The spell of warm sunny weather has made a huge difference to the view from my office window:
Well, what did you expect to see from a Maynooth University office window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of Wildebeest sweeping majestically across …
I woke this morning to the sad news that the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins passed away yesterday at the age of 95. He was one of the most influential and creative musicians of his time and there are many justifiably glowing obituaries of him. I can’t add much that hasn’t already been said by them, other than say that I consider myself deeply privileged to have been able see and hear Sonny Rollins play live, not once but twice, during the 1980s. The first was in the relatively intimate surroundings of Ronnie Scott’s club in London and the second in the Royal Festival Hall. On both occasions he was fantastic. Sonny Rollins was one of those musicians who made me think when I watched him that if you took the instrument out of his mouth it would somehow carry on playing on its own. At Ronnie Scott’s club he opened one set by starting to play in the band room, walking out through the audience onto the stage still playing and then about an hour later walked off back the way he came, still playing. The tune was Thelonious Monk’s 52nd Street Theme. He ended his set at the Festival Hall with an unstoppable version of Don’t Stop The Carnival that had everyone leaping about in the aisles. There was so much music in him it just had to come out. Was he playing the music or was it playing him?
Sonny Rollins began playing professionally when he was a teenager in the late 1940s but came to the attention of the jazz world in earnest when he teamed up with Miles Davis for a 1954 recording session that led to a record called Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins. (Coincidentally, today would have been Miles Davis’s 100th birthday). That record, originally issued on a 10″ LP, showcased Rollins’s big muscular sound on tenor sax, but also consisted of four tracks, three of which were compositions by Sonny Rollins, including a now-standard Oleo. That record was really Sonny’s breakthrough and he went on to record dozens of superb albums both as leader: A Night at the Village Vanguard, Saxophone Colossus, Newk’s Time, and Way Out West, to name just four. He also made many records as a side man, including the must-have album, Brilliant Corners with Thelonious Monk.
Having established himself as a major artist, Rollins suddenly took a three-year break from playing between 1959 to 1961 to develop his technique. Lacking space to practice in his apartment, he did so every day on the Williamsburg Bridge. When he returned to a recording studio in early 1962, the result was another classic album, The Bridge.
(Left: Sonny Rollins c. 1960)
Having established himself as a major artist, Rollins suddenly took a three-year break from playing between 1959 to 1961 to develop his technique. Lacking space to practice in his apartment, he did so every day on the Williamsburg Bridge. When he returned to a recording studio in early 1962, the result was another classic album, The Bridge.
In all he made over 60 albums, of which I have about a dozen. I’ll be listening to them a lot over the next few days and may post a few further items about them in due course.One thing I always liked about Sonny Rollins was his tendency to take a shine to very unexpected tunes and turn them into something magical. Off the top of my head I can think of The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, How are Things in Glocca Morra? and I’m an Old Cowhand.
It’s impossible to pick a single track than can do justice to Sonny Rollins so I’m just going to include a couple here. The first is the very first track I ever heard by him, on a Blue Note sampler album. It’s a Miles Davis tune called Tune Up and it’s from the 1957 Blue Note album Newk’s Time with Wynton Kelly (piano), Doug Watkins (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Perhaps listening to the energy and invention of his playing, delivered with that characteristically leathery tone then you’ will understand why I fell instantly in love with his music and wanted to hear more.
The second is one of my favourite records of all time. It’s called Hold’ Em Joe and it was recorded in 1965 with Ray Bryant (piano), Walter Booker (bass) and the fabulous Mickey Roker on drums:
As a sad footnote on this sad occasion, the passing of Sonny Rollins means that not one of the great musicians in this famous photograph A Great Day in Harlem, taken on August 12th 1958, is still with us:
Rest in Peace Sonny Rollins (1930-1954), Saxophone Colossus indeed.
