 2018
Monday Nov 19, 2018
~0:00 Question: advice for students
1:00 Don't be afraid to be a religious scientist
2:00 Particular issues
3:00 Keep awake to the wonder of the world
4:00 Bill: ignorance of the common man about both science and religion
5:00 Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
6:00 Christopher Baglow: science and faith textbook
7:00 Church beginning (at long last?) to address the need to catechize & educate about this
Phone ringing can't be excised without gutting Bill's question!
8:00 Media's portrayal of religion as boring and science as exciting
9:00 Science explores the world as it is, but there must be issues beyond: "why" issues
10:00 Intellectual freedom necessary for science to make any sense
11:00 No reason for Catholics to fear science uncovering fatal problems for faith
12:00 20th century overturn of 19th century mechanistic, unfree universe
13:00 Advent of the big bang theory, verification through microwave radiation
14:00 Bill: "free will on steroids" in uneasy coexistence with materialism
15:00 Barr: inherent conflict there
16:00 Pernicious recurring feature of intellectual history: excuses not to be free
17:00 Bill: does faith make one a better scientist?
18:00 Wonder: "ears to hear and eyes to see"
19:00 Summation: join Society of Catholic Scientists!
20:00 Sign off
Monday Nov 12, 2018
Monday Nov 12, 2018
Minute Comment
0:00 Paul introduces
1:00 Bill: Lemaitre announcement
2:00 Lemaitre: faith & science not opposed
3:00 Barr: Lemaitre announcement
4:00 Ignorance of Lemaitre
5:00 Ignorance of the Christian, Catholic origin of science & famous Catholic scientists
6:00 Barr: late 19th century critical period for the forging of the myth of Church as anti-science
7:00 Science only professionalized in the late 19th century, looking for influence
8:00 More famous Catholic scientists
9:00 Mission of the Society of Catholic Scientists; religious people looking askance at scientists, 10:00 Scientists timid about showing their faith in the presence of a few loud atheists
11:00 Catholic scientists joining SCS & finding others like themselves
12:00 Witness to the world
13:00 Conferences, past and future: next June at Notre Dame
14:00 2017: origin of universe, life; 2018: mind and matter
15:00 2019 conference: what is it (and has it been) to be human; speakers from outside the faith
16:00 Past non-Catholic conference speakers
17:00 Peter Koellner's talk at 2018 conference
18:00 Koellner and Godel's theorem
19:00 Neaderthals, language, reason
20:00 Godel's beliefs about mind and mathematical truths
21:00 Mathematical truth and religious truth
22:00 Depth & sophistication of the law that governs the universe
Monday Nov 05, 2018
Episode 032 - Science and Saints
Monday Nov 05, 2018
Monday Nov 05, 2018
Intro: Nobel Prize announcements
Donna Strickland
Nadia Murad
Segue: Lemaitre press release
Transition: the early 20th century golden age from Chesterton to Fulton Sheen
Theme: All Saints Day
Augustine
Isidore
Albert the Great
Roger Bacon
Nicolaus Steno
Gregor Mendel
Georges Lemaitre
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Image: Braulio of Saragossa and Isidore of Seville, writing his Origins (Etymologies)