The 5km Limit

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 2, 2020 by telescoper

Since the Covid-19 restrictions were imposed over a month ago I’ve been confined to within a 2km radius of my home.

Yesterday, however, the Taioseach Leo Varadkar announced that is being relaxed to a 5km limit. Eager to see what thrilling new horizons would unfold as a result of this announcement I checked on a phone app and found this:

Great. So now I can visit a little bit of Leixlip, a little bit of Celbridge, or an even smaller bit of Kilcock.

I can barely contain my excitement.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags on May 2, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve been quite worried about Maynooth University Library Cat as I haven’t laid eyes on him since before Easter, despite regular visits to his spot on campus on my daily exercise round. Initially I thought I was just turning up at the wrong time, but then when colleagues started to ask if I’d seen him I started to fret. It’s not unusual for cats to take it upon themselves to go walkabout and thus particular moggy certainly knows how to look after himself. Nevertheless I did fear that something bad might happened.

Anyway, I fear no more. Last night a colleague (Cathal McCauley) messaged me to inform me that our famous feline had returned, as large as life and no worse for wear. Here some of his pictures to prove it.

It’s just like a cat to reappear nonchalantly like that, as if he’d never been away. He seems as sleek and healthy as ever and continues to have a healthy appetite.

What he’s been up to for the past few weeks I don’t know. Perhaps that’s just as well…

A relevant factor is the weather. It hadn’t rained much here in Maynooth until a couple of days ago when it poured down. I suspect he has been sleeping al fresco somewhere but returned to his box when he needed somewhere dry. It’s just a theory of course.

The main thing is that he’s back and seems in good shape. I’ll see if he’s still around when I drop by this afternoon.

Update: Sunday 3rd May. I didn’t see him yesterday but made up for that just now.

I can confirm he looks very healthy and has a good appetite, though he did not seem best pleased when he saw a dog nearby.

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Mayday!

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on May 1, 2020 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, let me offer a hearty ‘Lá Bealtaine sona daoibh‘!

Today is also the day that the Irish Government decides whether to extend the restrictions arising from the Covid-19 outbreak due to end on May 5th (May 4th is a Bank Holiday). All the signs are that they will and indeed that they should.

We are told that the decision will be based on five measures.

The ‘criteria’ being quoted are:

  1. the progress of the disease;
  2. healthcare capacity & resilience;
  3. testing & contact tracing capacity;
  4. ability to shield & care for at-risk groups;
  5. the risk of secondary morbidity & mortality due to the restrictions themselves.

These aren’t really criteria of course as they don’t set a standard by which performance will be measured. My own amateurish attempts to keep track of the data show that while new cases are falling slowly (the value of the R-number is in the range 0.5-0.8) the rate of deaths remains roughly constant:

If you look at the world data on Covid-19 you will see that it’s a global phenomenon that the timescale for the spread to decrease is much longer than that for the initial increase. That means that loosening control too early will simply precipitate another rapid spread which in turn will require another lengthy lockdown.

The rate of hospital and ICU admissions is not falling significantly either. This may be because over the past weeks an increasing number of infections have occurred in care homes among elderly patients who are much more vulnerable to serious illness than the general population.

I can’t see any evidence from this that would support an argument for starting to end the lockdown anytime soon, and that’s before considering the other points. Testing, for example, is definitely not yet up to speed.

When it first started I told my colleagues that it wouldn’t start to unwind until June and I’m sticking with that.

It’s worrying though that there are signs that some individuals are taking it upon themselves to relax the restrictions. There is definitely more traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian) than there was a few weeks ago here in Maynooth. The question arises that if the lockdown is extended will it just become less effective as more people flout it? I think if it is going to be extended the Gardaí will have to get much tougher.

Although I’m very worried by the prospect of things dragging on I do at least get the impression that the Irish Government is doing its best not only to deal with Covid-19 but also to be honest about the situation, to the extent of owning up to its failures. The situation is very different on the other side of the Irish Sea, where the daily UK Government briefings are transparent only in their abject dishonesty.

UPDATE: to nobody’s great surprise the current restrictions will stay in place until 18th May, after which there will be a phased relaxation. For more details see here.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘When You Are Old’, by William Butler Yeats

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

One more for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. I couldn’t resist posting one by William Butler Yeats (known to his friends as ‘WB’)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘Dublin’, by Louis MacNeice

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

Here is another poem for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. This one is called Dublin and it was written by Louis MacNeice.

