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A Euclidean Model

Posted in Euclid, Maynooth with tags , , on May 5, 2026 by telescoper

A few weeks ago the Euclid Consortium released a printable 3D model of the Euclid Spacecraft. Being a mere theoretician, I don’t know how to operate a 3D printer so I had to ask our technicians if they would make a version for use at open days, etc. The larger version is indeed quite large and everyone has been busy with labs etc, so took a while to print, but thanks to Pat Seery (who did the printing) and Ian McAuley (who assembled and painted the result), here is our model:

The scale for the model is 1:16, so its actual dimensions are 29.5 × 19.5 × 19 cm for the model, and 33 × 20 × 20 cm including the stand. The real thing is over 4.5m tall. There is a little model of an astronaut that comes with the kit (not pictured above) to give an idea of the real size. It’s going to get a protective coat of varnish on it before we use it in public, but it will be a nice addition to our open-day stand and will otherwise be on show in a display case in the Physics Department.

Anyway, if you have access to a 3D printer and would like to make your own version, you can download full instructions here.

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Back to May(nooth)

Posted in Biographical, Cricket, Maynooth with tags , , on May 4, 2026 by telescoper
Not May Blossom (actually Common Pearlbrush)

So here I am, back home in Maynooth after a long weekend away in Not Maynooth. The weather forecast for Maynooth was typically dreadful for a Bank Holiday weekend but I have to say I can’t sign see much sign of the heavy rain that was predicted.

On the way back I checked the cricket scores and discovered that Glamorgan won their County Championship game against Hampshire by an innings and 69 runs. That’s worth marking on this blog because it is their first win in Division One since 2005. Historic. Their first three games this season ended in a defeat and two draws, so it was 4th time lucky. Well played to them!

Anyway the last four days of teaching term beckon, including a 9am lecture tomorrow morning, so I had better leave it at that and try to get into a work frame of mind.

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Ten Signs of a Toxic University

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , on May 3, 2026 by telescoper

I saw this on LinkedIn the other day, and thought I should share it here:

If you work in a University, what’s its score? I was thinking we could make a League Table, but so many institutions would get 10/10 that would be pointless.

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Thoughts on 1st May

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 1, 2026 by telescoper

Today, 1st May, Beltane (Bealtaine in Irish), is an old Celtic festival that marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It’s one of the so-called Cross-Quarter Days that lie exactly halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. These ancient festivals have been moved so that they take place earlier in the modern calendar than the astronomical events that represent their origin: the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is actually next week. Anyway, “May Day”, Lá Bealtaine in Irish, is today – the name Bealtaine applies to the whole month of May.

In Ireland the Bank Holiday associated with Bealtaine is on Monday 4th May, so another long weekend beckons.

Workwise, after today we will have completed the penultimate teaching week of Semester 2 so after Monday’s Bank Holiday we will have just four official days of teaching left, before a Study Week and the start of examinations. Yesterday I correctedthe last of my Computational Physics class tests so I am up to date with the continuous assessment and feedback of both my modules. I now have a week before the Computational Physics projects are submitted, and another week before the exam period starts.On Wednesday last we had project presentations for about half of the final year class; the other half do their things next Wednesday.

Now, I have a particle physics lecture to give – the antepenultimate one of the semester – after which I’ll be launching myself into the long weekend.

Lá Bealtaine shona daoibh go leir!

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M.C. Escher and CP Violation

Posted in Art, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on April 28, 2026 by telescoper

I’ve had these pictures for quite a while and can’t remember where I got them from, but I used to show them in my lectures on Theoretical Particle Physics when I was in Nottingham to illustrate CP-violation and used them in this morning’s lecture at Maynooth.

The following picture by M.C. Escher is called Day and Night:

If you look at it you can see two kinds of symmetry emerging. One is a kind of reflection symmetry about a vertical axis drawn through the centre of the picture that applies to shapes but not to colour. The other is between black and white. But it is obvious that the picture doesn’t display these symmetries separately: to get a picture unchanged from the original you would have to do the mirror reflection and change black to white (and vice-versa).

