Brian Keating

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Brian Keating
Brian Keating 2022.jpg
BornSeptember 9, 1971  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Alma mater
Occupation
Awards
Website https://briankeating.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Academic career
Institutions
Thesis A search for the large angular scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background
Doctoral advisor Peter Timbie

Brian Gregory Keating (born September 9, 1971) is an American cosmologist. He works on observations of the cosmic microwave background, leading the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments. He also conceived the first BICEP experiment. He received his PhD in 2000, and is a distinguished professor of physics at University of California, San Diego, since 2019. He is the author of two books, Losing The Nobel Prize and Into the Impossible.

Contents

Education and career

Keating received his B.S. degree in Physics from the Case Western Reserve University in 1993. [1] [2] He then obtained his M.S. degree in Physics from Brown University in 1995, and subsequently studied for his Ph.D. also at Brown. [2] His thesis, titled A search for the large angular scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background and supervised by Peter Timbie, was accepted in 2000. [3] He started as a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in 2001 [4] until 2004. He was an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego from 2004, before being promoted to associate professor there in 2009. [2] He received an NSF career grant in 2005, and a Presidential Early Career Award in 2006. [5] Keating was one of three scientists, along with Jonathan Kaufman and Bradley Johnson, to receive the Buchalter Cosmology Prize in 2014. [6] He became co-director of the Ax Center for Experimental Cosmology and the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Program in Astrophysics in 2013. [2]

Keating became a professor at UC San Diego in 2014. [2] He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016. [7] [8] In 2019 he became the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, [7] [9] in the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, [10] which is part of the Department of Physics. [11] Keating received an Excellence in Stewardship Award in 2018/19, and is an honorary member of the National Society of Black Physicists. [12] He is co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego. [13] He received the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University Graduate School in 2022. [14]

Research

Keating researches cosmology, focusing on the study of the cosmic microwave background and its relationship to the origin and evolution of the universe. [15] He conceived the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) instrument, which observed from the South Pole. [16] BICEP received a NASA Group Achievement Award in 2010. [17] In 2016 he convinced the Simons Foundation to provide US$38.4m of funding for what later became the Simons Array, [18] and in 2019 a US$20m grant from the Simons Foundation led to the creation of the Simons Observatory, [19] followed by an additional US$4.6m in 2021. [20] Keating co-leads POLARBEAR2 and the Simons Array in Chile, [12] is the Principal Investigator of Simons Observatory, [21] and has raised around US$100m of funding for CMB telescopes. [22] He has two patents, on a "wide-bandwidth polarization modulator for microwave and mm-wavelengths" in 2009, [23] and "Tunnel junction fabrication" in 2016. [24]

Podcast and outreach

Keating presenting at the Royal Institution in 2023 Brian Keating at the Royal Institution 2023 10.jpg
Keating presenting at the Royal Institution in 2023

Keating has hosted the Clarke Center Into the Impossible podcast since 2016. [2] It takes its name from the second of Clarke's three laws: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." Each episode is a long-form conversation with nobel laureates, scientists, writers and other notable individuals such as Stephen C. Meyer (an advocate of intelligent design [26] [27] ), Noam Chomsky, Eric Weinstein, Jill Tarter, Sara Seager, and nobel prize winners interviewed for his books, [13] lasting around an hour. As of 2022 it has hosted 11 Nobel Prize winners and two recipients of the Pulitzer Prize. [22] It reached 200,000 subscribers in 2024. [28]

Keating also appeared in The Michael Shermer Show  [ d ] podcast in 2019, [29] and the Lex Fridman Podcast in 2022. [30] He has also recorded videos for conservative website PragerU, [31] and has talked about popular science connected with The Witcher television series. [32] He appeared in the "Mysteries Of The Moon" episode of The UnXplained. [33]

He also teaches astronomy to high school students since 2012 as part of his outreach work, [12] [2] and has given presentations to over 3,000 K-12 students since 1994. [2]

He has also co-narrated a 21-hour audio book of Galileo Galilei's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 2022. [34]

Books about the Nobel Prize

Keating is critical of the way that Nobel Prizes are organized, saying that "No scientist arrives alone in Stockholm." He has written two books on the topic. [35] The Nobel Prize was a motivating factor in Keating's career due to his academic rivalry with his father. [36]

Losing The Nobel Prize (2018)

Keating published his first book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor on April 24, 2018. [37] [16] The book describes the BICEP and BICEP2 experiments, which were located at the South Pole and were devised to detect and map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the Big Bang. BICEP2's data showed strong polarization signals that were announced to be cosmological in origin, but were later shown by Planck satellite data to be caused by polarized interstellar dust.

