Herd in Dallas

This has been a very busy week at the huge American Physical Society meeting in Dallas. APS has taken over the convention center and most of the good hotels. There was a large and attentive audience for Monday's talk: Lunar Orbit Anomaly and GM=tc^3 Cosmology. Tuesday was filled with poster sessions and meetings with APS journal editors. Wednesday started with another meeting, this one with Physical Review Letters. The Physical Society of Japan is holding a collection for tsunami relief. Scientists came from every continent to hear talks.

In front of the convention center is this sculpture of cosmologists. The herd finds it easy to follow fashionable ideas, be they "inflation" or "dark energy." Has anyone told them the awful fate that awaits the end of their journey? How inflation can never be proven experimentally? How "dark energy" will be remembered alongside ether and epicycles? As physicists head for slaughter, they feel safe in their great numbers.