The mirror reflection in the image can be taken to represent parity (P). Strictly speaking parity refers to a reflection through the origin in 3D rather than a mirror reflection, but it’s just for illustration. We know that a parity symmetry is violated in weak interactions just as it is in the picture.

The other possible symmetry, between black and white can be taken to represent charge-conjugation (C), the operation that converts particles into anti-particles and vice-versa.

While P is not an exact symmetry of weak interactions, it was long thought that the combination of C and P (CP) would be. Actually it isn’t. The story of the discovery of CP-violation is fascinating but I don’t have time to go into it here. It suffices to say that the Escher print also displays CP violation.

First lets do `C’, i.e. convert black to white and vice-versa. The result is:

Now reflect about the vertical mid-line to illustrate `P’:

If `CP’ were an exact symmetry then that image would be identical to the original, which I reproduce here:

You can see, however, that while some elements of the picture do look the same after this combined operation (e.g. the birds), others (e.g. the buildings at the bottom) do not. Although CP is not an exact symmetry of this picture, it is almost (just like it is in particle physics).

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Two Weeks To Go…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 27, 2026 by telescoper

There are just two weeks of teaching left in the Spring Semester at Maynooth University. Actually slightly less than that because next Monday (May 4th) is another bank holiday. That day doesn’t make any difference to my own teaching, however, as I have no teaching sessions on Mondays anyway.

As I mentioned last week, the formal teaching part of one of my modules (Computational Physics) is already over and the students are now – or should be – busy doing mini-projects.

My other module, Particle Physics, has four remaining lectures. That means that I’m on schedule, despite missing one lecture on Good Friday. The very last lecture for this module is on the last day of term, May 8th, so I don’t know how many students will be there. Come to think of it, because this is a final-year module, it may actually be the last lecture of all at Maynooth for some students…

The end of teaching does not mean the end of the term, however. We have a short “break” and then, on May 15th, the examinations start. In the break I’ll have to mark a stack of Computational Physics projects. That’s always quite hard work as I have to run the codes and check the results as well as read and grade the written reports.

This week and next we also have the final presentations for project students. That will take up two whole full afternoons (this Wednesday and next Wednesday). There’s usually a bit of a do after these to give the students a send-off, as these are projects done by the graduating class. I have been supervising two students this year, plus an MSc student (though the latter will not finish until August).

People sometimes ask me why we have such heavy teaching loads at Maynooth University. Four modules a year – other staff do five (as I did a few years ago when was also Head of Department) – plus projects is far more than one would expect of a “research-led” University outside Ireland. Part of the reason is what I mentioned yesterday – that the University (along with most others) spends far too much of its income on Management salaries and projects that have nothing to do with research or teaching. Other than that I can’t comment. According to this document, Maynooth University has committed to

Introduce a University Workload Allocation Model (WAM) enhancing transparent processes and procedures in the allocation of work.

If there is such a model, it is news to me…

P.S. There’s an even older document here (dated 2014) that says:

The University is committed to ensuring that the allocation of work is reasonable and fair across and within academic units. It is also required to exercise oversight of the implementation of academic workload management. In support of this, the Head of Department / School / Institute will monitor and record workload allocations and will provide to the university, via the Faculty Dean, an annual report on the procedure and model used to allocate workloads, and also an anonymised summary of the average and range of workload distributions between teaching, research and service among all academic staff in the Department/School/Institute.

The design and implementation of workload allocation models will be undertaken by Departments/Schools/Institutes in accordance with the general principles outlined above.

Will it? When?

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The Sharp End of Term

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 23, 2026 by telescoper

So here I am, sitting in the (empty) Physics Computer Lab. The formal Computational Physics lab sessions are over, but I’m on duty to provide help the students with their project work, which will take up the remaining two-and-a-bit weeks of term. It’s a lovely day outside which explains why there are very few people in the lab, and none of them have asked for help so I’ve been busy getting on with some work. Past experience with these sessions suggests that they’ll all come just before the project deadline, which is May 8th.

