The last ten years

Posted in Biographical on June 4, 2022 by telescoper

Time passes.

Today, as I find myself another year older, I was thinking back over what things of a personal nature have happened in the last ten years. In that time I moved from Cardiff to Sussex and back to Cardiff and then here to Maynooth.

When I was chatting to John Ellis over lunch at the ITP meeting last week he said to me “You move around quite a lot, don’t you?”. I replied “Yes, that has been remarked upon”. He seemed to think that was funny.

I don’t think I’ll be moving jobs again. Sometime in the next ten years I’ll be retiring, hopefully sooner rather than later. At any rate in less than three months I’ll be stepping down as Head of Department, hopefully spending more time on teaching and research and less on pointless bullshit.

Another notable thing that happened in the last decade was that I had a nervous breakdown. I spent a few weeks in a psychiatric institution but recovered well enough to return to work quite quickly. Fortunately, and contrary to my pessimistic expectations, and despite the stresses caused by the pandemic, I have suffered no significant recurrences and am now not even taking any medication (unless you count wine). So that’s all good.

The last ten years also saw my Mam cruelly taken by dementia; she passed away in 2019. Now all my grandparents and both my parents have gone.

The other thing I realised today is that I am now older than my late collaborator and colleague Francesco Lucchin, with whom I wrote a cosmology text book, was when he passed away twenty years ago, in 2002.

Time passes.

Anyway, I’ve done very little today except relax, read and listen to music and to complete the self-indulgence I’m now going to cook dinner and drink some wine while I watch some football on the telly.

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R.I.P. David Matravers

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 3, 2022 by telescoper
David Matravers, pictured on his 80th birthday in December 2017 (Picture Credit: ICG)

I was very sad this morning to hear via George Ellis of the death at the age of 84 of David Matravers. A South African by borth, David moved to (then) Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1990, just before it became the University of Portsmouth, where he set up a group in cosmology and relativity with the Mathematics Department. Though initially small, that group grew steadily branching out into other areas, including observational cosmology, and became, in 2002, the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation which is recognized throughout the world as a centre of excellence in research. I see it did particularly well in the recent Research Excellence Framework, for example.

NOTE: I am grateful to David Wands for pointing out that David Matravers wasn’t the first Director of the ICG as I said in an earlier version of this post: that was Roy Maartens. David Matravers actually retired just as the ICG was being set up but played a huge role in its creation.

David Matravers is rightly regarded as its founding father of research in cosmology and gravitation at Portsmouth. He therefore leaves a wonderful legacy not only in the ICG itself but in the many alumni who have passed through it at various stages of their careers and are now carrying on their work all around the globe.

During the 1990s I saw David Matravers quite regularly as he visited Queen Mary & Westfield College where I was working at the time to attend our relativity seminars and talk to the relativity group. He was a very cheerful and engaging chap who was always keen to encourage early career researchers. I was in that category at the time and, although I never worked directly with David, he was always very kind and supportive to me. What struck me in particular about him were his enthusiasm and determination, which is no doubt why he was so successful at building up the ICG from scratch. He will be greatly missed.

My condolences to his friends, colleagues and family.

Rest in peace, David Matravers (1937-2022).

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On Board for Examinations

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on June 2, 2022 by telescoper

We’ve at last managed to finish marking and collating examination scripts, coursework and project reports of various types and the provisional results are all uploaded to the system. I have to say that marking examinations on paper is much less of a chore than doing digital submissions online, though it is still not exactly a simple task and I’m glad it’s over for another year.

Tomorrow morning we’ll have a relatively informal “Pre-Board” meeting to go double-check the results and discuss any isues arising before the full Departmental Examination Board which takes place next week. That’s just for the Department of Theoretical Physics but we also do teaching for the Department of Engineering and there are Pre-Boards and Full Boards for those too.

In between now and the Full Boards we have a Bank Holiday weekend. Not the extravaganza going on over the Irish Sea concerning the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, just the regular Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh we have every year. In any case, there’s more than one old Queen having a celebration this weekend. A nice thing about living in Ireland is that my birthday is always in close proximity to a national holiday.

But I digress.

