They have arrived! All hail our Octopus overlords!
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Night of the Octopodes
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Ceredigion, Octopodes, Octopus on October 30, 2017 by telescoperThis is not normal: universities in the news
Posted in Education, Politics on October 30, 2017 by telescoperA reaction to recent news coverage of UK universities, among other things.
I particularly liked “the degraded language of TEF, REF and KEF, which confuses bureaucracy with vision”. Well said.
It is not normal for universities to occupy the front pages of national newspapers. Granted, at any time there is a vital, occasionally tense, dialogue between universities and the nations in which they are situated. The line between ideals of academic freedom on the one hand, and the 
realities of finances and state oversight on the other hand, is notoriously fuzzy. The extent to which universities reflect or represent their nations is always a potential point of controversy.
But these are not normal times. Over the past few months, debate has swirled frenetically around questions including university funding, whether we have too many universities, what our top managers are paid, free speech on campus, how we select our students, and what we teach. We appear now to be at the point where even what academics think might be a point for national outrage.
It seems to me that much of…
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The Joy of Viz
Posted in Uncategorized on October 29, 2017 by telescoper
National STFC Data-Intensive Science Launch Event
Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags Brian Bowsher, Centre for Doctoral Training, Data-Intensive Science, Karen Holford, Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC on October 27, 2017 by telescoperIt’s been a very busy week here in Cardiff, as we have been hosting a National Event to launch the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)’s new Centres for Doctoral Training in Data-Intensive Science. There are eight new CDTs involving 19 institutions across the country (including the local one that involved the Universities of Cardiff, Bristol and Swansea). We were delighted to be chosen to host this event, which has had a tremendous buzz about it, as 120 new PhD students met with academics from all the CDTs, STFC staff, and representatives of industry partners, for a mixture of training and networking activities. I took part in a panel discussion this morning about careers, which was very interesting.
Last night we had a dinner at the Mercure Hotel in Cardiff (where the Real Madrid team stayed just before this summer’s UEFA Champions League Final in Cardiff). The dinner was preceded by a welcome from Professor Karen Holford (Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University), a talk by Brian Bowsher (Chief Executive of STFC) and Prof. Patrick Sutton of the Gravitional Physics group at Cardiff who gave an outstanding talk about the latest developments in gravitational waves. There was then a `showcase’ event to allow students and staff to talk about their work over a few drinks.
Here are some pictures of yesterday’s activities.
Prof. Karen Holford giving her welcome speech.
Dr Bian Bowsher, STFC Chief Executive
I noticed in Dr Bowsher’s talk that STFC has apparently moved the Boulby Mine from North Yorkshire (near Whitby) to Northumberland:
STFC sites (some of them in the correct geographical location).
Professor Mark Walport was unable to attend the event in person but did at least appear on a slide about the new UK Research and Innovation entity, which formally comes into existence in April 2018!
Professor Sir Mark Walport
Patrick Sutton doing his gravitational waves talk…
The Showcase Event
Showcase Event
And here are some of the members of the team from STFC who did most of the organization for this very successful and enjoyable event.
Some members of the STFC team!
The event finishes this afternoon, after which I think I’ll have a lie down!
Update: there’s a Cardiff University News item about this here.
Follow @telescoperFeline Physics
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2017 by telescoper
Consider the stability of a spherical cat of mass M and radius R using tree-level perturbation theory.
Follow @telescoperFrom the House of the Dead in Southampton
Posted in Biographical, Opera with tags From the House of the Dead, Leos Janacek, Mayflower Theatre, Southampton, Tomáš Hanus, Welsh National Opera on October 25, 2017 by telescoper
It has been very hectic around here since I got back from India last week, so I’ve only just found time to do a quick review of Welsh National Opera’s production of From the House of the Dead which I saw last Friday at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton. I was away for the two performances of this Opera in Cardiff earlier this month and when I mentioned to a couple of friends of mine from London that I was hoping to catch it while it was on tour we decided to compare diaries and see if there was any way we could go together. And so it came to pass that we all ended up in Southampton, me returning to Cardiff through Storm Brian the next day, and Joao and Kim flying off to Cape Verde for two weeks from Gatwick Airport.
