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Award-winning science writer Ron Cowen has a passion for making complex topics in astronomy, physics and the history of technology clear, exciting and visceral to the general public. He has contributed dozens of articles to magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, Nature, The New York Times, Science, Science News, Scientific ...
- Selected Works
Also see Ron’s media appearances. Gravity’s Century A...
- Gravity’s Century
As Ron Cowen recounts, the foremost goal of the experiment...
- Selected Works
Also see Ron’s media appearances. Gravity’s Century A sweeping account of the century of experimentation that confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity, bringing to life the science and scientists at the origins of relativity, the development of radio telescopes, the discovery of black holes and quasars, and the still unresolved ...
As Ron Cowen recounts, the foremost goal of the experiment is to determine whether Einstein was right on the details. Gravity lies at the heart of what we don’t know about quantum mechanics, but tantalizing possibilities for deeper insight are offered by black holes.
May 1, 2024 · Ron Cowen has been a science writer and editor at NIST since 2016. When not working at NIST, he’s a freelance writer specializing in physics and astronomy. In 2019, he authored his first book, a popular-level account of the 100-year struggle to understand the general theory of relativity, Gravity’s.
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Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor Brian Keating W. W. Norton (2018)
If cosmologist Brian Keating had his way, the scientific teams that made two of the most astounding discoveries in physics — the Higgs boson and gravitational waves — would never have won Nobel prizes.
It’s not that Keating thinks the researchers undeserving. But the current rules and structure of the awards, he contends in Losing the Nobel Prize, foster ferocious and sometimes destructive competition for scarce research resources. He avers that the prizes are also biased against the work of female and younger scientists, and that they violate some of the very principles that Alfred Nobel, their founder, specified in his will more than a century ago.
Keating studies the infant Universe through subtle patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) left over from the Big Bang. He is a deft writer, interweaving the science with personal musings on topics from his relationship with a father who abandoned him as a child to the passions that impel him to explore the unknown. Looming over all are his concerns about the Nobels.
These arose after his very public roller-coaster ride as part of a research team whose work briefly seemed a shoo-in for the physics prize. The team — a collaboration between institutions including the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) — had built two radio telescopes at the South Pole to hunt for a signature in the CMB that could reveal how the early Universe had evolved. Keating conceived the first, BICEP1. The team then developed the more sensitive BICEP2, which observed the CMB from 2010 to 2012.
•Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead
•Nobel Prize: A dark edge to the glory
- Ron Cowen
- 2018
Nov 16, 2015 · The quantum source of space-time. Ron Cowen. Nature 527, 290–293 (2015) Cite this article. 11k Accesses. 24 Citations. 1382 Altmetric. Metrics. A Correction to this article was published on 13...
Ron Cowen has written for National Geographic, Nature, the New York Times, Science, Science News, Scientific American, and U.S. News & World Report, and is a guest commentator on NPR’s Science Friday. He has twice received both the American Institute...