The Departmental Examination Boards do not quite mark the end of the examinations business for the academic year, as we have the Final Final Examination Board after all the Departmental ones.  That is when marks from all Departments come together to determine the final results for students who are taking degrees in combinations of subjects. The Department of Theoretical Physics has quite a number of students doing Joint Honours with Mathematics, for example, and we don’t won’t know their final results until we see how their Mathematics has gone. It does add an extra level to the process, but I think that’s a price worth paying for the flexibility we offer to students through joint programmes.

This final Examination Board takes place on 22nd June and students will get their marks a couple of days later on 24th June. We have an official Consultation Day (28th June) the following week during which students can get feedback on their examinations as well as discussing options for choices to be made ahead of next year. Even that won’t be the end, because some students will be taking repeat examinations in August, but at least it signals a gap in the assessment cycle during which we can hopefully think of other things for a while.

This year has been challenging, to say the least. There was a piece in the Irish Times recently discussing concerns about lack of student engagement, poor lecture attendance and high dropout rates for students in Irish universities. I discussed some of the reasons for this here. Obviously, until our results are finalized I can’t say anything specific about the impact of all these difficulties on our students, but the post-Covid turmoil undoubtedly has had a significant impact on many students and a severe impact on some. It remains to be seen precisely what the scale of the problem is and what we can do to mitigate it.

The general turbulence in the wake of the pandemic, which is unavoidable, has been exacerbated in my Department by serious staffing issues resulting from deliberate management decisions. This combination has created a perfect storm which in my view could easily have been avoided. I shall refrain from commenting further, except to say that it will take some time to sort out and we’ll probably have similar – though hopefully less severe – issues next year.

One of the difficulties faced by students this summer is that they would not have done traditional written examinations for two years before this May’s set. The online timed assessments we deployed during the pandemic were of “open-book” style but the unseen written papers on campus are not. The challenge posed by these two types of examination are different, and it remains to be seen how well the students – especially those in Years 1 and 2 – have coped with the abrupt switch. Those who get disappointing results will have the opportunity to take repeat examinations (on campus) and those who disengaged entirely will have the chance to repeat the year in full if they so desire, so all is not lost!

Another sign of our gradual emergence from the pandemic is that our Examination Board meeting next week will be attended in person by the External Examiner. She wasn’t able to get here last year owing to  illness so it will be nice to have her present at the Exam Boards and, hopefully, at dinner afterwards.

 

 

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Pride Month 2022

Posted in LGBTQ+, Politics with tags , , , , on June 1, 2022 by telescoper

It’s 1st June 2022, which means that it’s the first day of Pride Month 2022. This year there’s actually going to be an in-person Pride Festival with a March and Parade in Dublin of which I’m planning to attend at least part, even if I am obviously too old for that sort of thing.

Anyway, I thought I’d flag this occasion with a selection of banners. Here is the traditional rainbow flag:

Here is the banner from Dublin Pride’s website, more accurately emphasizing the full spectrum of diversity covered by the term LGBTQIA+ than the original rainbow flag.

And here is the Pride Progress flag, hoisted today outside the John Hume Building on Maynooth University campus where it will remain for the rest of the month.

With its origins as a commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Pride remains both a celebration and protest. It’s more necessary than ever now because of the sustained abuse being aimed at trans people from all quarters, including those in political power and those sad losers who have nothing better to do that spend all day tweeting their bigotry on social media. Bigots will always be bigots, but the lowest of the low are those that masquerade as some sort of progressive while spouting their hate and prejudice.

Anyway, as well as a celebration and a protest, Pride is an opportunity for us all to show solidarity against those who seek to divide us.

Though many LGBTQIA+ people in many countries – even those that claim to be more liberal – still face discrimination, hostility and violence, Pride Month always reminds me of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years ago. Recently my own celebration of Pride is very subdued as it tends to makes me feel old and irrelevant as well as worried that we might be headed back to the bigotry and intolerance of the past; the rights we have won could so easily be taken away.

As I get older, I find I have become more and more protective towards younger LGBT+ people. I don’t want them to have to put up with the crap that I did when I was their age.

I would like to wish all LGBTQIA+ people around the world, but especially staff and students at Maynooth University, a very enjoyable and inspiring Pride 2022!

