The Cosmic Distance Ladder' delivered by Professor Terence Tao of UCLA for the RIA Hamilton Lecture 2020.

The Royal Irish Academy 1.84K subscribers Join us for 'The Cosmic Distance Ladder' delivered by Professor Terence Tao of University of California, Los Angeles for the RIA Hamilton Lecture 2020. Supported by Ibec and The Irish Times. 51 Comments rongmaw lin Add a comment... Salesforce USA Salesforce USA 1 year ago Tao is a very good communicator. Modest, fluent, responsive, considered, honest, and humorous. Very good person, a great scholar and a gentleman to the core. 7 Steve M. Potter Steve M. Potter 1 year ago Much appreciation to Prof. Mellon for doing such a good job moderating this excellent talk and panel discussion. All the technology worked so well, you seem like you have done this many times. Fair play to you and the panelists. 7 Scott Douglas Scott Douglas 1 year ago Terry begins at 7:30 21 John McGrath John McGrath 1 year ago (edited) I have to say I really enjoyed that, great lecture, it was wonderful to hear Terry talk about this topic, and great questions. Well done RIA for organising this, I'm looking forward to more Hamilton Day lectures! 4 Arnold Müller Arnold Müller 1 year ago Such an excellent and inspiring lecture, it closed many of my gaps in "all-day" astronomy. It gave me the shivers how good Terrys answers to the questions were. For example the one about by how much hard work all the results were earned, Terry said its because he reported only the firsts and the firsts are always at the edge of the technically possible. Its the perfect answer, given straight without time delay. In this little example we might get a glimpse into how great a mind he actually is. 12 Paul O'Donoghue Paul O'Donoghue 1 year ago Brilliant history of the cosmic distance ladder 8 Guy Nouri Guy Nouri 3 months ago What a remarkable presentation. Take to time for the whole thing including q and a. The ladder is a remarkable notion of conceiving a widening POV. How do how can we see our universe. I am re calibrating my most basic assumptions in view of Tao’s extensive presentation! 1 Michael Rose Michael Rose 1 year ago Quite good,although some of the innovative voices from mediaeval times were not touched upon. But a splendid job. 3 Mark Freeman Mark Freeman 1 year ago Simply awe inspiring, how far we have come from walking the desserts of Egypt, looking up at the sky. I would love to have learnt maths and physics like this, with embedded history, instead of by abstract geometry and equations that have no relevance to every day existence. 1 parc m parc m 9 months ago The question Martin Mathieu asks about individual mathematician versus group work has its origin in the purely socio-economic aspect of being a scientist. In those days... personal success equaled status, which was often more important than making knowledge available. This question is perhaps still relevant today, strangely enough. Mark Freeman Mark Freeman 1 year ago In terms of maths discovery and invention by one individual versus groups, I think the best way is to keep cycling between the two, lone focus versus collaboration. 2 Rick Baldrick Rick Baldrick 10 months ago Definitely easier to deduce the curvature of earth from the darkness to light aspect during dawn. The night sky is darker in a spherical aspect d7ffab97 d7ffab97 1 year ago This dude wants to see the whole universe! 2 Rick Baldrick Rick Baldrick 10 months ago I am just going to say they could of saved alot of time back in the day if they would have just placed in quadrants of 4 the light and darkness aspect ratio of the night sky. Born Bad Born Bad 3 days ago Toa Tao Tao, distance, must be separated from time ,unrelated, counting into infinite, infinite is a location, no time involved, 0-1-0, this is a distance that becomes a place ,the zeo is a place a nothing from negative to current position to positive, nothing moves its just there.the rule of infinite, is equal to the rule of void.,.current position equal to neither, but pulled into current position will become destination calculated 3 becomes 1 , 4 is unnecessary Deming the question invalid. Stop using time in a factor, traveling distance has nothing to do with this concept of time , perception is the definition of al time , ie an idea gone out of control. A cubit made of cubits missing the last cubit to complete the cubit , find the missing material in the knowledge of the cubit is all there is. Darpan Patel Darpan Patel 11 months ago This talk by Terence Tao about The Cosmic Ladder was like slicing butter with a chainsaw 😂 1 David Wilkie David Wilkie 9 months ago (edited) The Mathematics of light and dark, projection-drawing time-timing sync-duration fractal probability dominance interference-> Trigonometric positioning conics.., Act-uality of inherent coordinated coherence-cohesion objectives, pure relative motion-movie Intelligence, and instantaneous transverse trancendental Eternity-now Interval, resonant Observation. Therefore Default Wisdom consequences integrate in practice, via Actuality of AM-FM Universal Communication Entanglement In-form-ation. Understanding (holographic) ONE-INFINITY here-now-forever, looks simple as a beginning point for categorization of Superspin<->symmetry-> Temporal Singularity pivotal POV-> perspective, relative angular time-timing sync-duration identification, (axial-tangential centre of Time Clockface), superimposed analog quantization rates of rates, ..and the only device generally available is a personal, organic, bio-logical pulse timer. Heartbeat. Fundamental re-cognition of relative proportions of everything-connected holistic Self, is the default mechanism of Theoretical abstractions, and qualitative <->quantitative numberness analysis.., and on reflection, projected mapping techniques for Navigating a visual Sky Calendar. Which is the probable perceived cause, the naturally occurring Origin, for making the Heart the centre of Time and general Philosophy. The Theory of thought experiment, concentric laddering of the probabilistic re-evolution cognition, Astronomical Observation light-cone of Actuality Knowledge.., of QM-TIME Completeness cause-effect Timing-spacing-> logarithmic condensation modulation coordination-positioning AdS/CFT real-time Perspective. Gauss could explain why he was exasperated with the lack of understanding of observable mathematical meaning inherent in the Surveyor's Techniques of Observation. (?) 1 Chris LeBlanc Chris LeBlanc 8 months ago 15:50 - flat earthers beware 1 Jens Brusgaard Jens Brusgaard 8 months ago Very nice lecture about the astronomical ladder. However, there is a mistake. It was Ole Roemer who measured the speed of light based on the eclipse of Jupiter’s moon Io and not Huygens. Ибадат Жұмабек Ибадат Жұмабек 1 year ago nice netterstyl netterstyl 1 month ago Interesting bit of trivia: The number of miles from the Earth to the Sun is exactly the same number of times he uttered "um" during this presentation. Remarkable! xxx xxx xxx xxx 10 months ago A curious talk. He's a smart guy and obviously has a keen interest in the field but surely the talk would have been better coming from an expert in the field. Logan Schmidt Logan Schmidt 8 months ago He lost me when he said the earth was round 2 Mike Bellamy Mike Bellamy 9 months ago The history of discovery here tells us two things: 1 - The ancients were just a smart if not smarter than we are today.. (comparing the best so reasonable conclusion is it applies to the average) 2 - We smart humans cannot have been on this planet for that long.. more like a few thousand years not hundreds of thousands of years. Consistent with the bible I would suggest. Sky Darmos Sky Darmos 1 year ago All the distances of mainstream cosmology are wrong. The universe is really 42 trillion years old, and all the nearby galaxies are 3 times further away than we think while the most remote galaxy we can see is 39 times further away than we think.