Keys, Blues, a House, and an Infirmary

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on November 7, 2021 by telescoper
Scott’s Corner

I’m not finding very much time these days to continue trying to teach myself how to play the piano but I thought I’d share a quick post that probably only demonstrates how little I know about music.

The other day I decided to try to play The House of the Rising Sun without the music, i.e. by ear. Knowing that it is basically an 8-bar blues for which I thought I could easily figure out the chords I looked up what key it should be played in. Google confidently told me this:

So I set about trying to pick out the melody in that key, but I couldn’t get it to sound right at all (even allowing for the fact that my piano is a bit out of tune). Then I realized that it’s not really in F Major at all. It’s actually in D Minor (the relative minor of F Major, so it also has the same B flat but with a scale that starts on A rather than F). Transposing the chords into D Minor makes it sound much more moody. It can also be played in A Minor as demonstrated by the Modern Jazz Quartet whose Blues in A Minor is unmistakably the same tune:

Anyway, fooling around with 8 bar blues in different keys I tried F Minor and it struck me that there was a marked similarity between House of the Rising Sun and another famous 8-bar blues St James Infirmary. In fact you can sing the lyrics to St James Infirmary quite easily to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.

Both of these tunes have very old origins: Jack Teagarden, for example, introduced his classic 1947 live performance of St James Infirmary with the words “the oldest blues I ever heard”. I always assumed both these tunes referred to real places, but that seems wrong too. There was no “House in New Orleans” they called the Rising Sun, nor was there a St James Infirmary. They are not the same song, and neither started off as an 8-bar blues, but they do have elements in common and may be derived from a common ancestor.

The most famous version of The House of the Rising Sun is the 1964 hit by Eric Burdon with the Animals (including Alan Price on keyboards, who did the arrangement):

Interestingly, Eric Burdon and the Animals made a much less famous version of St James Infirmary in 1968 which I think demonstrates the similarity between the two tunes:

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Notes from Half Way

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on November 6, 2021 by telescoper

We’ve now reached the halfway point in our teaching semester at Maynooth University. That means there are another six weeks of teaching before the end of term break. I was looking through the notes of my modules this morning in order to make a plan for the rest of term and was relieved to find that I’m roughly on track to finish on time. That is despite the first years starting a week late and lectures being 45 minutes long instead of 50.

At this point I’m still finding it very disconcerting talking to an audience of masked students, but it’s a heck of a lot better than just talking at a camera. Quite a few times I’ve been walking around campus and a student without a face covering has said “hello Peter” or words to that effect and I’ve smiled and said “hello” back while wondering who they were. Outside, you see, people take their masks off while, inside, I’m the only person whose face is uncovered.

Still, at least during lectures I get to make eye contact with the students. I don’t know why that matters so much to me, but it does. I remember as a student I had some lecturers who were pathologically incapable of making eye contact with the class, usually staring at a spot about six feet over the heads of the students. I found that most off-putting.

Although it still feels a bit weird, I’m glad that the mask-wearing protocol is being observed very well at least in lecture theatres. Unfortunately cases are skyrocketing right now – almost 4000 yesterday, as high as last January – which is all very worrying. Are we going to move to a Plan B? I doubt it, because the Government doesn’t seem to have one. Nevertheless I do think there’s still a significant possibility of our January exams being moved online yet again, but that hasn’t been decided yet.

Meanwhile, in the UK, University staff have been balloted over industrial action relating to the USS pension scheme and to various issues relating to terms and conditions. The majority of votes cast were in favour of strikes, but some institutions did not reach the 50% threshold required for strike action to be legal (some by just a handful of votes) and others achieved the threshold in only one of the disputes. I don’t know what will happen next, but I’d like to express my solidarity with those taking what I consider to be entirely justified action.

I couldn’t resist quoting this from the Universities UK statement on the dispute:

After a difficult 18 months, students do not deserve any further disruption.

Yes, it has been a difficult 18 months for students, but the absence of even a teeny bit of recognition that it has also been very difficult for staff is extremely telling.

I’m taking a particular interest in the disputes not only because I have friends and former colleagues in the UK but also because I have the best part of 30 years’ contributions locked into the USS pension scheme, plus some additional voluntary contribitions, and am relying on the benefits from those for my own retirement. If anything happens to that source of income I am financially screwed.

Apart from the USS scheme, the other side of the UCU dispute concerns ‘four fights‘ over:

  1. Pay
  2. Workload
  3. Equality
  4. Casualisation

These issues don’t only apply in the UK, of course. Workloads in my Department are at ridiculous levels – not only for me – and we have been forced by Management decisions into a situation in which half of our lecturing is being done by staff on short-term contracts. I suspect that the unpaid overtime we have put in during the pandemic is the expectation for the future, and I see no sign of the casualisation of our teaching staff being reversed in the immediate future. I hope I’m proved wrong, but in the meantime I’m keeping a close eye on my USS pension in case early retirement proves the only way to escape…

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on November 5, 2021 by telescoper

Time to announce yet another publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This one is the 14th paper in Volume 4 (2021) and the 45th in all.

The latest publication is entitled  Ultra Fast Astronomy: Optimized Detection of Multimessenger Transients, and is in the section marked Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.  The authors are Mikhail Denissenya of Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan) and Eric V. Linder of the University of California at Berkeley (USA).