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Revisiting the Case for Irish Membership of CERN

Posted in Politics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on May 31, 2022 by telescoper

At last week’s Irish Theoretical Physics meeting I had the opportunity to have lunch with particle physicist Professor John Ellis (of King’s College London). Among other things we discussed whether or not it was likely that Ireland might join CERN. Currently Ireland has no official relationship with CERN, not even associate membership, which makes it anomalous among European countries. In November 2019 I blogged about the issue here.

There was a move reported in the news here in Ireland of a report from a Committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas making the case for Ireland to join CERN. You can download the report here (PDF) and you’ll find this rather striking graphic therein:

You will see that there are only three European countries other than Ireland that don’t have any form of membership or other agreement with CERN: Latvia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova. The fact that almost everyone else is in is not in itself necessarily a good argument for Ireland to join, but it does make one wonder why so many other countries have found it to join or have an agreement with CERN while Ireland has not.

As the document explains, if the Irish government  were to decide to take Ireland into CERN then  it would first have to become an Associate Member, which would cost around €1.2 million per year. That’s small potatoes really, and  the financial returns to Irish industry and universities are likely to far exceed that, so the report strongly recommends this step be taken. This Associate member stage would last up to 5 years, and then to acquire full membership a joining fee of around €15.6 million would have to be paid, which is obviously a much greater commitment but in my view still worthwhile.

There were some positive noises when the document came out, but that was near the end of 2019. Not far into 2020 the pandemic struck and the idea sank without trace. Perhaps now is a good time to raise the issue again?

While I strongly support the idea of Ireland joining CERN I do have a couple of concerns about the case as presented in the Oireachtas report.

One is that I’m very sad that the actual science done at CERN is downplayed in the  report. Most of it is about the cash return to industry, training opportunities, etc. These are important, of course, but it must not be forgotten that big science projects like those carried out at CERN are above all else science projects. The quest for knowledge does have collateral benefits, but it a worthy activity in its own right and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

My other (related) concern is that joining CERN is one thing, but in order to reap the scientific reward the government has to invest in the resources needed to exploit the access to facilities membership would provide. Without a related increase in research grant funding for basic science the opportunity to raise the level of scientific activity in Ireland would be lost.

Ireland recently joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a decision which gave Irish astronomers access to some amazing telescopes. However, there is no sign at all of Irish funding agencies responding to this opportunity by increasing funding for academic time, postdocs and graduate students needed to do the actual science. In one respect ESO is very like CERN: the facilities do not themselves do the science; we need people to do that. The jam is already spread very thinly in Ireland so having an extra thing to spread it on will not necessarily be a good thing for science in general.

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Professorial Position in Observational Astrophysics or Cosmology at Maynooth!

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on May 30, 2022 by telescoper

With about a month to go to the deadline, I thought I would take the opportunity to remind readers that Maynooth University has a Chair (i.e. Full Professor) position in Astrophysics or Cosmology under the Strategic Academic Leadership Initiative (SALI). I blogged about this scheme here and announced this Chair position originally here.

You can find the full announcement of the competition for all the SALI positions here; you can apply for the position at Maynooth here. The position is now also advertised on the AAS Jobs Register here.

The deadline for applications is in July 2022, and the provisional start date is January 2023 (although this is flexible). As well as a good salary (starting at €124,683 at current rates, rising by annual increments to €157,611) the position comes with membership of the Irish public service pension scheme, a defined benefit scheme (comparable to the older version of the UK’s USS which has now been scrapped).

The key rationale for these SALI positions is clear from the statement from Simon Harris, the Minister responsible for Third Level education in Ireland:

“Championing equality and diversity is one of the key goals of my department. The Senior Academic Leadership Initiative (SALI) is an important initiative aimed at advancing gender equality and the representation of women at the highest levels in our higher education institutions.

We have a particular problem with gender balance among the staff in Physics in Maynooth, especially in Theoretical Physics where all the permanent staff are male, and the lack of role models has a clear effect on our ability to encourage more female students to study with us.

The wider strategic case for this Chair revolves around broader developments in the area of astrophysics and cosmology at Maynooth. Currently there are two groups active in research in these areas, one in the Department of Experimental Physics (which is largely focussed on astronomical instrumentation) and the other, in the Department of Theoretical Physics, which is theoretical and computational. We want to promote closer collaboration between these research strands. The idea with the new position is that the holder will nucleate and lead a new research programme in the area between these existing groups as well as getting involved in outreach and public engagement.

