Tao is a very good communicator. Modest, fluent, responsive, considered, honest, and humorous. Very good person, a great scholar and a gentleman to the core.

Brilliant history of the cosmic distance ladder

I have to say I really enjoyed that, great lecture, it was wonderful to hear Terry talk about this topic, and great questions. Well done RIA for organising this, I'm looking forward to more Hamilton Day lectures!

Such an excellent and inspiring lecture, it closed many of my gaps in "all-day" astronomy. It gave me the shivers how good Terrys answers to the questions were. For example the one about by how much hard work all the results were earned, Terry said its because he reported only the firsts and the firsts are always at the edge of the technically possible. Its the perfect answer, given straight without time delay. In this little example we might get a glimpse into how great a mind he actually is.

What a remarkable presentation. Take to time for the whole thing including q and a. The ladder is a remarkable notion of conceiving a widening POV. How do how can we see our universe. I am re calibrating my most basic assumptions in view of Tao’s extensive presentation!

Much appreciation to Prof. Mellon for doing such a good job moderating this excellent talk and panel discussion. All the technology worked so well, you seem like you have done this many times. Fair play to you and the panelists.

Terry begins at 7:30

In terms of maths discovery and invention by one individual versus groups, I think the best way is to keep cycling between the two, lone focus versus collaboration.

Simply awe inspiring, how far we have come from walking the desserts of Egypt, looking up at the sky. I would love to have learnt maths and physics like this, with embedded history, instead of by abstract geometry and equations that have no relevance to every day existence.

Definitely easier to deduce the curvature of earth from the darkness to light aspect during dawn. The night sky is darker in a spherical aspect

The question Martin Mathieu asks about individual mathematician versus group work has its origin in the purely socio-economic aspect of being a scientist. In those days... personal success equaled status, which was often more important than making knowledge available. This question is perhaps still relevant today, strangely enough.

nice

Very nice lecture about the astronomical ladder. However, there is a mistake. It was Ole Roemer who measured the speed of light based on the eclipse of Jupiter’s moon Io and not Huygens.

Quite good,although some of the innovative voices from mediaeval times were not touched upon. But a splendid job.

This dude wants to see the whole universe!

This talk by Terence Tao about The Cosmic Ladder was like slicing butter with a chainsaw 😂

15:50 - flat earthers beware

Euler

I am just going to say they could of saved alot of time back in the day if they would have just placed in quadrants of 4 the light and darkness aspect ratio of the night sky.

Interesting bit of trivia: The number of miles from the Earth to the Sun is exactly the same number of times he uttered "um" during this presentation. Remarkable!

The Mathematics of light and dark, projection-drawing time-timing sync-duration fractal probability dominance interference-> Trigonometric positioning conics.., Act-uality of inherent coordinated coherence-cohesion objectives, pure relative motion-movie Intelligence, and instantaneous transverse trancendental Eternity-now Interval, resonant Observation. Therefore Default Wisdom consequences integrate in practice, via Actuality of AM-FM Universal Communication Entanglement In-form-ation. Understanding (holographic) ONE-INFINITY here-now-forever, looks simple as a beginning point for categorization of Superspinsymmetry-> Temporal Singularity pivotal POV-> perspective, relative angular time-timing sync-duration identification, (axial-tangential centre of Time Clockface), superimposed analog quantization rates of rates, ..and the only device generally available is a personal, organic, bio-logical pulse timer. Heartbeat. Fundamental re-cognition of relative proportions of everything-connected holistic Self, is the default mechanism of Theoretical abstractions, and qualitative quantitative numberness analysis.., and on reflection, projected mapping techniques for Navigating a visual Sky Calendar. Which is the probable perceived cause, the naturally occurring Origin, for making the Heart the centre of Time and general Philosophy. The Theory of thought experiment, concentric laddering of the probabilistic re-evolution cognition, Astronomical Observation light-cone of Actuality Knowledge.., of QM-TIME Completeness cause-effect Timing-spacing-> logarithmic condensation modulation coordination-positioning AdS/CFT real-time Perspective. Gauss could explain why he was exasperated with the lack of understanding of observable mathematical meaning inherent in the Surveyor's Techniques of Observation. (?)

A curious talk. He's a smart guy and obviously has a keen interest in the field but surely the talk would have been better coming from an expert in the field.

Toa Tao Tao, distance, must be separated from time ,unrelated, counting into infinite, infinite is a location, no time involved, 0-1-0, this is a distance that becomes a place ,the zeo is a place a nothing from negative to current position to positive, nothing moves its just there.the rule of infinite, is equal to the rule of void.,.current position equal to neither, but pulled into current position will become destination calculated 3 becomes 1 , 4 is unnecessary Deming the question invalid. Stop using time in a factor, traveling distance has nothing to do with this concept of time , perception is the definition of al time , ie an idea gone out of control. A cubit made of cubits missing the last cubit to complete the cubit , find the missing material in the knowledge of the cubit is all there is.

The history of discovery here tells us two things: 1 - The ancients were just a smart if not smarter than we are today.. (comparing the best so reasonable conclusion is it applies to the average) 2 - We smart humans cannot have been on this planet for that long.. more like a few thousand years not hundreds of thousands of years. Consistent with the bible I would suggest.

All the distances of mainstream cosmology are wrong. The universe is really 42 trillion years old, and all the nearby galaxies are 3 times further away than we think while the most remote galaxy we can see is 39 times further away than we think.