Archive for the Biographical Category

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Planck, Pointillism and the Axle of Elvis

Posted in Art, Biographical, Cosmic Anomalies, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on March 21, 2013 by telescoper

The reason I was out of the office yesterday was that I was in Cambridge, doing a PhD oral in the Cavendish Laboratory so the first thing to say is congratulations Dr Johnston! It was one of those viva voce examinations that turned out to be less of an examination than an interesting chat about physics. In fact the internal examiner, Prof. Steve Gull, seemed to spend more time asking me questions rather than the candidate!

Afterwards I met up with Anthony Lasenby, the candidate’s supervisor. Not surprisingly the main topic of our brief discussion was today’s impending announcement of results from Planck. Anthony is one of the folks who have been involved with Planck for about twenty years, since it began as a twinkle in the eye of COBRAS/SAMBA. I was looking forward to getting in bright and early this morning to watch the live streaming of the Planck press conference from Paris.

Unfortunately however, I could feel a bit of a lurgy coming on as I travelled to Cambridge yesterday. It got decidedly worse on the way home – it must have been the Cambridge air – and I even ended up passing out on the train from Victoria to Brighton. Fortunately, Brighton was the terminus so someone woke me up when we got there and I got home, coughing and spluttering. I suspect many cosmologists didn’t sleep well last night because of excitement about the Planck results, but in my case it was something else that kept me awake. Anyway, I didn’t make it in this morning so had to follow the announcements via Twitter. Fortunately there’s a lot of press coverage too; see the ESA site and a nice piece by the BBC’s redoubtable Jonathan Amos.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s Planck’s map of the cosmic microwave background:

Planck_CMB_large

It’s rather beautiful, in a pointillist kind of way, I think…

It will take me a while in my weakened state to complete a detailed study of the results – and I’m sure to return to them many times in the future, but I will make a couple of points now.

The first is that the papers and data products are all immediately available online. The papers will all appear on the arXiv. Open Access sceptics please take note!

The second is that the most interesting result (as far as I’m concerned) is that at least some of the cosmic anomalies I’ve blogged about in the past, such as the Axle of Elvis Axis of Evil and the famous colder-than-it-should-be cold spot, are still present in the Planck data:

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The other results excite me less because, at a quick reading, they all seem to be consistent with the standard cosmological model. Of course, the north-south asymmetry is a small effect on could turn out to be a foreground (e.g. zodiacal emission) or an artefact of the scanning strategy. But if it isn’t a systematic it could be very important. I suspect there’ll be a rush of papers about this before long!

I’m sure to p0st much more about the Planck results in due course, but I think I’ll leave it there for now. Please feel free to post comments and reactions through the box below.

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Balls in Cardiff

Posted in Biographical, Rugby with tags on March 17, 2013 by telescoper

I’ve been offline for a couple of days owing to being back at the old place in Cardiff, and consequently without internet connection. I could have used my phone, of course, as I’m doing now, but the 3G coverage in Wales is very poor so I find it frustrating to blog on my Blackberry.

Anyway, I came back to Cardiff to take care of a few loose ends and also to attend the annual Chaos Ball on Friday evening, which is run by the staff-student society in the School of Physics & Astronomy. It was a pleasant experience to see former colleagues and students again, so thanks to the organisers for finding tickets for me and my guest at the last minute!

Yesterday it was a different ball that took centre stage, as this year’s Six Nations rugby came to a dramatic conclusion with Wales’ comprehensive and well-deserved victory over England in Cardiff. I didn’t go to the game, but did watch it in a local pub. There’s a very special buzz in Cardiff on such occasions, and I was glad to experience it one more time, despite being an Englishman..

Now I have to get my act together and head back to Brighton. I wonder what sort of balls the British railway system will serve up?

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Snowbound in Brighton

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on March 12, 2013 by telescoper

The last twenty-four hours in Brighton have been very strange. It started snowing yesterday morning. Not snowing very much, actually, but it was also very cold so not a very pleasant way to start the week. Nevertheless I had a trouble-free bus trip to the University of Sussex campus and got on with my business. It carried on snowing a bit, but not much. This is what it looked like outside my office at about 11.30.