It is intended that the position to appeal not only to people undertaking observational programmes using ground-based facilities (e.g. those provided by ESO, which Ireland recently joined), or those exploiting data from space-based experiments, as well as people working on multi-messenger astrophysics, gravitational waves, and so on.

Exciting as this position is in itself, it is part of wider developments and we are expecting to advertise further job opportunities in physics and astronomy very soon! I’d be happy to be contacted by any eligible person wishing to discuss this position (or indeed the general situation in Maynooth) on an informal basis.

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Two New Publications at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on May 29, 2022 by telescoper

Last week was rather busy. Amongst other things I managed to complete the publication process for two more papers in the Open Journal of Astrophysics (one on Tuesday and one on Thursday) although there was a small delay in registering the metadata so I didn’t fully announce them until yesterday. I’ve only just managed to find time today to advertise them here. These two are the sixth and seventh papers in Volume 5 (2022) and the 54th and 55th in all respectively. Both the new papers are in the folder marked Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics.

The first of these two new publications is entitled “The Impact of Quadratic Biases on Cosmic Shear” and is written by Tom Kitching and Anurag Deshpande of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey (UK).

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of this paper directly here.

The second new publication is entitled “Cosmo-Paleontology: Statistics of Fossil Groups in a Gravity-Only Simulation” and is written by Aurora Coissairt, Michael Buehlmann, Eve Kovacs, Xin Liu, Salman Habib and Katrin Heitmann all from the Argonne National Laboratory which is just outside Chicago in the USA.

Here is the overlay of that paper which includes the abstract:

Once again You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of the paper here.

We have quite a few more papers in the pipeline so expect to be announcing more quite soon, probably early next month.

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Mahler & Schubert at the National Concert Hall

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , on May 28, 2022 by telescoper

Yesterday evening, after a very pleasant wine reception at the end of ITP2022, I walked to the National Concert Hall in Dublin for my second concert in two days. Before the lockdown I used to go regularly to the Friday evening performances by the National Symphony Orchestra but until last night I hadn’t attended one since February 2022. Since I was in Dublin anyway and Mahler was on the menu I couldn’t resist this one and have now at last added to my stock of souvenir programmes. Last night’s concert was actually the last of the season but hopefully I’ll be able to go more frequently from September when the next season starts.

Last night’s performance began with Mahler’s Blumine which began life as the second movement (marked Andante) of his First Symphony but which was subsequently deleted. We heard the four-movement version of the work (i.e. without this part) in the second half of the concert. Blumine is a nice enough piece, relaxed and lyrical, but it is difficult to see how it was supposed to fit in with the rest of the symphony which is now always performed without it. Still, it served as a very good warm-up for the orchestra which, under the direction of Jaime Martín, established a polished tone and warm colour for this piece and for the rest of the evening.

After Blumine a large fraction of the orchestra left the stage to leave a pared-down version for some Lieder by Franz Schubert performed by legendary Swedish mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter who was resplendent for the occasion in an emerald green dress.

You wait two years to go a concert and then along come two in the space of two days! Only one of the songs, the first, Romanze from the incidental music for the play Rosamunde, was actually orchestrated by Schubert; the other were written with piano accompaniment and then orchestrated by others. I have to say I didn’t find the addition of a full orchestra added much to these songs, many of which have a rather spare piano accompaniment that works superbly well. A good example is An Sylvia which has its origins in Shakespeare’s play The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I love the sprightly version of this with piano accompaniment but the orchestrated version was much slower, as if weighed down by the arrangement. Still, these pieces were beautifully sung and that made them very enjoyable. After rapturous applause, Anne Sofie von Otter returned to give an encore of the old song The Last Rose of Summer which, as you can imagine because it is set to a traditional Irish tune, went down very well with the Irish audience.

After the interval the full orchestra returned to deliver a powerfully impressive performance of Mahler’s First Symphony. The programme notes remind us that for much of his life Gustav Mahler was celebrated as a conductor rather than a composer, and the First Symphony was not well received largely because it was deemed in some quarters at the time to have a structure that was insufficiently symphonic. There’s no reason why we should pay much attention the opinions of over a hundred years ago. The symphonic form has been pulled around in many directions since this work, not least by Mahler himself, and I think Mahler 1 is a very fine work. I always particularly enjoy the 3rd movement, with its occasionally raucous evocation of a Klezmer band.

