COSMO 17 Conference, Paris, August 2017, report
September 2, 2017
I just came back from the COSMO 17 conference, held in Paris from August 28 to September 1, 2017, at Paris Diderot University, organized by the APC laboratory, Astroparticles and Cosmology. I imagine internet users asking "so, what were the reactions?"
It went like in Frankfurt. I would even say: it was worse.
First, internet users need to know what it means to participate in a conference by presenting a poster. It's a kind of presentation, but nothing to do with oral presentations in a room, the only ones where people can "react" or just want to react.
There were 193 participants, from 24 countries, but it seems that Parisian researchers formed a larger group. There were people sitting on the stairs of an amphitheater packed to the brim. I will talk about these interventions later, in detail. But it is worth describing what international conferences seem to have become, at least in this specialty, today. The speakers give their presentations, lasting 30 to 40 minutes, illustrated with images on a screen.
In the room, half of the attendees, and sometimes two out of three, have their phone on their lap. What are they doing? When you look at their screens, it has nothing to do with the presentation they are supposed to be attending. Since they have access to the internet, they can read their emails, receive and send messages during the talks. I was personally sitting next to a young Russian woman, who works in Germany, in Bonn, and who spent all these sessions staring at a text in Cyrillic on a small tablet, without paying the slightest attention to the talks. She didn't hesitate to tell me that it was the reading of a ... novel!
In many sessions, I would say less than half of the attendees were listening. And it was the same in Frankfurt. When the talk ends, the chairperson thanks the speaker very much, and then the room is filled with enthusiastic applause. I had already noticed the same phenomenon in Frankfurt. But, in the past, the few times I was able to participate in a conference, I had never seen that. You can clearly tell the difference between "normal" applause and what I witnessed. It borders on a "standing ovation." As if the audience wanted to apologize for their lack of attention, or to validate the content, which is generally completely empty, when it comes to theoretical talks.
But then, why such conferences? For most, it boils down to the fact that participants can mention their participation in an international event in their activity reports. The research barons can also meet, present the development of their powerful observational means, where we are not even close to ten million dollars. Yes, observation is going very well. The technical means allow us to collect increasingly precise data, to make real discoveries, like that of the "Great Repeller" in January 2017.
This lack of attention during the talks may seem astonishing. But in the theoretical field in question, there is no unity. The specialist on the right hand doesn't understand what the specialist on the left hand is saying. We just drown in words.
At this conference, I didn't find Thibaud Damour, Françoise Combes, Aurélien Barrau, or Riazuelo, nor even Marc Lachièze-Rey, who is part of the laboratory that organized the conference, the APC (Astroparticles and Cosmology).
I counted the participations, in descending order:
Japanese: 32 (...)
Americans: 31
French: 27
British: 27
Koreans: 12
Germans: 10
Dutch: 9
Spaniards: 8
Canadians: 8
Swiss: 6
Poles: 5
Chileans: 4
Mexicans: 4
Portuguese: 2
Estonians: 2
Brazilians: 2
Finns: 2
Italians: 2
Iranians: 2
Chinese: 1
Indian: 1
Swede: 1
Israeli: 1
United Arab Emirates: 1
Total 192 participants, from 24 countries! It is the annual international event in cosmology.
By the way: no presence of French science journalists. If they echo this event, it will be through second-hand accounts. I had asked four journalists from Ciel et Espace, none came.
I presented two posters on the scheduled day, Tuesday. But you shouldn't expect reactions other than simple curiosity towards something so huge: suggesting to replace Einstein's equation with two coupled field equations. In the second poster, I presented my model, which is an alternative to the black hole model: neutron stars that evacuate any excess mass sent to them by a companion star. A subject I will dedicate an entire video to.
I skip discussions with young Canadian, Japanese, etc. researchers, translating a vague curiosity, nothing more.
Monday
:
The session starts with a talk on dark energy by an Italian researcher, based at the CEA-Saclay Astrophysics Laboratory, Filippo Vernizzi. You can easily find his academic record on Google Scholar. He is the archetype of a theoretical physicist today. Scalar fields, quintessence, quantum gravity, etc. In his talk, centered on dark energy, he talks about "ghosts" (of ghosts), "massive gravity", "quintessence", "k-essence", and "scalar-tensor theory". I discover the word "Symmetron" (...). He concludes "something is missing in our scheme". Indeed ....
Filippo Vernizzi, dark energy theorist
Department of Astrophysics, CEA-Saclay
I approach him during the coffee break. He faces me with evident displeasure. After briefly mentioning the main points of my approach (but he obviously isn't listening), I continue by citing what could have an impact on his field, quantum mechanics:
- Currently, the acceleration of the universe implies that, in quantum physics, we have to take into account negative energy states. You agree? You said so during your talk (in front of all the participants, not in a small group in smaller rooms in the afternoon). This cosmic acceleration implies negative pressure, therefore negative energy states.
He frowns. I continue:
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Pressure is also an energy density per unit volume.
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No! He protests, pressure is a force per unit area. It has nothing to do with it. Even with negative pressure, the energy is positive (? ...)
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I'm sorry, but you're making a mistake. If you want to approach this pressure issue as a force per unit area, let's go ahead. It's a topic I know well because I've done a lot of kinetic gas theory. Place a wall in this fluid medium. It will be hit by incident particles. These particles will then transfer to the wall the part of their momentum corresponding to the component of their velocity perpendicular to the wall. Do you agree?
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Yes ....
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Now, this momentum is mV. So a fluid in contact with a wall, if it has negative pressure, does not push this wall, it pulls it. If we start from negative pressure, it implies that these collisions are due to particles bringing a negative momentum, therefore ...