The first part of the book describes the background behind cosmological inflation, and the second covers BICEP2. The third section focuses on Keating's issues with the Nobel Prize, including lack of diversity in the recipients, that the prize can't be awarded posthumously, [15] the maximum of three laureates per prize, which excludes larger groups from receiving it, [38] and the secrecy around nominations. According to Keating, all of these "reward an outdated version of science", [39] and "better science comes from inclusivity, collaboration, and innovation". [16] He argues that the science Nobel Prizes have strayed from the original intent of Alfred Nobel's will, and may hinder scientific progress by fostering unnecessary, and sometimes destructive, competition. [40] He proposed that half a Nobel prize should go to the leaders of a collaboration, with the other half awarded to the rest of the team of scientists working on the project. [41]

Into the Impossible (2021)

His second book, Into the Impossible, was published in 2021. [42] It features interviews with Nobel Prize winners Adam Riess, Rainer Weiss, Sheldon Glashow, Carl Wieman, Roger Penrose, Duncan Haldane, Frank Wilczek, John C. Mather and Barry Barish. [43]

Personal life

Keating was born on September 9, 1971, [42] the son of the mathematician James Ax, [44] and his wife Barbara. [37] When he was about seven, his parents divorced and his mother remarried, and the young Brian took his stepfather's name, Keating. He was out of contact with his father for the next 15 years, reconnecting only when he was a graduate student. Keating grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. [37] He has 3 brothers. Kevin, Nick and Shaya. [44]

As a youth, Keating was a member of the Catholic Church, although he has reported that his mother and stepfather were non-observant Jews. He later became an atheist, and subsequently he became Jewish, currently describing himself as a "practicing devout agnostic". [44]

As well as a cosmologist, he is a pilot with a multi-engine turbine license. [1] He was a trustee of Math for America, San Diego in 2006–2014, Angel Flight West in 2010–2015, and the National Museum of Mathematics in 2014–2017. He is currently a trustee of San Diego Air & Space Museum since 2013, and is on the Ruben H. Fleet Museum advisory council since 2017. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical cosmology</span> Branch of cosmology which studies mathematical models of the universe

Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cosmic microwave background</span> Trace radiation from the early universe

The cosmic microwave background, or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1965 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arno Allan Penzias</span> American physicist (1933–2024)

Arno Allan Penzias was an American physicist and radio astronomer. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rashid Sunyaev</span> Russian astronomer (born 1943)

Rashid Alievich Sunyaev is a German, Soviet, and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his MS degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1966. He became a professor at MIPT in 1974. Sunyaev was the head of the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been chief scientist of the Academy's Space Research Institute since 1992. He has also been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany since 1996, and Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2010. In February 2022, he signed an open letter from Russian scientists and science journalists condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation</span> Aspect of the history of modern physical cosmology

The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation constitutes a major development in modern physical cosmology. In 1964, US physicist Arno Allan Penzias and radio-astronomer Robert Woodrow Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB), estimating its temperature as 3.5 K, as they experimented with the Holmdel Horn Antenna. The new measurements were accepted as important evidence for a hot early Universe and as evidence against the rival steady state theory as theoretical work around 1950 showed the need for a CMB for consistency with the simplest relativistic universe models. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint measurement. There had been a prior measurement of the cosmic background radiation (CMB) by Andrew McKellar in 1941 at an effective temperature of 2.3 K using CN stellar absorption lines observed by W. S. Adams. Although no reference to the CMB is made by McKellar, it was not until much later after the Penzias and Wilson measurements that the significance of this measurement was understood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Observational cosmology</span> Study of the origin of the universe (structure and evolution)

Observational cosmology is the study of the structure, the evolution and the origin of the universe through observation, using instruments such as telescopes and cosmic ray detectors.