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It kept on snowing a bit, but not much, all afternoon. By five o’clock I noticed that the Twitter feed for the Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company was announcing that some bus services were suspended. Then all of its bendy buses were withdrawn from service. Since most of the buses I get to and from campus are of the bendy variety I decided to head home. It was snowing a little heavier by then, and it took a long time to get home owing to heavy traffic, but I made it to my flat by about 6.30pm. Checking Twitter again I saw that all bus servives had been cancelled. The accumulated amount of snow in central Brighton was no more than a centimetre.

Buses remained suspended this morning. Owing to the transport difficulties facing its staff and students the University of Sussex decided to cancel teaching for the day and operate at a minimal level of service. I settled down to work a bit at home, with a view to travelling to campus as soon as the buses were running again. In fact the roads appeared very clear when I decided to make the most of my morning off, by doing some shopping and getting a haircut, but the bus service to Falmer was not reinstated until about two hours after I took this picture…

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When I did eventually get on a Number 25 bus, the roads were completely clear of snow. Not surprisingly, actually, because although it snowed for quite a long time it was really rather light.

What is staggering is that less than half an inch of snow could paralyse the transport system of entire Town the size of Brighton, especially when it was forecast days in advance. There may have been heavier snowfall elsewhere in the area of course. The town is also rather hilly which, in icy conditions could cause problems for buses. But Brighton & Hove Council’s preparations for this cold snap seem to have been woefully ineffective. It’s sobering to experience how vulnerable this town is to even slightly bad weather.

Anyway, I’m now on campus. It’s not snowing. The sun’s shining, in fact. All the roads are clear. But there are few students about because there’s no teaching going on. Time to get some work done…

..and then try to get home!

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Sussex, a month in…

Posted in Biographical, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 2, 2013 by telescoper

Well, although it seems like no time at all it appears I’ve now been in Brighton and working at the University of Sussex for a whole month! Here’s a picture of the street I live in in the Kemptown area of Brighton, taken this afternoon. That’s the English Channel at the end of the road, in case you don’t know where Brighton is; it’s definitely not in the Midlands.

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I’m currently on campus again, although I made a major miscalculation in that Brighton and Hove Albion are playing at home again today. Since the Amex Stadium is just over the road from the University, that means I’ll either have to go back before the final whistle blows or wait until the crowds have dispersed before returning to base.

It has been unbelievably hectic. Although I knew it was going to be hard work taking over as Head of School halfway through the academic year, several unforeseen things have come up that have made me even busier than I’d anticipated. Some of these were pleasant surprises and some weren’t, but that’s all I’m going to say for now!

Since I arrived a large part of my time has been spent on matters relating to new staff appointments, arising from a mixture of replacements and new investment across the whole School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. That has included new staff in Applied Mathematics, Theoretical Particle Physics, Experimental Particle Physics, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics and of course Astronomy. There are more to come over the next few weeks, including a new group in the area of Probability and Statistics. It’s pleasant work, of course, especially when it goes well (which it definitely is) but I have to admit that the schedule of presentations and interviews is rather exhausting.

Apart from that the other principle preoccupation has been strategic planning for the next five years. On Thursday morning I had a crunch meeting with members of the University’s management team to discuss the plans for MPS, which were actually drafted before I took up my post but have since been modified quite a bit. I was more nervous before that meeting than I’ve been for many years, primarily because I did not know what to expect. It turned out to be quite pleasant, actually, and I left the meeting not only relieved but relaxed.

In the afternoon it was back to interviewing, but this time for postgraduate students. That’s also a pleasant duty, because it involves giving excellent young scientists their first step on the ladder towards a research career. I’m sure it’s not so pleasant for the candidates though. Nerves sometimes get the better of the students in these interviews, but experienced interviewers can calibrate for that. And if you’re nervous, it means that you care…

Anyone reading this who is nervous about doing a PhD interview (or has experienced nerves in one they’ve already had) might reflect on my experience when I was called to interview for a PhD place in Astronomy at the University of Manchester way back in 1985. I was very nervous before that, and arrived very early for my grilling. I was told to wait in a sort of ante-room as the previous interview had only just started. I started to read a textbook I had brought with me. About five minutes later, the door of the interview room opened and the interviewers, Franz Kahn and John Dyson, carried out the unconscious body of the previous candidate. It turned out that, after a couple of friendly preliminary questions, the two Professors had handed the candidate a piece of chalk and told him to go to the blackboard  to work something out, at which point said candidate had fainted. When it was my turn to be handed the chalk I toyed with the idea of staging a mock swoon, but resisted the temptation.