Anyway, to the Opera. From the House of the Dead is by Leoš Janáček, and is based on the autobiographical novel of the same (or similar) name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is set in a Siberian prison, in one such establishment Dostoyevsky himself spent four years of his life. It’s a grim story that starts with the arrival of a nobleman, Goryanchikov, to start his sentence. He is stripped of his fine clothes, beaten and tortured, then joins the wretched ensemble of captives until he is unexpectedly released at the end of the Opera. In between the prisoners take turns to describe their life stories, holding on to the past as people do who perceive that they have no future. There is little plot other than this series of narratives apart from a quasi-comic interlude provided by an Easter `show’, in the form of a pantomime. The work is in three relatively short acts which, in this production, run together without an interval. The whole performance lasts about 90 minutes. The picture above, taken during a previous run of this production in Finland, conveys the look and feel of this revival of a production by David Pountney that was first performed in 1982.
From the House of the Dead was written in the last years of Janáček’s life and was not performed until two years after his death. It opens with a prelude that reminded me a lot of his superb String Quartet No. 2 (`Intimate Letters’), written around the same time (1928) but whereas that work is about the nature of love, this Opera is about loneliness, isolation and brutality. The musical score is very rich and varied, but the vocal lines rather constricted, as if to emphasise the sense of captivity. It’s also really an ensemble piece rather than one in which the principal vocalists stand out from the chorus. This works very well for Welsh National Opera, as the chorus of WNO is exceptional. The Orchestra, under the direction of Tomas Hanus (himself a native of Brno, where Janáček lived for much of his life), played superbly, bringing out the subtleties of the orchestration by adding contrasting notes of optimism and hope to the intense, unrelenting darkness.
In short it was well worth the trip to Southampton, even if it did take me five hours to get home via two trains and a rail replacement bus service. This production has deservedly been very positively reviewed in the national media and I strongly recommend you see it during one if its remaining dates, in Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol or Llandudno.
Follow @telescoperPhysics of the EU – Revised Syllabus
Posted in Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags BrExit, Christopher Heaton-Harris, Physics of the Early Universe on October 25, 2017 by telescoperYesterday, Tory MP Christopher Heaton-Harris wrote to all Vice-Chancellors of UK universities asking them to send him the names of professors teaching about “European affairs” together with links to relevant syllabuses and course materials. There has been an overwhelmingly negative response to this sinister request, which comes from an arch-Brexiteer apparently intent on thought control.
Not wishing to fall foul of the Brexit Police, I have updated my syllabus for next term and include it here so Mr McCarthy Heaton-Harris can read it:
I’m afraid that, for any further information and/or course materials relating to this module, Mr Heaton-Harris will have to register and pay the requisite fee which, thanks to his government is £9250.
P.S. I posted this slide on Twitter yesterday, and it got as close as any of my tweets have ever done to going viral (with over 800 retweets).
Follow @telescoperStrong constraints on cosmological gravity from GW170817 and GRB 170817A
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:1710.06394, Dark Energy, dark matter, GRB 170817A, GW170817, modified gravity on October 24, 2017 by telescoperOne of the many interesting scientific results to emerge from last week’s announcement of a gravitational wave source (GW170817) with an electromagnetic counterpart (GRB 170817A) is the fact that it provides constraints on departures from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. In particular the (lack of a) time delay between the arrival of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals can be used to rule out models that predict that gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves travel with different speeds. The fractional time delay associated with this source is constrained to be less than 10-17 which actually rules out many of the proposed alternatives to general relativity. Modifications of Einstein’s gravity have been proposed for a number of reasons, including the desire to explain the dynamics of the expanding Universe without the need for Dark Energy or Dark Matter (or other exotica), but many of these are now effectively dead.