<i>Planck</i> (spacecraft) Space observatory

Planck was a space observatory operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2009 to 2013. It was an ambitious project that aimed to map the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at microwave and infrared frequencies, with high sensitivity and angular resolution. The mission was highly successful and substantially improved upon observations made by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Pole Telescope</span> Telescope at the South Pole

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Smoot</span> American astrophysicist and cosmologist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BICEP and Keck Array</span> Series of cosmic microwave background experiments at the South Pole

BICEP and the Keck Array are a series of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. They aim to measure the polarization of the CMB; in particular, measuring the B-mode of the CMB. The experiments have had five generations of instrumentation, consisting of BICEP1, BICEP2, the Keck Array, BICEP3, and the BICEP Array. The Keck Array started observations in 2012 and BICEP3 has been fully operational since May 2016, with the BICEP Array beginning installation in 2017/18.

Bruce Winstein was an experimental physicist and cosmologist noted for his early work in elementary particle physics, particularly work toward demonstrating a serious asymmetry between particles and their anti-particles. Later in his career, he worked in experimental cosmology, measuring polarization in the microwave background radiation whose properties date back to the early universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uroš Seljak</span> Slovenian cosmologist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">POLARBEAR</span>

POLARBEAR is a cosmic microwave background polarization experiment located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile in the Antofagasta Region. The POLARBEAR experiment is mounted on the Huan Tran Telescope (HTT) at the James Ax Observatory in the Chajnantor Science Reserve. The HTT is located near the Atacama Cosmology Telescope on the slopes of Cerro Toco at an altitude of nearly 5,200 m (17,100 ft).

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Michele Limon is an Italian research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Limon studied physics at the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy and completed his post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been conducting research for more than 30 years and has experience in the design of ground, balloon and space-based instrumentation. His academic specialties include Astrophysics, Cosmology, Instrumentation Development, and Cryogenics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hiranya Peiris</span> British astrophysicist (born 1974)

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Abigail Goodhue Vieregg is a professor of physics at the Enrico Fermi Institute and Kavli Institute of Cosmology, University of Chicago, specializing in neutrino astrophysics and cosmology. Her work focuses on cosmic high-energy neutrinos and mapping the cosmic microwave background.