The question, in case you’re interested, was to estimate the angle through which light  is deflected by the Sun’s gravity. I hadn’t done any general relativity in my undergraduate degree, so just did it by dimensional analysis. That seemed to go down well and they offered me a place … which I turned down in favour of Sussex.

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Omnibus Edition

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , on February 27, 2013 by telescoper

One of the things I’ve had to get used to about working at a University based on an out-of-town campus is that it’s no longer feasible to walk to work every morning. Fortunately there is an excellent bus service from central Brighton to Falmer, so this isn’t too much of a hardship. I’ve now invested in one of those new-fangled smart cards that makes it very economical not only for getting to work, but also for hopping on and off while pottering about town doing shopping and whatnot.

I have noticed that if I get the No. 25 bus from Old Steine before 8am it only takes about fifteen minutes to get to the University of Sussex. If I’m a bit late starting out, however, and don’t get to the bus stop until after eight in the morning, the trip can take about forty minutes. The problem is that roadworks on the A27 Lewes Road have reduced it to a single lane in each direction; there’s a critical point when the traffic builds up to rush hour levels and then solidifies. Still, I don’t mind getting in before 9am as that gives me useful time before the roll of meetings commences, so I found it quite easy to adapt to the early start.

Anyway sitting on the bus this morning I had a kind of flashback to my schooldays. The school I went to was on the opposite side of Newcastle to where I lived, so I had to take the bus every morning. I did much the same thing in those days as I am doing now, in fact – getting the bus at 7.30 to avoid the heaviest traffic, and often doing the previous night’s homework before lessons started in the morning.

The one thing that was very different in those days (and we’re talking about the Seventies now) was that the “School Run” didn’t really exist. Even the posh kids took the bus or train to School rather than being ferried back and forth by doting parents. I think it did me a lot of good travelling on the bus along with all kinds of other people rather than being transported in the hermetically sealed cocoon of a family car. The famous friendliness of Tyneside folk undoubtedly contributed to the omnibus experience and left me with a lifelong preference for public over private transport. I’ve never owned a car and have no intention of ever doing so.

Anyway, this all reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) quote from Margaret Thatcher:

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.

Whilst I’d by no means be ashamed to be counted a failure according to a Thatcherite criterion, I did once get a bit riled by a version of it when I was conducting a UCAS Admissions Day at another institution (also a campus university). A (male) parent of one of the candidates asked me why there was so little car parking space for students on the campus. I replied that undergraduates were basically not allowed to park on the campus, otherwise it would be overrun with motor vehicles and wouldn’t be so nice and spacious and green. However, I said, that’s not a problem because there was an excellent bus service that could take students to the University from town and vice versa in just a few minutes. The indignant father bristled and announced in a very loud and angry voice “No son of mine is going to get on a bus”. That was the nearest I’ve ever come to losing my temper with a parent on a university admissions day. Fortunately nothing like it has happened since.

It never would have occurred to my parents to come with me when I visited universities for interview and I would have been horrified if they had insisted on doing so. Nowadays, however, prospective students are invariably accompanied by parents, who generally ask at least as many questions as their offspring do. Is this just an extension of the School Run, or is because parents now have to foot the bill (when in my day there were maintenance grants and no tuition fees). Either way, times have definitely changed.

Anyway, I’m about to get the bus home. Tomorrow we are interviewing prospective postgraduate (PhD) students. I don’t think any will bring their parents along. And quite a few may even come on the bus.

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The End of Cosmology?

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 21, 2013 by telescoper

A very busy day interviewing candidates for a job in Experimental Particle Physics was made even busier by the arrival by the boxes containing all my books and other knick-knacks from Cardiff. Anyway, the net result of all this is that I only have time for a brief post before I go home and lapse into a coma. I can at least do something useful, however, which is to pass on the following announcement:

Presentation of the first cosmologic results of Planck mission as well as its first all-sky images of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Launched in 2009, Planck studies the Cosmic Microwave Background – the relic radiation from the Big Bang – to allow cosmologists to zero-in on theories that describe the Universe’s birth and evolution. The first all-sky images of the Cosmic Microwave Background will be presented at the press conference held in Paris ESA HQ on March 21st, 2013.

We’ve been expecting that the “cosmologic” results from Planck would be announced sometime early this year. Now we know when. March 21st 2013 is the date to put in your diary, and that’s only about a month from now. Exciting times.