The final movement brought the piece – and the whole concert – to a thrilling climax. Near the end, the entire brass section of the orchestra (7 horns, 5 trumpets, 4 trombones, and a tuba) stood up at which point I thought “this is going to be loud”. It was. Gloriously loud.

I’ve said before on this blog how much I enjoy watching a full orchestra in action. From my position at the right of the auditorium I had a great view of the double basses who were working very hard but clearly enjoying themselves.

Anyway, last night’s concert was broadcast live on the radio and also streamed and you don’t have to take my word for anything because you can watch the whole thing yourself here:

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John McLaughlin & The Fourth Dimension

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , on May 27, 2022 by telescoper
John McLaughlin last night (Picture Credit National Concert Hall)

Last night I went to the National Concert Hall in Dublin for a superb gig by guitarist John McLaughlin with his band The Fourth Dimension. This was the first time I’d seen him live though I have known some of his music on disc, especially two albums he made with Miles Davis in the late Sixties, Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. Since then John McLaughlin has been consistently regarded as one of the best jazz guitarists ever. He is now eighty years old but apart from the fact that his hair is white you would never guess that. He looks as fit as a fiddle, and last the band played for over 90 minutes without a break.

John McLaughlin (who was born in Doncaster but who referred to Ireland as “the land of my ancestors”) is currently on a European tour and he began his concert last night with a heartfelt expression of his gratitude for being able to perform in person with his band after a gap of over two years. This period has been particularly difficult for Jazz musicians who depend so much on mutual interaction when performing. The first number they played was called Lockdown Blues…

The band The 4th Dimension brings together excellent musicians from different cultures and musical traditions, integrating their all cultural influences in a unique way while at the same time preserving the spontaneity of jazz. The result is hard to classify – there’s definitely more than an echo of McLaughlin’s earlier musical work in jazz/rock fusion, but with diverse elements of world music thrown in. His own musical style is instantly recognizable to anyone who has heard music from his back catalogue, but subtly altered to suit his current band.

Gary Husband (right in the picture), who is from the UK, played keyboards (and drums on a couple of numbers). Ranjit Barot – Indian by birth and living in Mumbai – was the main drummer (sometimes playing together with Husband, hence the two kits in the picture); he also made various vocal contributions. On electric bass (left) was the extraordinarily virtuosic Étienne M’Bappé who is of Senegalese origins. The band played collectively but also in various combinations with and without McLaughlin, who tended to move around the stage generally encouraging and directing the traffic.

It was a fantastic gig with a wide range of musical influences being evidence. I noticed two pieces made famous by Pharaoh Sanders – The Creator has a Master Plan and The Light at the Edge of the World – but there were also numerous references to McLaughlin’s work with Indian musicians.

It was a very enjoyable performance that generated a huge response from the audience. The NCH wasn’t quite full, but it was a good crowd. I think I was in danger of forgetting how much I enjoy watching musicians as well as listening to their music.

So after a break since February 2020 I’ve finally resumed concert-going. It’s not only the musicians who have missed live music! As a matter of fact I’ll be back at the National Concert Hall this very evening after the final day of ITP2022, for a very different concert…

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Fuzzy Cosmology at ITP2022

Posted in Biographical, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on May 26, 2022 by telescoper

As I usually do when I give a talk (which hasn’t been for a while) I’ve uploaded the slides for the presentation I gave at the Irish Theoretical Physics meeting at DIAS this morning. The title of the talk was Fuzzy Cosmology and the abstract reads:

I discuss some applications of the Schrodinger-Poisson wave-mechanical approach to
cosmological structure formation. The most obvious use of this formalism is to “fuzzy” dark matter,
i.e. dark matter consisting of extremely light particles whose effective de Broglie wavelength is
sufficiently large to be astrophysically relevant, but it can be used to model more general scenarios
and has a number of advantages over standard methods based on Eulerian perturbation theory. I
illustrate the formalism with some calculations for cosmic voids and discuss its application to the
cosmological reconstruction problem(s).

I think it went reasonably well despite there being a hitch at the start because the touchpad on my laptop stopped working. Fortunately I was able to produce an emergency mouse. Anyway, here is a picture of me taken during the talk to prove I was there..

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