Paul Charles William Davies (born April 22, 1946) is a British-born physicist, writer and broadcaster, presently a professor at Arizona State University, as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He has held previous academic appointments at Macquarie University, University of Adelaide, The University of Cambridge, University of London and University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option.
In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics.
He was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium held on November 2006.
Davies's inquiries have included theoretical physics, cosmology, and astrobiology; his research has been mainly in the area of quantum field theory in curved spacetime.
Notable contributions are the so-called Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, according to which an observer accelerating through empty space will perceive a bath of thermal radiation, and the Bunch-Davies vacuum state, often used as the basis for explaining the fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang.
A paper co-authored with Stephen Fulling and William Unruh was the first to suggest that black holes evaporating via the Hawking effect lose mass as a result of a flux of negative energy streaming into the hole from the surrounding space.
Davies has had a longstanding association with the problem of time's arrow, and was also a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars cocooned in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.
During his time in Australia he helped establish the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.
He is the author of over twenty books, including The Mind of God, Other Worlds, God and the New Physics, The Edge of Infinity, The Runaway Universe, The Cosmic Blueprint, Are We Alone? The Fifth Miracle, The Last Three Minutes, Superforce, The Accidental Universe, About Time, "Quantum Fields in Curved Space" (with N.D. Birrell), "The Physics of Time Asymmetry", How to Build a Time Machine, The Matter Myth and "The Goldilocks Enigma", also under the title Cosmic Jackpot.
He was also heavily referenced in the novel Naive. Super by Norwegian writer Erlend Loe (translated by Tor Ketil Solberg), published in 1996. |