Will Planck confirm the standard cosmological model and measure its parameters more precisely? Or will there be the first hints of physics outside the standard model? Will cosmology be all done and dusted, or will we find out that we didn’t understand the Universe as well as we originally thought?

I don’t know. Yet.

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Two cultures, or none?

Posted in Art, Biographical, Education with tags , , on February 14, 2013 by telescoper

Just a quick rehash of an old post by way of a follow-up to Sunday’s blog about Emotion and Creativity which touched on the negative stereotypes sometimes used to characterize scientists.

Anti-science attitudes are far from unusual among the Arts & Humanities fraternity, even in the supposedly enlightened environment of a University, which I think is a real shame. After all, you’ll have to work very hard to find a scientist who would be prepared to stand up in front of audience and proudly announce “I hate art”. Many of my scientific colleagues have deep passions for the performing arts (especially music and drama) as well as being very well read across a wide range of subjects.  Many also hold strong  (and often idiosyncratic) political opinions and are involved in a huge range of activities outside science.

In short, scientists don’t just sit in their labs and offices making dangerous chemicals or torturing small animals. We live in the real world and have as much contact with wider society as anyone else. Imagination, creativity and free thinking can be found in scientists, just as they can in the arts.  Scientists both contribute to and participate in our society’s cultural heritage. Scientists are human beings. Culture belongs to us too.

Some time ago there was an article in the Times Higher with the title “Life depends on science but the arts make it worth living“. I agree with a lot of what is written in the piece, in fact, although it does seem also to contain numerous examples of non sequitur and I think it’s both poorly argued and highly exaggerated. The arts are undoubtedly among the things that make  life worth living, but there are others, such as “ordinary” human relationships and the “simple” enjoyment of the natural world, which academics of all persuasions all too frequently neglect.

One of the most prominent examples of non sequitur in the Times Higher article is that we have music, literature, poetry and the rest but how much of this is actually done in universities? The article compares Einstein with Beethoven. Albert went to University in Zurich. Beethoven didn’t go to a university. There’s a big difference between making art and writing about it. One of the big cultural differences between art and science is that we don’t have science critics, although we do have people who popularize it and also people who try to explain it to the general public. Much of the impenetrable cultural analysis that emerges from academia concerning the arts seems to have the opposite aim. Does any university have a Professor of the Public Understanding of Art?

You probably think I’m going to go off on a rant about the famous Two Cultures thesis advanced  by C.P. Snow, but I’m not. I think Snow’s analysis is only marginally relevant. I do think that there are “two cultures”, but these are not “science” and “the arts”. One is a creative, thinking culture that encompasses arts, the humanities and science. The other is its antithesis, a “culture” that sees the sole function of education as being to train people  to take their place on the never-ending treadmill of production and consumption.

The way we are heading, it’s not “two cultures” that we should be worried about. It’s no culture at all.

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Spiegel im Spiegel

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , on February 11, 2013 by telescoper

I’ve been so busy this last week that I really needed to unwind a bit on Sunday morning, for which purpose I picked this beautifully spare and sublimely contemplative piece by the great Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. This music always makes me think of the first line of the Desiderata…

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence

..except of course that it’s not silent.

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Emotion and the Scientific Method

Posted in Biographical, Music, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on February 10, 2013 by telescoper

There was an article in today’s Observer in which four scientists from different disciplines talk about how in various ways they all get a bit emotional about their science. The aim appears to correct “the mistaken view that scientists are unemotional people”. It’s quite an interesting piece to read, but I do think the “mistaken view” is very much a straw man. I think most people realize that scientists are humans rather than Vulcans and that as such they have just as many and as complex emotions as other people do. In fact it seems to me that the “mistaken view” may only be as prevalent as it is because so many people keep trying to refute it.

I think anyone who has worked in scientific research will recognize elements of the stories discussed in the Observer piece. On the positive side, cracking a challenging research problem can lead to a wonderful sense of euphoria. Even much smaller technical successes lead to a kind of inner contentment which is most agreeable. On the other hand, failure can lead to frustration and even anger. I’ve certainly shouted in rage at inanimate objects, but have never actually put my first through a monitor but I’ve been close to it when my code wouldn’t do what it’s supposed to. There are times in that sort of state when working relationships get a bit strained too. I don’t think I’ve ever really exploded in front of a close collaborator of mine, but have to admit that one one memorable occasion I completely lost it during a seminar….

