Scientific Series

Richard Feynman is said to have said that philosophy of science is of no more use to scientists than ornithology is to birds. I will describe how a sociologist looks at the search for gravitational waves. Is it ornithology to birds?

I will review some recent claims of anomalous signatures in the WMAP data of the CMB - specifically those that indicate a departure from Statistical Isotropy. This will include an outline of various methods of analysis and the issues involved in testing the Gaussianity and Statistical Isotropy of the CMB. I will then discuss the various implications of the observations - the most exciting of which is that our Universe is not Isotropic and more complicated cosmological models need to be considered.

Preon models enjoyed considerable popularity during the early 1980s, but have seen little progress since then. I will describe a correspondence between one of the more successful preon models and a simple game involving the twisting and braiding of ribbons, subject to straightforward topological conditions. This reproduces the fermions and gauge bosons of the standard model, as well as the electromagnetic, weak and colour interactions. The prospect that such structures may occur naturally within Loop Quantum Gravity will be discussed

I shall discuss entanglement - assisted invariance (symmetry exhibited by correlated quantum states) and describe how it can be used to understand the nature of ignorance, and, hence, the origin of probabilities in quantum physics. WHZ, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 120404 (2003); Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 715 (2003); Phys. Rev. 71, 052105 (2005) (quant-ph/0405161).

Highest energy cosmic rays reach {\it macroscopic} energies $> 10^{20}$ eV ($\sim 10$ joules; corresponding linear momentum in one proton is similar to a slapshot hockey puck's). Such protons can either be accelerated by nearby astrophysical sources or be by-products of decay of unknown superheavy fundamental particles. After reviewing phenomenology of cosmic rays, I will discuss a novel {\it non-stochastic} acceleration mechanism in jets of powerful active galactic nuclei. The mystery of ultra high energy cosmic rays is likely soon to be resolved by Pierre Auger observatory.