Anyway, I bookmarked a nice paper about this last week while I was in India but forgot to post it then, so if you’re interested in reading more about this have a look at this arXiv paper by Baker et al., which has the following abstract:
Follow @telescoperThe detection of an electromagnetic counterpart (GRB 170817A) to the gravitational wave signal (GW170817) from the merger of two neutron stars opens a completely new arena for testing theories of gravity. We show that this measurement allows us to place stringent constraints on general scalar-tensor and vector-tensor theories, while allowing us to place an independent bound on the graviton mass in bimetric theories of gravity. These constraints severely reduce the viable range of cosmological models that have been proposed as alternatives to general relativistic cosmology.
The Bullying Scandal in Zurich
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Bullying, ETH Zurich, Institute for Astronomy, Marcella Carollo, Sinon Lilly on October 23, 2017 by telescoperYesterday I came across a story about bullying in the Institute of Astronomy at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich in Switzerland (known universally as ETH Zürich). You can find details here (in German) or here (in English, as produced by Google translate).
The allegations contained in this piece are so serious that they have resulted in the closure of the Institute of Astronomy. Two senior members of the faculty are currently on sabbatical and have had their positions transferred to the Department of Physics. You can read the substance of this case in the link I’ve provided so I won’t elaborate further here and will restrict myself to making a couple of points.
First, while this is not the type of case of sexual harassment with which we are becoming regrettably familiar in Astronomy and elsewhere, it does seem to be a product of the same systemic problem: an excessively hierarchical management structure that places far too much power in the hands of prominent individuals at the expense of junior colleagues. Moreover, as in so many other cases, the institutional response seems to be to protect the senior staff rather than to deal with the underlying issues. The institution has allegedly taken over a decade to respond to the accusations of bullying. What compensation or other redress is being offered to those who have been bullied in the Institute of Astronomy during this time? I suspect the ETH just wants to keep the lid on this scandal and hopes it goes away by the time the individuals involved return from `gardening leave’. That is not an adequate response to a situation so serious that it necessitated the closure of an entire Institute. Ironically, just a month ago, ETH Zürich hosted a meeting on `Equal Opportunity at Work’.
That brings me to my second point. The article describing this case changes the names of the principal protagonists, perhaps for legal reasons. The allegations are directed at `Gabriella M.’ who arrived at the Institute at the same time (2002) as her British husband `Paul F.’. This information is sufficient to allow anyone working in Astronomy to identify the two immediately. Anyone not familiar with the Astronomy world could arrive at the same conclusion in a few minutes with a little bit of googling (as a non-astronomy friend of mine proved on Facebook last night). I don’t know why the report I’ve linked to felt the need to disguise the identities of these people, but I see no reason to play along with the attempted anonymity even if it were not so badly botched.
The (female) Professor against whom the allegations of bullying have been made is Marcella Carollo and her husband is Simon Lilly. You will see if you look at the Wikipedia page for Marcella Carollo that it has been edited a number of times to include the news presented in the report I linked to, but the editors have been undoing the changes on the grounds that they represent `vandalism’ of a biographical page. Nowadays telling the truth is `vandalism’, apparently.
I might get into trouble for posting this information, but I feel I’m acting in the public interest and anyway I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble…
UPDATE:
The Past, Present and Future of Measurement
Posted in Uncategorized on October 22, 2017 by telescoperLengthy but interesting post about forthcoming changes to the definition of four of the base units of the SI system.
Measurement, the simple process of comparing an unknown quantity with a standard quantity, is the essential component of all scientific endeavours. We are currently about to enter a new epoch of metrology, one which will permit the breath-taking progress of the last hundred years to continue unimpeded into the next century and beyond.
The dawn of this new age has been heralded this week by the publication of an apparently innocuous paper in the journal Metrologia. The paper is entitled:
Data and Analysis for the CODATA 2017 Special Fundamental Constants Adjustment
and its authors, Peter Mohr, David Newell, Barry Taylor and Eite Tiesinga constitute the Committee on Data for Science and Technology, commonly referred to as CODATA. In this article I will try to explain the relevance of CODATA’s paper to developments in the science of metrology.
The Past
The way human beings began to make sense…
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In the Dark 