At the start of the spring gardening season I decided to leave a bed that I had cleared unplanted to see what would grow there of its own accord. I expected standard weeds like dandelions, and did get a few of those, but more recently I have a considerable number of Ox-eye Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). The flowers look very like those of regular daisies (of which I also have a few on the front lawn) but the plants are much bigger: I estimate they’re about 80cm tall. Anyway, I find the white and yellow very striking against the green foliage behind so I’m very happy to see these wild flowers thriving.
These must have blown in as seeds, along with the numerous other wild flowers I have in the garden. That reminds me that the term “blow-in” is used colloquially in Ireland to denote someone who has just moved into a town or village where they have no deep familial roots. I’ve been called a “blow-in” many times, not always in a friendly way.
This reminds me of an article I saw in the Irish Times soon after arriving here about British immigrants in Ireland. Being one such myself I find a lot of it rings true. You can read the article here (I don’t think it’s behind a paywall). I think it’s well worth a look.
I found quite a few things in it resonate quite strongly with my experiences since I arrived here a couple of years ago. Top of these was the realization of just how ignorant I was about Irish history, thanks to the almost total neglect of this topic in British schools. Lack of education inevitably leads to lack of understanding and more often than not leads to prejudice and one finds a lot of that in the attitude of British people, even senior figures (many of them “educated” at Oxford) who are supposed to know better.
I was also struck by the “Not Really Irish” tag, which I think about rather a lot. It’s not really just a question of whether or not you have Irish citizenship or an Irish passport, it’s about the extent to which you belong. I spent over fifty years living in England and Wales so I’m missing a huge amount of cultural background pertaining to Ireland. I won’t ever be able to catch up all that so I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel `really Irish’. Of course people speak English here, but I’m very conscious that I have a funny accent. I suppose that means I’ll always feel like a stranger in Ireland. If there is predominant attitude towards the British over here, however, in my experience it is one of sympathy rather than hostility.
Anyway, since I am a metaphorical blow-in I suppose it’s only fair that I have so many literal ones in my garden!
So much has happened since that it’s hard to believe that just two years ago I was enjoying a sabbatical in Barcelona. I was delighted when it was announced that this year’s Euclid Consortium Meeting would be held there, but when I saw the dates (25th to 29th May) I was worried that the meeting might clash with examining duties. When the examination timetable was published a couple of months ago, that possibility became a reality and I realized that I couldn’t attend. In fact I have an examination to deal with tomorrow, and will be grading the scripts for the rest of the week ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend.
It’s a shame I can’t make the EC meeting because this will be the last one before the first main release of data, DR1, which is scheduled to take place on October 21st this year. I’ve been following progress in the science working group on galaxy clustering via weekly Zoom conferences, but it would have been nice to see what has been going on in the other groups as well as catching up with colleagues in person as opposed to online.
The second data release, DR2 will not happen until March 2029, by which time I will have retired. In fact there will be at most two Euclid Consortium meetings that I can attend – in 2027 and 2028 – and the second of those may be after my retirement. The final data release, DR3, will happen in October 2031.
It’s worth also mentioning that there will be another Quick Release of data, this one from the Euclid Galactic Bulge Survey, on June 24 this year. There will be quite a lot of press activity around that, but I’m not involved in it.
Here is the complete timeline for reference:
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone involved in the Euclid Consortium Meeting an enjoyable and productive time in Barcelona as well as a fun stay in what is truly an amazing city. I’ll be enjoying the beautiful weather in Maynooth (25°C and sunny) while all the participants are slaving over hot cosmology.
I have found this a very disappointing weekend in many respects for sports. Two Irish rugby teams (Ulster and Leinster) both lost their cup finals against French opposition (Montpellier and Bordeaux in the Challenge Cup and Champions Cup, respectively). Glamorgan’s cricketers lost their first two Twenty20 games of the season (both narrowly). And today’s last round of matches in the English Premier League saw Newcastle lose, an outcome made worse by the fact that Sunderland won.
