Our first bet, made back in grad school, was whether we would someday have a reliable measurement of Omega, the cosmological density parameter. We purchased a small bottle of vintage port and agreed that Brian would collect it if we didn’t have an agreed-upon value within 20 years, while I would collect it if we did. You have to remember that back in early 90’s, astronomers kept measuring numbers that implied the universe was open, while theorists kept insisting that it must be spatially flat on naturalness grounds. The controversy was largely ended by the discovery of cosmic acceleration, showing that both camps were right: astronomers had correctly measured the density of matter, but universe is essentially flat, the remainder being taken up by dark energy. Brian graciously conceded, but I’m sure King Carl Gustav<\/a> consoled him on his defeat.<\/p>\n But the real lesson I learned from the whole trip is: with a tiny amount of effort, it’s possible to turn the ordinary public lecture experience into something much more fun for the audience. (Not that a good public lecture isn’t already fun.) Admittedly, it helps to have a Nobel laureate involved and an amusing story to tell, which can get a fairly un-noteworthy event boosted up to front page news<\/a> in the local paper. But Brian, who is strongly dedicated to using his notoriety for good<\/a>, had the idea of inaugurating a lecture series that would go beyond the usual hour-lecture-and-a-few-questions routine.<\/p>\n So my Canberra public lecture was a bit out of the ordinary. For one thing, they actually sold tickets ahead of time, albeit for a nominal six bucks. For another, there was cocktail time before the talk itself — every attendee got a free glass of wine. The wine works out to about six bucks per person for the organizers, so it was financially a wash, but buying a ticket makes the attendee feel a little more invested in the event than deciding at the last minute to show up and just walk in.<\/p>\n Finally, the talk itself was slightly altered from the conventional format. Brian didn’t introduce me directly, but instead welcomed Adam Shirley, a local radio announcer, who served as MC for the evening. Adam introduced me, after which I gave a shorter version of the usual talk — it was supposed to be half an hour, but I think I went 40 minutes (the Higgs will not be contained!). After that, Adam and I sat down together on stage, and he orchestrated an interview that was partly his own questions, partly questions from the audience, and partly questions from Twitter. A small change from a more typical Q&A, perhaps, but just enough to change up the tempo of the evening and keep everything fresh.<\/p>\n As far as I could tell, the whole thing was a smashing success from the audience’s point of view. It felt more exciting and eventful than would a minimalist lecture+Q&A. It takes a tiny bit of additional effort to organize something like this, but I highly recommend it to anyone who is in charge of a lecture\/event series. Not necessarily this exact format, but the basic idea of jazzing things up and keeping people engaged. The science itself is endlessly fascinating, it’s up to us to do it justice.<\/p>\n Now Brian and I just have to come up with a topic for our next bet (for me to win). We discovered, sadly, that we agree on too much these days. Surely there is some looming question in science that we disagree about and that will be settled before too long?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apologies for the extended radio silence here at the blog. (Originally typed “radio science,” which I suppose is an encouraging sign from my subconscious.) My time and attention has been taken up by an interesting phenomenon known as “real work.” I have four papers in almost-submittable rough draft form, another three projects bubbling along nicely, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-society","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11097"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11104,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11097\/revisions\/11104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"vineyard\"](\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/vineyard.jpg\")
<\/a> In 2009 Brian foolishly challenged me again, this time on whether physicists would eventually discover the Higgs boson at the LHC. His job is to play the curmudgeonly experimentalist, while I am the ever-optimistic theorist — so in July 2012, when CERN announced a new particle<\/a>, Brian found himself once again in the role of gracious conceder. We’re all grown up by now, so the stakes were a bit larger: Brian donated some of his impressive store of frequent flyer miles to fly Jennifer and me to Australia, where I would give some talks. We had a great time, needless to say, including a visit to the vineyard<\/a> where Brian makes his celebrated Maipenrai<\/em> Pinot Noir. (Yes you read that correctly. He’s an energetic guy.) <\/p>\n![\"partygravy\"](\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/partygravy.jpg\")
<\/a> As the audience mixed and mingled with their wine in hand, there was a band playing by the venue entrance — Party Gravy<\/a>, a local Dixieland troupe. They also played onstage as Brian came up to introduce the event, and again at the end as everyone filed out. A small touch, but enough to help change the vibe from “lecture” to “event.”<\/p>\n