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals –
O’Connell, Grattan, Moore –
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades –
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler’s trick
You poise the toppling hour –
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.

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#PoetryDayIRL: ‘Quarantine’, by Eavan Boland

Posted in History, Poetry with tags , , on April 30, 2020 by telescoper

It is a remarkable fact that when the poet Eavan Boland passed away a couple of days ago, the sad news of her passing led the main TV bulletin here in Ireland. I struggle to think of another country where the death of a poet would be deemed so important.

Anyway, today is National Poetry Day in Ireland so I decided to post a poem by Eavan Boland as a tribute on this day. This is Quarantine a moving contemplation of the tragedy of the Great Hunger.

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking — they were both walking — north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

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The ‘Great Debate’ of 1920 – Shapley vs Curtis

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on April 29, 2020 by telescoper

I was so busy at the weekend that although I had the date in my diary I forgot to write a post on 26th April, which was the centenary of the Great Debate that took place on 26th April 1920 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

The principal protagonists on the US debate were astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis. It concerned the nature of so-called spiral nebulae (such as the Andromeda Nebula M31 shown above) and the size of the Universe.

Shapley argued the case that distant nebulae were relatively small and lay within the outskirts of Earth’s home galaxy, while Curtis held that they were in fact independent galaxies, implying that they were exceedingly large and distant.

The two scientists first presented independent technical papers about “The Scale of the Universe” during the day and then took part in a joint discussion that evening. Two papers outlining their opposing positions were subsequently published by Shapley and by Curtis in the May 1921 issue of the Bulletin of the National Research Council. The published papers each included counter arguments to the position advocated by the other scientist at the 1920 meeting.

Many at the time felt that Shapley had won the debate, interpretating the Milky Way as the entire Universe rather than just one of many galaxies. The spiral nebulae were relatively nearby, possibly solar systems in the process of formation.

A key piece of evidence in favour of the Shapley argument was provided by Adriaan van Maanen, who claimed to have measured the rotation a spiral nebula which implied the object had to be nearby. Van Maanen’s measurements were later shown to be incorrect. Moreover, within a decade, Edwin Hubble and others had established that the spiral nebulae are in fact large and enormously distant; they galaxies like our own Milky Way.

Two things struck me about this story. One is that it illustrates that its not unusual for a majority scientists to be wrong about something. Debates like this are really not very good for settling scientific arguments. In the end it the data count far more than opinions.

The second is that it is remarkable to think that just a century ago we knew so little about the Universe. Our modern view of the Universe may well turn out to be wrong in some important respects but I still think we can say we know more now than we did then!

I’m reminded of this quote:

We have not succeeded in answering all our problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.

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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 April 28, 2020 by telescoper

Well Maynooth University may have been closed by the Coronavirus but the The Open Journal of Astrophysics certainly has not!

In fact we have just published another paper! This one is called Discrete Chi-square Method for Detecting Many Signals and the author is Lauri Jetsu of the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Here is a grab of the overlay as it appears on my phone:

You can find the arXiv version of the paper here.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Editorial team and various referees for their efforts in keeping the Open Journal of Astrophysics going in these difficult times.

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Electroacoustic Miniatures (on Astrophysical Themes) – John McClachlan

Posted in Music, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 28, 2020 by telescoper

And now for something completely different.

I was listening to the radio last night – specifically to Bernard Clarke’s Blue of the Night on RTÉ Lyric FM – as a result of which I heard a fascinating piece of music by a composer who is new to me, John McClachlan. The composition I heard was a miniature with an astrophysical theme called Sagittarius A* (the name of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy) . It turns out that this piece is the first of 12 such miniatures composed during the ‘cultural wave’ of the current Covid-19 lockdown. I gather one is going to played every evening on Blue of the Night for the next few weeks.

All these miniatures are on astrophysical themes, which gives me another excuse for posting them in a playlist here!

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One Cigarette – Edwin Morgan

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on April 27, 2020 by telescoper

Today (27th April 2020) is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late great Scottish poet Edwin Morgan so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post one of my favourite poems of his. This is called One Cigarette:

No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker’s tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I’ll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.

by Edwin Morgan (1920-2010)

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