At least however there was an opportunity to enjoy Ireland’s greatest spectator sport (after hurling, of course): the counting of votes in an election. Friday saw two by-elections, one because of the resignation of Paschal Donohoe (FG) from his seat in Dublin Central in order to take a lucrative job at the World Bank, and the other vacated by Catherine Connolly whose seat in Galway West became vacant when she took on the role of President. Neither of these are constituencies in which I could vote, but it was fun watching the results come on.
These elections, like all elections in Ireland, were held under a system of Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote). The constituences return multiple members in a General Election, but in the case of a by-election only one candidate is elected. This simplifies matters a bit because the part of the process that involves transferring surplus votes from candidates who exceed quota is not needed. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated as the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated. You can rank all the candidates or just some. In the system employed here one ranks the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated in various rounds until one ends up with one winner.
There was also the presence of gang leader Gerard Hutch among the candidates in Dublin Central, but in the end he didn’t put up a serious challenge.
Opinion polls gave Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan a narrow lead on first preferences, but since SF are notoriously transfer-unfriendly, I was very confident that lead would be overturned by Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats. As it turned out, however, Ennis actually led on first preferences which confirmed me in my opinion that he would win. This is how the transfers panned out.
Ennis won comfortably, and John Stephens of Fianna Fáil gaining the distinction of getting the lowest share of first preference votes that his party has ever recorded in an election. There are some bizarre transfers, e.g. from the left-wing PBP (People Before Profit) to Fine Gael. Other than that the outcome was as predicted.
Not long ago Sinn Féin were riding high in the polls and might have expected to win a seat here, especially since Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, holds a seat in Dublin Central, but their popularity has slumped. I think that’s primarily because they have recently lurched to the right – rather like UK Labour has – and many who want a genuinely progressive alternative to the crumbling neoliberal consensus have decided that they can’t support SF which puts on the mask of a progressive party when it suits them but are quite to remove it when chasing the right-wing vote. is quoted as saying that there is ‘no confusion’ for voters about whether the party was left-wing or right-wing. I think she is correct there, but perhaps not in the way she intended…
A genuinely left-wing party of the size of Sinn Féin should be building coalitions and knocking at the door to power, but instead it has squandered its position by pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment, jumping on the bandwagon of the recent “fuel protests” and signing up to transphobic policies in Northern Ireland. I don’t understand why they have chosen this path, but it looks very foolish to me. I’m not the only one to think this. Is Morgan McSweeney now working for Sinn Féin?
As I write, the count in Galway West is still going on but it has come down to a contest between two unpalatable right-wing candidates so I’m not following it as closely. Oh, the Fine Gael candidate has won.
It’s Saturday once again, so time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further six papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 110 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 558.
I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.
The first paper to report this week, published on Monday 18th May in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics is “Edges In Coadded Images” by Erin Sheldon (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA). This paper describes a study exploring how image discontinuities and noise impact weak gravitational lensing measurements, finding no significant biases under typical conditions. Biases occur only in extreme cases, but can be mitigated.
The overlay for this paper is here
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
The second paper for this week, also published on Monday 18th May but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, is “Joint cosmological fits to DESI-DR1 full-shape clustering and weak gravitational lensing in configuration space” by A. Semenaite (Swinburne Institute of Technology, Australia) and 72 other authors from all round the world. This paper presents a cosmological analysis of correlations between the DESI-DR1 Bright Galaxy Survey and Luminous Red Galaxy samples and overlapping shear measurements from various weak lensing surveys.
The overlay for this one is here:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
Next one up, the third paper of the week, and the third published on Monday 18th May, also published on Tuesday 12th May, and in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Probing Dark Energy Microphysics with kSZ Tomography” by Julius Adolff, Selim Hotinli and Neal Dalal (all of the Perimeter Institute, Canada). This paper explores how kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich tomography and galaxy clustering can enhance our understanding of dark energy and its effects, potentially revealing its microphysical properties in future surveys.
The overlay for this one is here:
The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
The fourth paper this week, published on Wednesday May 20th “A Census of Variable Radio Sources at 3 GHz” by Yjan A. Gordon, Peter S. Ferguson, Michael N. Martinez and Eric J. Hooper (all of the University of Wisconsin, USA). This article, published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, uses data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey to analyze variability in the radio sky, finding most changes consistent with blazars and quasars.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and here is the Mastodon announcement:
The fifth article of this week was published on Friday 22nd May in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The title is “Uncovering the Next Galactic Supernova with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory” by John Banovetz (Lawrence Berkeley Lab., USA), Claire-Alice Hebert & Peter B. Denton (Brookhaven National Lab., USA), Dan Scolnic (Duke University, USA), Anze Slosar (Brookhaven) and Chris Walter (Duke). The paper presents a study simulating how effectively the Vera C. Rubin Observatory can localize supernovae using neutrino triggers, finding a 57-97% success rate based on stellar mass density predictions.
The overlay is here:
You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
Last, but by no means least, this week we have “Pulsar timing solutions for 17 pulsars at 150 MHz from the Irish LOFAR station” by David J. McKenna (ASTRON, The Netherlands), Evan F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Peter T. Gallagher (DIAS, Ireland) and Joe McCauley (Trinity). This was published on Friday 22nd May in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. It presents a demonstration of the use of international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) stations in tracking and characterizing pulsars, providing new insights into these neutron stars’ emission properties.
The overlay for this one is here:
You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one next Saturday.
It has taken a bit longer that I expected to get this far but I have now completed the grading of one of my modules. It wasn’t the written examination that took all the time, but the marking of the computational physics projects. This is always a slow job but for some reason it took even longer this year. Anyway, all components of the assessment for that module are now done and dusted and everything uploaded.
To add to the fun and games, last week I did the biannual trip to Naas for my anti-arthritis injections. I’ve been doing this regularly for some years now and it has become routine. When I first started I was told that there was a risk of one or both knees swelling up, but that has never happened. Until last week, that is. My right knee decided to swell up alarmingly. Although this was not really painful, I was forced to stay at home to rest and periodically apply a bag of ice. That worked well enough that I could go to last Friday’s concert (with the aid of a walking-stick) but it wasn’t until Sunday that I was properly recovered.
The alarm having passed I am now starting to feel the benefit of the jabs. I am planning sometime soon to walk from Maynooth to Dublin along the Royal Canal, that being the last leg of the National Famine Way. I want to be sure I can manage the 27km walk before attempting to do the full walk later in the summer. The weather is set fair for a few days so I might give it a go next week, assuming I manage to finish all my examining duties promptly. It’s the season finale at the National Concert Hall next Friday – followed by a long weekend break when I will be travelling a little, so I might try to do it on Thursday.
My next examination is not until Tuesday morning so, after several days of being shut away doing corrections, I can now spend a few days until the scripts are ready to collect doing numerous things that I’ve let slip while I’ve been busy. For one thing I have an inbox full of unanswered emails to attend to.
But for now I’m quite tired and in the mood only to vegetate.
In Irish, a pine marten – such as the one shown on the left – is cat crainn which means literally “cat of the tree” or, less clumsily, “tree cat”. The word for “tree” in the nominative case is crann and the genitive meaning “of the tree” is crainn. They are about the size of a domestic cat.
I mention the pine marten partly because a while ago it came up on Bitesize Irish, which is a way I’m trying to add to my meagre vocabulary of Irish words and phrases, and partly because the story of these animals is quite fascinating. Pine martens have existed in Ireland for thousands of years alongside native red squirrels whose habitat is similar. More recently the invasive grey squirrels arrived and bullied their smaller red cousins into decline. Pine martens were also in serious decline because of hunting and deforestation and were critically endangered until recently, when legal protections were introduced. Now the population is growing and they are spreading into new areas.
Pine martens are fierce predators who eat all kinds of small mammals including rats and voles as well as squirrels. Having coexisted with them for ages, red squirrels have learnt to avoid pine martens quite effectively. Pine martens will try to catch them but don’t find them easy prey. Grey squirrels are a different matter, though, so there has been a big difference in the rate of predation with the grey squirrels being forced out of many areas. This differential effect has been excellent news for the red squirrels, whose population is recovering strongly.
