Question
Answer the following about contemporary cosmologists who write popular science books, for 10 points each.
[10e] In The Disordered Cosmos, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (“chahn-dah press-cod-wine-styne”) interweaves cosmology and the social world, including noting that white scientists tend to refer to this substance as foreboding. Unlike baryonic matter, this substance does not interact with light.
ANSWER: dark matter (Prescod-Weinstein also argues that dark matter is an inappropriate name because it’s not actually dark, it’s transparent.)
[10h] This scientist wrote Warped Passages and Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. This scientist and an Indian-American colleague developed models of the universe with warped extra dimensions to solve the hierarchy problem.
ANSWER: Lisa Randall (That is the Randall–Sundrum model.)
[10m] Katie Mack’s The End of Everything discusses how we could all die when the universe decays out of a false type of this state. The Higgs field’s expectation value in this state is 246 GeV (“G-E-V”).
ANSWER: quantum vacuum state [accept false vacuum state or false vacuum decay; prompt on ground state]
Data
| Team | Opponent | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Tech A | Cornell A | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Penn A | WUSTL B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |