Leaving Late Again

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on June 3, 2021 by telescoper

Yesterday we were told that, as was the case last year, this year’s Leaving Certificate results will be delayed until September (3rd, to be precise). The first round of CAO offers will be made a few days later, on September 7th. All this is about three weeks later than the usual (pre-Covid) cycle of examinations and results. Last year the announcement of a delay was made in mid-July, but now it’s been done in early June.

I’m actually a bit baffled as to why it is going to take so long this year, given that it’s not a new situation with respect to Covid-19 and there will be fewer examinations to mark than in previous years. Universities are able to turn around marks for thousands of students in just a couple of weeks so why the heck will it take so long to get the Leaving Certificate results out? There will be fewer exams to mark than in pre-Covid era too, as some subject marks will be based on coursework.

Here at Maynooth University the start of the academic year 2021/22 is due to take place on Monday 20th September, with Welcome Week starting on 13th September.   Getting everything ready in time for teaching will be a huge challenge because we will only find out very late in the day how many students we have to accommodate in first-year lectures. It is unlikely that timetable will be possible so we face the prospect of having to scrap the orientation events that usually take place in Welcome Week, delaying the start of term, shortening the teaching semester (again) or scrapping the mid-term Study Break.

We’re not able to make many plans in advance because we don’t have much idea in what form teaching will resume because that depends on public health guidelines. Last year, most lecture rooms had their capacity reduced by more than half. Lecturers need to know how many students they have in order to decide how to use the available lecture slots and how to strike a balance between live and online delivery. It’s an even worse situation for laboratory subjects.

The Minister responsible is saying he expects campuses to be more-or-less fully open in September but I’m not convinced that we’re out of the woods yet. Let’s hope that I’m wrong.

If any prospective student is getting worried reading this, I can promise you that we will be doing the best we can to provide the best education we can in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in this September. So please bear with us. We didn’t want any of this any more than you did, but we just have to make the best of it!

UPDATE: We have now been informed that returning students will start as planned on 20th September, while lectures for new students will start a week later, on 27th September, with the previous week being used for some orientation events.

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Buttercups and Columbines

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on June 2, 2021 by telescoper

I suppose Ranunculus and Aquilegia are technically both weeds but they are adding a bit of colour to my garden at the moment and seem to be thriving in their spot next to the wall so I’ll leave them undisturbed.

I suppose it was inevitable that, the day I finished correcting my examination scripts, the glorious weather would end and it would start raining. Still, the rain is good for the garden. There’s always a burst of new growth after each shower. I wonder what will come up next?

The weather improve for the coming weekend which will be nice. It’s a Bank Holiday next Monday and a significant date for me personally on Friday so I’m hoping to take a break during which some gardening will be on the agenda (weather permitting).

I was also thinking about going into Dublin at some point for the first time in over a year, just for a walk around and maybe to visit the National Gallery again. The stories in the press of big crowds of people drinking outdoors last weekend have put me off a bit, but I dare say I can avoid the likely problem areas. Having been stuck in one place for 15 months (apart from a trip to get vaccinated) I feel I should make the effort to begin some sort of renormalisation.

With the exams over, students are asking what is going to happen with teaching in September. The answer is still that I have no idea, though if there’s a spike in infections due to recent events it will be even less likely that we will be back to normal for the new academic year.

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Who is a proper physicist?

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff on June 1, 2021 by telescoper

There is a rather provocative paper on the arXiv by Jeroen van Dongen with the title String theory, Einstein, and the identity of physics: Theory assessment in absence of the empirical. I thought I’d share it here because it sort of follows on from yesterday’s post.

The abstract is:

String theorists are certain that they are practicing physicists. Yet, some of their recent critics deny this. This paper argues that this conflict is really about who holds authority in making rational judgment in theoretical physics. At bottom, the conflict centers on the question: who is a proper physicist? To illustrate and understand the differing opinions about proper practice and identity, we discuss different appreciations of epistemic virtues and explanation among string theorists and their critics, and how these have been sourced in accounts of Einstein’s biography. Just as Einstein is claimed by both sides, historiography offers examples of both successful and unsuccessful non-empirical science. History of science also teaches that times of conflict are often times of innovation, in which novel scholarly identities may come into being. At the same time, since the contributions of Thomas Kuhn historians have developed a critical attitude towards formal attempts and methodological recipes for epistemic demarcation and justification of scientific practice. These are now, however, being considered in the debate on non-empirical physics.

You can find a PDF of the full paper here.

As always, proper comments are welcome through the box below.

P. S. The answer to the question posed in the title is of course that a proper physicist is a physicist who’s at rest in the laboratory frame.

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Life is too short…

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on May 31, 2021 by telescoper

Today not being a bank holiday in Ireland – though it is in the UK, it’s our turn next Monday – I’ve been trying to finish off my examination marking and haven’t had time to write a proper post. Instead of doing that I thought I’d share the following picture, which I found on Facebook. It’s from the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. I hope my colleagues in the Department of Experimental Physics don’t take offence!

Lest anyone gets the wrong idea about my view of the Experimental versus Theoretical Physics
divide, let me repeat some thoughts I posted a while ago.

Regular readers of his blog will know that here at Maynooth University there are two Physics departments, one the Department of Theoretical Physics (of which I am a Faculty member) and the other the Department of Experimental Physics. These two units are in the same building but have so far have been largely separate in terms of teaching and research; Experimental Physics (EP) is somewhat larger in terms of staff and student numbers than Theoretical Physics (TP).

For instance, when students enter on our General Science degree programme they have to choose four subjects in the first year, including Mathematics (much as I did when I did my Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge back in the day). Picking `double physics’ (i.e. Experimental Physics and Theoretical Physics) uses up two of those choices, whereas Physics was a single choice in the first year of my degree. In the second year of this programme students do three subjects so can continue with both Theoretical and Experimental Physics (and another) , as they can in Year 3 where they do two subjects, and in Year 4 where they can do a single Major in either TP or EP or a double Major doing a bit of both.

To confuse matters still further, the Department of Theoretical Physics only changed its name from the Department of Mathematical Physics relatively recently and some of our documentation still carries that title. Quite often I get asked what’s the difference between Theoretical Physics and Mathematical Physics? As far as Maynooth is concerned we basically use those terms interchangeably and, although it might appear a little confusing at first, having both terms scattered around our webpages means that Google searches for both `Mathematical Physics’ and `Theoretical Physics’ will find us.

The Wikipedia page for Theoretical Physics begins

Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimental tools to probe these phenomena.

This is what Wikipedia says about Experimental Physics:

Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and observations, such as the Cavendish experiment, to more complicated ones, such as the Large Hadron Collider.

I count myself as a theoretical physicist (that’s what I did in Part II at Cambridge, anyway) though I do work a lot with data and many of the researchers in my discipline (cosmology) actually work at the interface between theory and experiment, so the distinction between theorists and experimentalists is perhaps not a very useful one.

As a matter of fact I think there’s a good case for theoretical physicists to have at least some experience of practical experimental work. There are two reasons for this:

  1. to understand about errors in measurement and how to treat them properly using statistical methods;
  2. to learn how easy it is to break expensive laboratory equipment.

In the past during Open Days I have asked the audience of prospective physics students if they could name a famous physicist. Most popular among the responses were the names you would have guessed: Einstein, Hawking, Feynman, Dirac, Newton, Schrodinger, and some perhaps less familiar names such as Leonard Susskind and Brian Greene. Every single one of these is (or was) a theorist of some kind. This is confirmed by the fact that many potential students mention similar names in the personal statements they write in support of their university applications. For better or worse, it seems that to some potential students at least Physics largely means Theoretical (or Mathematical) Physics.

Although it is probably good for our recruitment that there are so many high-profile theoretical physicists, it probably says more about how little the general public knows about what physics actually is and how it really works. No doubt there are many prospective students who are primarily drawn to laboratory work just as there are many drawn to theoretical calculations. But there are probably others whose interests encompass both. For me the important thing is the interplay between theory and experiment (or observation), as it is in that aspect where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. Life is too short for arbitrary divisions!

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The Tironian et…

Posted in History with tags , , , , , on May 30, 2021 by telescoper

Last week I had my last Irish language lesson at Level 1. Although I struggled to find the time to do anything outside the actual classes, and am consequently struggling generally with the language, I have enjoyed it a lot and do intend to go again next year to try to learn a bit more and get better at the basics.

One thing that came up in passing last week was the abbreviation “srl” which I’d seen a few times but although I didn’t understand it I didn’t ask – largely because there were so many other things I didn’t understand. Anyway, it turns out that “srl” is short for agus araile which means “and others”, so is the Irish equivalent of “etc” (et cetera in Latin).

In English “etc” can be abbreviated to &c, where the ampersand is a ligature of the e and t that make up “et” and so stands for “and”. After some googling and discussions on Twitter I learn that Old Irish had quite a lot of special symbols for abbreviations which are no longer used in modern Irish. In fact “srl” used to be “⁊rl” where the “⁊” is not a seven (7) but a Tironian et. It looks like 7 in modern typefaces but in older Irish script it looks more like the ligature “koto” found in Japanese (ヿ). Thys symbol is not entirely extinct – I’ve seen it a few times (e.g. above) and also on old post boxes. Here’s another example from a pub sign in Galway.

This is not a name, by the way. The sign means “bar” and “restaurant” (bialann = bia +-lann, the suffix “-lann” meaning place, usually an enclosed space, so it’s literally food place; the Irish word for “library” is leabharlann, srl.)

The Tironian et is one of the characters in a system of shorthand invented by Marcus Tullius Tiro, the slave (subsequently freed) who worked as private secretary to Cicero (aka Marcus Tullius Cicero). This system was used extensively in monasteries until the mediaeval period, which explains how its use came into Irish through Irish monks. It went out of fashion when printing presses became widely available and the Tironian et is one of the few still in use in the age of computers – it does have a unicode and is available in various fonts that come free with most operating systems in use today.

I think one of the reasons I am struggling to learn everyday Irish is that I keep going off at tangents like this, something I tend to do in all kinds of contexts.

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Between Shots

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 on May 29, 2021 by telescoper

The weather being rather pleasant today I had the chance to do a spot of gardening and hence chat to a couple of my neighbours outside at front of house about this that and the other. It turns out all three of us are between vaccine jabs, two having had a dose of Pfizer/BioNTech and the other one dose of AstraZeneca. None of us had any side effects after the first dose but are all now wondering when we’ll get our second. I expect I’ll get mine by mid-June sometime.

Official statistics on Ireland’s vaccination are no longer being published owing to the continuing disruption caused by a randsomware attack on the HSE computer systems, but the programme itself has not been affected by this and it is now believed that over 50% of the adult population has had its first jab.

However, this week we learned that Johnson & Johnson has joined AstraZeneca in not being able fulfil its contractual obligations and there might be a shortfall of several hundred thousand doses in June. It always seemed to me unlikely that Ireland would reach the Government’s target of 80% of the adult population vaccinated by the end of June, and now that looks virtually impossible.

Progress in vaccination will be a big factor in how we start teaching again next academic year, especially as it concerns the student population. We won’t know for a while how this will pan out so I’m trying not to think about it.

Of course there’s also the question of how many don’t take up the offer of a vaccine. I haven’t seen statistics on that but I hope it’s a small fraction. If people refuse their jabs, many may die needlelessly.

P.S. Can anyone suggest a plausible scientific explanation of why the lockdown has caused all my summer clothes to shrink?

 

 

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More from the Dark Energy Survey

Posted in Astrohype, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on May 28, 2021 by telescoper

To much media interest the Dark Energy Survey team yesterday released 11 new papers based on the analysis of their 3-year data. You can find the papers together with short descriptions here. There’s even a little video about the Dark Energy Survey here:

The official press release summarizes the results as follows:

Scientists measured that the way matter is distributed throughout the universe is consistent with predictions in the standard cosmological model, the best current model of the universe.

This contrasts a bit with the BBC’s version:

The results are a surprise because they show that it is slightly smoother and more spread out than the current best theories predict.

The observation appears to stray from Einstein’s theory of general relativity – posing a conundrum for researchers.

The reason for this appears to be that the BBC story focusses on the weak lensing paper (found here; I’ll add a link to the arXiv version if and when it appears there). The abstract is here:

The parameter S8 is a (slightly) rescaled version of the more familiar parameter σ8  – which quantifies the matter-density fluctuations on a scale of 8 h-1 Mpc – as defined in the abstract; cosmic shear is particularly sensitive to this parameter.

The key figure showing the alleged “tension” with Planck is here:

The companion paper referred to in the above abstract (found here has an abstract that concludes with the words (my emphasis).

We find a 2.3σ difference between our S8 result and that of Planck (2018), indicating no statistically significant tension, and additionally find our results to be in qualitative agreement with current weak lensing surveys (KiDS-1000 and HSC).

So, although certain people have decided to hype up a statistically insignificant l discrepancy, everything basically fits the standard model…

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Meet the Astronomer Royal for Scotland!

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff on May 27, 2021 by telescoper

I just heard this morning the wonderful news that Scotland has a new Astronomer Royal, in the form of Professor Catherine Heymans who is based at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. I am delighted to hear of this appointment! I have known Catherine for a long time from her work on cosmological applications of gravitational lensing. She was kind enough to visit us in Maynooth back in 2019 on University business and to meet Maynooth University Library Cat.

Catherine Heymans is the 11th Astronomer Royal for Scotland, succeeding Professor John Brown who passed away in 2019. She is also the first female holder of the title, in the 187 years since it was created.

I’m not exactly sure what is in the job description of Astronomer Royal for Scotland. I think it is largely an honorary title, but it will give Catherine a platform for outreach and other public activities which I’m sure she will do brilliantly, hopefully inspiring a future generation of female scientists in the process!

P.S. I can’t resist mentioning that I have posted a look-alike…

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R.I.P. Dave Carter

Posted in The Universe and Stuff on May 26, 2021 by telescoper

Dave Carter, photographed around 2001 by the Liverpool Telescope. Picture credit here.

It is with great sadness that I pass on the news of the death over the weekend of Professor David Carter of Liverpool John Moores University who, among many other things, was a regular commenter on this blog. I understand he had been suffering from leukemia for some time.

Dave Carter obtained his PhD from the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge in 1977 working on the surface brightness profiles of galaxies. He then had a number of positions: at Oxford, at Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories in Australia, the Isaac Newton Group on La Palma and back in Cambridge. In 1996 he joined Liverpool John Moores University as Project Scientist for the Liverpool Telescope. He took early retirement from LJMU in 2012 but carried on research as an Emeritus Professor mainly working on the HST/ACS Coma Cluster survey.

His comments on this blog over the years – his first was in 2010 – revealed him to have a wide range of interests outside astronomy, including cricket and music. He was also involved in his local Methodist Church and Community Centre, and a local parish councillor.

I didn’t know Dave very well in a personal capacity – we only met in person a few times – but he always struck me as a very nice man as well as being immensely knowledgeable about matters astronomical. I send my deepest condolences to his wife and three sons, as well all his friends and colleagues both in Liverpool and around the world who miss him terribly.

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The Burning of the Custom House

Posted in History with tags , , , , on May 25, 2021 by telescoper

Today is the centenary of a significant event in the War of Independence. On 25th March 1921 about 120 members of the Irish Republican Army mounted an operation in Dublin with the aim of setting fire to the Custom House, a fine 18th Century neoclassical building on the North Side of the River Liffey in central Dublin. They were aided in this task by members of the local Fire Brigade who, being Republican supporters, started by the IRA, did the best they could to spread the flames throughout the building when purportedly trying to put them out.

The destruction of the Custom House was a major propaganda coup for the Republican forces, but in military terms it was disastrous. About two-thirds of the IRA volunteers that took part were captured and five were killed. That meant that the virtual elimination of the fighting capability of the IRA in Dublin. The whole plan was the brainchild of Éamon de Valera, who wanted to stage a large-scale “spectacular” to counter the British propaganda argument that Republican forces – who had previously fought a guerilla war of ambushes and assassinations – were just a gang of criminal thugs. The problem with his plan was that the IRA was vastly outnumbered, especially in Dublin where the British garrison was about 10,000. In practical terms, guerilla warfare was all the IRA could manage with the resources available at this time.

The Custom House raid might have been less of a military disaster had more thought been given to an exit strategy once the fires had started, by somehow securing a route out of the area, but as it was the Republican forces trying to hold a perimeter were quickly surrounded, ran out of ammunition in the ensuing gun battle, and were overwhelmed. But maybe it really did have a big effect on the British authorities. Just a few months later, on 11th July 1921, a truce was signed and the War of Independence came to an end.

There have been many commemorations today, many of them rightly focusing on the loss of civilian life and lots of coverage in the news and other media. Here is an item that was on RTÉ News last night.

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