Up until last week I had a Computational Physics lecture at 9am on Thursdays, but the last one of those happened last Thursday. It was nice to have a more leisurely start this morning. I did think I might get a haircut on the way to work but when I passed my usual barber’s I saw it was full of people waiting their turn so I walked on. It seems that the good weather gave quite a few people the same urge to have shorter hair.

Yesterday was the last Class Test for my other class, Particle Physics, and I’ve taken the opportunity to correct all the scripts for that. I even had time to type up the solutions all neatly and tidily in Latex (including doing Feynman diagrams, which is fun).The end of that job means no more grading for that module until the main examination, which is about a month away. I do however, have lectures and tutorials still to do, including two at 9am on Tuesdays.

The finest weather is usually reserved for the exam period, of course, to maximize the annoyance of students. In my memory all my undergraduate examinations took place in very fine weather, with the exception of my Physics practical the night before which there was an enormous thunderstorm. Come to think of it, that could well have been a portent that warned me off experiments and made me become a theorist.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , on April 22, 2026 by telescoper

This week at Maynooth University numerous parties of schoolkids have been, and are being, shown around the campus. Naturally an important stop on this tour is the abode of Séamus the Library Cat. The weather has been nice this week so far, as it was today, so said feline has generally been out and about and making himself available to be admired. On my way to lunch I managed to bypass a large coach party of schoolgirls and reach the cat’s spot ahead of them. I found Séamus giving himself a good wash and brush-up in anticipation of the arrival of the visitors.

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The Perseus Cluster

Posted in Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on April 16, 2026 by telescoper

In a vain attempt to convince my readership that I know anything about observational astronomy, I thought I’d share this image of the central regions of the Perseus Cluster (also known as Abell 426) made by my final-year project students:

Picture Credit: Ben Doyle

The image was taken last November using the 1.20m reflecting telescope at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence where the final-year astrophysics students from Maynooth spent a week last November on a field trip taking various observations. The exposure was 240 seconds and the field of view is about 15 arcminutes on a side. Most of the objects in the image are galaxies, rather than stars.

I asked my students to look at this cluster (which is about 10 degrees across), partly because it appears near the Zenith in November so would be a good target, partly because it is nearby so the galaxies in it are therefore quite bright, and partly because it was observed by Euclid and featured among the Early Release Observations. The Euclid telescope is also 1.20m in diameter, but because it has a very fancy camera and is in space, Euclid reveals far more galaxies but I was nevertheless impressed at how well this turned out!

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Back for the Last Four Weeks…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 13, 2026 by telescoper

So the Easter break is over and I was back to campus today armed with a very long to-do list. I’m pleased to say I’ve ticked all the items off except the last, which was to prepare my lecture for 9am tomorrow. I’ll do that after supper.

I was very tired this morning after doing a bit of gallivanting for a couple of days. Am I too old to be carrying on like that? Yes. Do I intend to stop? No. Although I had a lot to do I didn’t have any lectures or tutorials so I was able to knuckle down and get on with things, interrupted only by an obligatory telecon.

We have four weeks left until the end of lectures for Semester 2. To be precise it’s four weeks minus one Bank Holiday (on Monday 4th May) which makes it 3.8 (working) weeks, but I don’t have lectures on Mondays so this isn’t very relevant to me. My Particle Physics module will continue in the same vein until the end of teaching but Computational Physics changes after this week, with lectures and formal lab sessions ending allowing the students time to do their mini-projects (which they have already started). They will still have access to the labs and be able to consult the demonstrators for help on their projects, though they can work at home (or somewhere else) instead if they prefer.

Other signs of the approaching end of term is that the May Examination timetable has been published, the required papers are being printed, schedules of student presentations are being circulated, and arrangements being made to mark projects.

When teaching is over for the academic year , and before exam marking starts, assuming a whole day of decent weather arrives, I plan to walk from Maynooth into Dublin along the Royal Canal. That’s a distance of 27 km. I do intend to walk the length of the National Famine Way later this year, but I was convinced to do one stage first to see if my knees can take it. The final leg of the Famine Way is from Maynooth to Dublin, which is convenient because if I’m forced to give up I can easily get the bus or train home, as I can if I reach the end.

Now for a quick supper, write my lecture for tomorrow morning, and have an early night!

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