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Profs and Pints Iowa City presents: “The Universe Revealed by Clashing Minds"

Associate Professor Ken Gayley; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa

Scientific progress is often framed as coming about through the collision of two opposing views of the universe and the triumph of the right one over the one deemed wrong. The most famous example of this is Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a 1632 book in which Nicolaus Copernicus’s view that the Earth and planets orbit the sun triumphs over Claudius Ptolemy’s placement of the Earth at the center of the universe.

Often, however, deeper truths do not emerge from the triumph of a right view of the universe over a wrong one, but from a synthesis of the two ideas that reveals something profound and unexpected. In many cases, it comes through a realization that in the initial debate was a fool’s errand because the wrong question had been asked.

Come to the Graduate Iowa City to explore this dynamic with the help of Dr. Kenneth Gayley, a physicist whose research and teaching is especially focused on the various insights that have helped us understand the physics of stars.