So, yes. Scientists are people. They can be emotional. I’ve even known some who are quite frequently also tired. But there’s nothing wrong with that not only in private life but also in their work. In fact, I think it’s vital.

It seems to me that the most important element of scientific research is the part that we understand worst, namely the imaginative part. This encompasses all sorts of amazing things, from the creation of entirely new theories, to the clever design of an experiment, to some neat way of dealing with an unforeseen systematic error. Instances of pure creativity like this are essential to scientific progress, but we understand very little about how the human brain accomplishes them. Accordingly we also find it very difficult to teach creativity to science students.

Most science education focuses on the other, complementary, aspect of research, which is the purely rational part: working out the detailed ramifications of given theoretical ideas, performing measurements, testing and refining the theories, and so on. We call this “scientific method” (although that phrase is open to many interpretations). We concentrate on that aspect because we at have some sort of conception at least of what the scientific method is and how it works in practice. It involves the brain’s rational functions, and promotes the view of a scientist as intellectually detached, analytic, and (perhaps) emotionally cold.

But what we usually call the scientific method would be useless without the creative part. I’m by no means an expert on cognitive science, but I’d be willing to bet that there’s a strong connection between the “emotional” part of the brain’s activities and the existence of this creative spark. We’re used to that idea in the context of art, and I’m sure it’s also there in science.

That brings me to something else I’ve pondered over for a while. Regular readers of this blog will know that I post about music from time to time. I know my musical tastes aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but bear with me for a moment. Some of the music (e.g. modern Jazz)  I like isn’t exactly easy listening – its technical complexity places a considerable burden on the listener to, well, listen. I’ve had comments on my musical offerings to the effect that it’s music of the head rather than of the heart. Well, I think music isn’t an either/or in this respect. I think the best music offers both intellectual and emotional experiences. Not always in equal degree, of course, but the head and the heart aren’t mutually exclusive. If we didn’t have both we’d have neither art nor science.

In fact we wouldn’t be human.

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Brighton at home, and at home in Brighton

Posted in Biographical, Education, Football with tags , , , on February 9, 2013 by telescoper

So here I am again, in the office on a Saturday. This morning was the first UCAS Admissions Days during my tenure as Head of School so I came up to campus in order to make a short speech to welcome the prospective students and their parents to the University. Although I’ve only been in post for a week and hadn’t had time to prepare a proper presentation I think it went reasonably well. It’s bound to sound like a cliché when someone like me stands up and says it’s a very exciting time to be coming to the University of Sussex, but it just happens to be true in this case. We’re currently in the middle of quite a large expansion in the faculty across the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, or MPS for short, which means that there’s a lot of new blood coming with lots of new ideas in both teaching and research. The buzz around the place is unmistakable.

As far as MPS  is concerned,  today’s event was exclusively for students applying to do Mathematics so I had to pretend to know about  draw on my past experience of working in a Mathematics department in speaking to students and their parents. Of course the various activities inside the School were more detailed, so I tagged along a bit in order to find out what goes on in such events. Among the things that have changed since I was a postgraduate student here 25 years ago, is that there’s a thing called the Creativity Zone, which is a flexible interactive working space for the students to use in a variety of ways. I’m not saying we didn’t have any creativity when I was a student but teaching was rather one-dimensional in those days. I think the wider the range of teaching methods we can deploy the better, because different students respond differently to any given style; what’s best for one may not be best for everyone.

Anyway, in case anyone is interested I managed to find myself a flat in Brighton and took possession of the keys on Thursday morning. I then had to dash around buying bits and bob – bedlinen etc – before coming into work for some meetings in the afternoon. OnThursday evening I made a quick trip back to the old homestead in Cardiff to check everything was OK and  pick up some stuff for the flat (and my P45 which hadn’t arrived by the time I left last week). Passing through London on the way to Brighton last night I managed to make it to the Athenaeum for dinner with the RAS Club before returning late and very tired to my new Brighton residence.

If I hadn’t had to do the honours on campus this morning I would happily have slept until noon. It’s been such a busy week, that I’m definitely a bit knackered.  But then I knew it was going to be hectic and it’s all gone fairly well so far really. Now I’m going to head back home, put my feet up and do today’s crosswords.

The one complication is that Brighton and Hove Albion are playing at home today (against Hull) and their stadium,as you can see from the map, is right next to the campus, just on the other side of the A27…

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However, the match is not until this evening (17.20) so I should be able to get home without too many problems.

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