The Quest for the Nobel: Cosmology, Physics, and the Search for the Origins of the Universe | Brian Keating

In Episode 46 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brian Keating, astrophysicist and author of Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor.

When we think about competition, we don’t typically think about scientists. Instead of seeing these individuals as adversaries competing for fickle prizes or glory, we see them as impartial explorers of the cosmos. We see them as the selfless gatekeepers of knowledge. This view, as we are coming to learn, is more than a little askew.

The darker sides of science — the prejudices and egos and dubious incentives — are realities that we are forced to face almost as soon as we start investigating what it is that drives scientists in their pursuits.

And they are realities that Brian Keating knows all too well.

Keating is an astrophysicist at UC San Diego's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. He is also credited as being the driving force behind BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made. BICEP2 was tasked with answering some of the biggest questions in physics, such as how our cosmos came to be and what the universe was like at the beginning of time. Specifically, the telescope was created to detect the unique B-mode polarization signature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a byproduct of the cosmos’ first moments of expansion.

For a time, Keating and his team believed they had detected this signature. The work almost won Keating the Nobel Prize in Physics. Almost.

In this episode, Keating joins host Demetri Kofinas to walk us through the history of experimental cosmology and trace its course to modern science. He starts with an examination of the early geocentric models of the universe and shows how the scientific revolution, and the introduction of empiricism, altered the course of history and set us on the path to modern physics. The episode culminates with a discussion of what it is that drives scientists in their pursuits. From wealth to fame, from a genuine desire to understand the origins of the cosmos to an egotistical desire to wage war on religion, Keating outlines some of the most remarkable discoveries in physics and how biases and incentives are slowing innovation and shredding the fabric of modern science.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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