I’m told that there are pine martens on the campus at Maynooth, though I have never actually seen one in the flesh and am not sure where they live. This is not surprising – they are secretive and good at hiding. There are grey squirrels on Maynooth campus too. I have seen many. I’ve never seen any red squirrels though. If the pine martens thrive, perhaps that will change?
Although undeniably cute, with their chocolate-coloured coat and creamy yellow bib, pine martens are wild animals and will bite if you give them cause. The word for “bite” in Irish is greim.
This letter has been doing the rounds on social media so I thought I’d share it here because it is so truthful and accurate:
Last week I posted about the dire situation at Nottingham University and particularly in the School of Physics & Astronomy there. I since learned that I didn’t get the nunbers quite right: it appears that there are 71 staff in the School and 56 received notices that their jobs are at risk. There are 23 Professors in the School and 20 have received letters. The intention is that about 20 jobs will be lost across all academic and technical staff.
The open letter and petition here has already garnered over 2000 signatures, but more can’t do any harm.
I’ve heard also that staff at Notitngham are about to start a Marking and Assessment Boycott in response to the plans. This seems entirely reasonable to me and I would support further industrial action too. There is more about the situation in Physics World here.
I mentioned in my previous post that
Not all those in receipt of an “at risk” letter will actually be made redundant, but the intention is clearly to scare people into leaving in order to save on redundancy payments.
No doubt some positions will be saved by retirements and voluntary severance, but cuts on the scale being planned will be difficult to achieve without a significant number of compulsory redundancies. The messaging from the University Management is not subtle.
I have no idea what the management “plan” is at Nottingham, but I suspect it goes something like this, from the current Private Eye:
The effect of all this on staff morale will be devastating, but there will also be a practical effect. The more mobile, especially those with portable individual research grants, and those not tied to laboratories, will already be looking to move elsewhere. That will no doubt include some of Nottingham’s best researchers. It won’t be easy to move elsewhere in the UK, however, as the higher education system is collapsing. Other universities will no doubt follow a similar path,
Unfortunately, the recent goings-on at the Science and Technology Facilities Council will almost certainly be taken as a cue to shed posts in PPAN areas (Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics), as grants in these areas are to be drastically reduced. This is a clear signal that STFC wants the PPAN community to shrink. As far as I can see, Nottingham University currently employs about eleven Academic Staff in Astronomy and a similar number in Particle Cosmology.
On a personal note, in the interest of full disclosure, I joined Nottingham University as Professor of Astrophysics in January 1999. Neither of these groups existed then and the School of Physics (as it was) was struggling in the doldrums. The incorporation of Astronomy led to the name being changed to the School of Physics & Astronomy, led to a boost in undergraduate recruitment and improved research assessment outcome. The Particle Cosmology group came a bit later. The University’s original plan for Astronomy was just one Professor and two lecturers! I pushed particularly hard for this when I was there. I left Nottingham in 2007 and watched from the outside as both groups prospered over the years, due not only to teaching and research but also to an effective outreach campaign centered around Sixty Symbols. I feel very sad to see their future so drastically threatened.
While I am on the subject of messages, the Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University, Jane Norman, has recently announced publicly that she thinks the University might go bust by 2031 without these cuts. Now, if you were a prospective Nottingham University student, how would you respond to a statement that the University you are thinking of applying to could run out of money in five years? The VC can’t possibly imagine that recruitment will remain buoyant in this situation, can she? Her blundering attempt to justify the planned cuts brings the prospect of a death spiral at Nottingham closer.
As James Binney put it in his comment on the open letter:
If these redundancies go ahead, the best physics faculty will leave Nottingham, outstanding candidates will no longer accept offers from Nottingham and the quality of the student body will rapidly decline. It takes generations to create a world-class department, but one can be destroyed in less than a decade.
In the Dark 