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References

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  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Brian Keating (2019). "CV 2019" (PDF).
  3. ↑ Brian Gregory Keating (2000). A search for the large angular scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Bibcode:2000PhDT.......176K. ISBN   978-0-599-94122-9. OCLC   50084607. Wikidata   Q111020694.
  4. ↑ "NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows". NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows. January 1, 2001. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  5. ↑ "The Birth Pangs of the Big Bang: Detecting Primordial Gravitational Waves with Microwave Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP)". National Science Foundation. March 4, 2006. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  6. ↑ Brown, Susan (January 6, 2015). "Cosmology Prize Recognizes 'Inventive' Proposed Test of Fundamental Physics". UCSD News. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  7. 1 2 "Brian Keating". UCSD Profiles. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  8. ↑ "APS Fellow Archive". APS.org. American Physical Society. Retrieved January 3, 2019.
  9. ↑ "List of Endowed Chairs at UC San Diego". List of Endowed Chairs at UC San Diego. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Professor Brian Keating". bkeating.physics.ucsd.edu. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  11. ↑ "UC San Diego | Faculty Profile". physics.ucsd.edu. Archived from the original on January 8, 2019. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
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  13. 1 2 "The 'Into the Impossible' Podcast Honors Arthur C. Clarke". Wired. December 18, 2020. Retrieved March 23, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Astrophysicist Brian G. Keating '95 Sc.M., '00 Ph.D. Selected for Horace Mann Medal | Graduate School". www.brown.edu. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
  15. 1 2 Mueck, Leonie (May 2018). "The seduction of a scientist". Nature Physics. 14 (5): 429. Bibcode:2018NatPh..14..429M. doi: 10.1038/s41567-018-0130-z . S2CID   125146841.
  16. 1 2 3 Klesman, Alison (April 16, 2018). "Writer". Astronomy. Kalmback Publishing Company. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  17. ↑ "NASA Agency Honor Awards" (PDF). NASA. May 11, 2010. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  18. ↑ Robbins, Gary (December 18, 2017). "UC San Diego to design telescope to search for "ancient light" from the universe". San Diego Union Tribune. San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  19. ↑ Fuller-Wright, Liz (July 10, 2019). "Simons Foundation commits $20 million in quest to understand universe's beginning". Princeton University. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  20. ↑ "UC San Diego pulls in record $1.54B behind research tied to COVID-19". San Diego Union-Tribune. August 17, 2021. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  21. ↑ "Simons Observatory Begins Hunt for Echoes of the Big Bang in Universe's Oldest Light". Simons Foundation. June 3, 2024. Retrieved September 10, 2024.
  22. 1 2 "UC San Diego physicist winning fans with his joyously geeky podcast 'Into the Impossible'". San Diego Union-Tribune. March 12, 2022. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  23. ↑ Keating, Brian Gregory; Lange, Andrew E. (March 10, 2009). "Wide-bandwidth polarization modulator for microwave and mm-wavelengths" . Retrieved April 16, 2022.
  24. ↑ Moyerman, Stephanie; Keating, Brian (August 23, 2016). "Tunnel junction fabrication" . Retrieved April 16, 2022.
  25. ↑ Brian Keating (2023). Charting the evolution of the universe.
  26. ↑ Keating, Brian (April 21, 2021). "A conversation: Prof. Brian Keating with Dr. Steven Meyer, author of Darwin's Doubt and Return of the God Hypothesis". Medium. Retrieved March 26, 2024.
  27. ↑ "Stephen Meyer: Return of the God Hypothesis". Apple. Retrieved March 26, 2024.
  28. ↑ Brian Keating (2024). Celebrating 200k subscribers.
  29. ↑ 70. Dr. Brian Keating — Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor, The Michael Shermer Show, Presenter: Michael Shermer, June 11, 2019, Wikidata   Q109651473 {{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  30. ↑ Brian Keating: Cosmology, Astrophysics, Aliens & Losing the Nobel Prize, Lex Fridman Podcast, January 18, 2022, Wikidata   Q110620689
  31. ↑ "Brian Keating | PragerU". www.prageru.com. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  32. ↑ Stone, Maddie (December 17, 2021). "We asked a physicist whether The Witcher's multiverse could really exist". The Verge.
  33. ↑ "Mysteries of the Moon". The UnXplained. April 9, 2021. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  34. ↑ Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei, Stillman Drake, Translator, Albert Einstein - Audiobook | Scribd . Retrieved May 31, 2022.
  35. ↑ "El cosmólogo que cree que otorgar los Premios Nobel a científicos de forma individual es un anacronismo". BBC News Mundo (in Spanish). October 3, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  36. ↑ "San Diego's huge science community is on pins and needles about this year's Nobel Prizes". San Diego Union-Tribune. October 3, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  37. 1 2 3 Brian Gregory Keating (2018). Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor. ISBN   978-0-393-35739-4. OL   28901222M. Wikidata   Q111021259.
  38. ↑ Halpern, Paul (April 20, 2018). "Reconsidering the Nobel Prize". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aat0374 . Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  39. ↑ McKie, Robin (September 30, 2018). "Why Nobel Prizes Fail 21st Century Science". The Guardian. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  40. ↑ Ron Cowen (April 2018). "The trouble with the Nobel prize". Nature . 556 (7701): 301–302. doi:10.1038/D41586-018-04535-0. ISSN   1476-4687. Wikidata   Q58929771.
  41. ↑ ""Losing the Nobel Prize": A Q&A with Author and Astrophysicist Brian Keating". Space.com. June 18, 2018. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  42. 1 2 "Into the Impossible With Brian Keating: Part 1 of 2: Eric Weinstein n- WTF Happened in 1971: An INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Birthday Extravaganza! on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  43. ↑ Brian Gregory Keating (2021). Into the Impossible: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: Lessons from Laureates to Stoke Curiosity, Spur Collaboration, and Ignite Imagination in Your Life and Career. ISBN   978-1-5445-2348-4. OL   36382309M. Wikidata   Q111021372.
  44. 1 2 3 Strogatz, Steven (March 31, 2020). "Brian Keating's Quest for the Origin of the Universe". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2022.

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