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

You can find the paper on the Open Journal of Astrophysics site here and can also read it directly on the arXiv here.

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The 2020 Decadal Survey

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 4, 2021 by telescoper

Delayed by a year, the 2020 US Decadal Survey of Astronomy -full title Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s – is now out.

It’s a hefty document of more than 600 pages so I haven’t had time to do anything but skim it. The top priority for NASA for the next decade seems to be a 6-m class space telescope capable of imaging Earth-like worlds orbiting sun-like stars, something that can’t be done with much larger telescopes from the ground though the plan does involve bringing very large ground-based telescopes (the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Thirty Metre Telescope in Hawaii) into service more quickly than currently scheduled. Any new space telescope won’t be built and launched on the timescale of course: it probably won’t fly until the 2040s by which time I’ll probably be retired,

I also noticed in the section on the Cosmic Microwave Background we have

Recommendation: The National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy should jointly pursue the design and implementation of the next generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment (CMB-S4).The panel suggests that third-generation CMB experiments aligned with CMB-S4―specifically, the SPO (South Pole Observatory) and the “nominal” version of the SO (Simons Observatory)―be high priorities for federal support.

The clarifications in parentheses are my additions.

The shopping list is a lot longer than these items however. There is plenty of discussion in the media already. See, for example, here. I may comment further if time allows.

UPDATE: there is a very user-friendly interactive overview of the survey here.

This is of course an American survey but Astronomy is a truly international enterprise so astronomers all round the globe will be studying it and trying to work out its implications for their own research environment.

And of course there’s a box below for comments from you!

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 4, 2021 by telescoper

Regular readers of the blog – both of them – may remember that, after a couple of postponements due to Covid-19, we presented a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology in Maynooth on March 25th 2021. Well, owing to popular demand, we’ve decided to do a re-run of the event on Friday 12th November 2021 ahead of the forthcoming CAO cycle. That’s a week tomorrow!

This will be a half-day virtual event via Zoom. It’s meant for school students in their 5th or 6th year of the Irish system. There might be a few of them or their teachers who see this blog so I thought I’d share the news here. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

Here is the updated official poster and the programme:

I’ll be talking about cosmology early on, while John Regan will talk about black holes. After the coffee break one of our PhD students will talk about why they wanted to study astrophysics. Then I’ll say something about our degree programmes for those students who might be interested in studying astrophysics and/or cosmology as part of a science course. We’ll finish with questions either about the science or the study!

I’m told that with a week still to go we already have over 750 science students based in schools from An Daingean to Arranmore Island, from Monaghan to Mayo and many counties in-between. Fortunately it is online so no travelling is involved. Unfortunately the participants don’t get to see the wonderful campus so here’s a gratuitous picture!

(And at 12 noon I don’t turn into a pumpkin but do have to run off to give a lecture on vector calculus..)

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A Question of Balance

Posted in Cute Problems, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 3, 2021 by telescoper

Here’s an interesting physics problem for you, based on the idea that the mass of a set of bodies changes if the energy of their mutual interactions changes according to Einstein’s famous formula “E=mc2“.

Four identical masses are placed at rest in pairs either side of an extremely sensitive balance in a symmetrical way such that the distance between the members of a pair is identical for each pair and the centre of mass of each pair is equally spaced from the fulcrum of the balance. In this configuration the system is in equilibrium and the balance is level.

As illustrated schematically in the graphic, one pair of weights is adjusted by displacing each weight slightly away from the centre of mass of the pair by an equal and opposite distance, thus keeping the position of the centre of mass of the pair constant. The other pair of weights is not adjusted.

Assuming that the balance is sufficiently sensitive to detect the slight change in mass associated with the gravitational interactions between the masses in each pair, does the balance move?

If it does move which pair moves up: the displaced pair or the undisturbed pair?

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The Messenger of Autumn – Paul Klee

Posted in Art with tags , , on November 2, 2021 by telescoper

by Paul Klee (1922, 24cm x 31cm, watercolour and pencil on paper, Yale University Art Gallery).

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Save Dublin’s Science Gallery!

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on November 1, 2021 by telescoper

Last week Trinity College Dublin decided to close the Science Gallery on Pearse Street owing to losses generated during the pandemic. It would be a terrible shame to lose such an excellent venue and the range of fascinating exhibitions it has hosted. The Irish Government has apparently intervened and a reprieve may be on the way but I think it’s important to demonstrate the strength of feeling about the decision.

There is a piece on RTÉ Brainstorm about the reasons why the Science Gallery should not be closed here.

There is a petition here for you to sign should you so wish. It has so far attracted over 3000 signatures.

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Hallowe’en – Charles Ives

Posted in Music with tags , , on October 31, 2021 by telescoper

I posted about this fascinating piece by Charles Ives ten years ago today, when I was still in Cardiff, but the link on that post to the actual music has died so I’m posting it again today.

If you like you can read my first ever Hallowe’en post from 2008 here.

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Newton’s Fractal

Posted in mathematics with tags , , on October 30, 2021 by telescoper

Here’s another thing I bookmarked recently and then forgot about. It’s about a fractal structure that arises when using Newton’s Method (aka the Newton-Raphson Method) to find the roots of a real-valued function. I hope I remember this when I’m teaching root-finding in Computational Physics next term!

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