Britain dutifully bows down to the ruling elite.

Posted in Politics on December 14, 2019 by telescoper

A view from New Zealand…

leftinnewzealand's avatarLeft in New Zealand

Congratulations to the people of ‘Great’ Britain for voting the ruling elite into power yet again. You certainly do know your place. Now they have a mandate to treat people with disdain and contempt, for the next five years. I always thought people in the US were dumb, but there is a new kid on the block vying for the title. How can a party offering no credible policies, with a history of inflicting misery on millions, with a leader who hides in a fridge when things get mildly difficult remain in power. I could glibly say you get what you deserve, but that would be grossly unfair to the millions who can see through this charade of thinly veiled fascism.

It would appear that many people from where I grew up in the north have had a lobotomy, believing all that the billionaire controlled media had to say pre-election…

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Goodbye UK

Posted in Biographical, Politics, Uncategorized on December 13, 2019 by telescoper

Britain’s Prime Charlatan

Here I am on a Late Great Western train heading to this month’s Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London and to pass the time I thought I’d have a go on the blog.

I’m not going to comment at length of the election results, except to say that the scale of the Conservative majority and corresponding Labour rout mean that the UK is heading for at least five years with the hard right in charge, and probably many more. That is if the United Kingdom exists five years from now, which is doubtful.

During this time the country of my birth will almost certainly turn itself into a Trumpian dystopia, with planned assaults on the National Health Service, the courts, and what remains of its threadbare constitution. Poverty and homelessness will continue to rise and the evil xenophobic rhetoric that helped win the election (as it did the 2016 Referendum) will make the environment of the UK even more hostile to anyone ‘foreign’.

That’s whats going to happen and that, apparently, is what people voted for. How anyone could vote for a party led by a person so palpably unsuitable for high office is beyond me. But that’s what people did. I hope they’re proud.

For myself, I’ll just say two things. One is that at least this Election Night made me feel young again. I relived all the horror of 1983.

The second is just that although Ireland is no paradise I’m glad I found a way out of the nightmare of Britain. Sorry if that sounds selfish but it’s the truth.

Goodbye UK.

P.S. My train is going to be at least an hour late. No chance of the railways being fixed in the next five years either.

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Don’t mind me, I’m honing my toning

Posted in Biographical with tags , on December 12, 2019 by telescoper

Trying to divert myself from thoughts of what the British electorate is about to do, I actually read one of the emails I get from WordPress. I found this:

 

I suddenly realized that I’ve been doing the blogging all wrong for the past 11 years. I should have been trying to cultivate and convey my online personality in order to humanize my brand as well establishing an emotional relationship with, and gaining the trust of, my visitors.

I’m by no means convinced that any of my visitors would want to have an emotional relationship with me, but I promise to try harder in future to hone my tone.

Even if I do all this, however, I still think I’ll struggle to achieve business growth, principally because I don’t have a business in the first place.

 

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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 December 11, 2019 by telescoper

We seem to be having an end-of-year rush and have published yet another new paper at The Open Journal of Astrophysics!

Here is a grab of the overlay:

The authors are Aditi Krishak (IISER Bhopal) and Shantanu Desai (IIT Hyderabad), both in India.

You can find the accepted version on the arXiv here. This is another one for the `Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics’ section with a cross-listing in `Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics’, both of which are proving rather popular.

We would be very happy to get more submissions from other areas, especially Stellar and Planetary astrophysics. Hint! Hint!

P.S. Just a reminder that we now have an Open Journal of Astrophysics Facebook page where you can follow updates from the Journal should you so wish..

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`How Physical Cosmology Grew’ – The Nobel Lecture of Jim Peebles

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , on December 11, 2019 by telescoper

It seems like yesterday when I heard the news that Jim Peebles had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics, but this week the man himself has been in Stockholm receiving the honour amid a number of press engagements and other formalities including the Nobel Lecture, which has now appeared on Youtube and is well worth watching if you’re at all interested in cosmology!

 

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Wine for signing

Posted in Biographical, Education on December 10, 2019 by telescoper

I forgot to mention a nice thing that happened to me yesterday. A young man arrived at my office with a copy of my little book Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction, which he had bought as a present for his kid brother. It turns out his sibling had attended a lecture of mine a while ago and must I suppose have enjoyed the talk.

Obviously I was more than happy to sign the book and write a small dedication to the intended recipient. When I did so my visitor produced the bottle of wine pictured above as a thank-you gift. It was a very nice gesture. I look forward to trying the wine on a suitable occasion!

I did tell him that there’s a new edition coming out next year, and the one he’d bought was very out of date, but he didn’t seem to mind…

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The Eddington Eclipse Expeditions and Astronomy Ireland

Posted in History, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on December 10, 2019 by telescoper

After a full shift during the day at Maynooth University, yesterday evening I made my way into Dublin to give a talk to a very large audience in the famous Schrödinger Lecture Theatre in Trinity College, Dublin, an event organized by Astronomy Ireland. I have given a number of talks on the topic of the 1919 Eclipse Expeditions during this centenary year, but I think this one had the biggest audience! We adjourned to a local pub for a drink afterwards before I dashed off to get the last train back to Maynooth.

Here are the slides I used during the talk:

This time there was an important addition to my usual talk, courtesy of Professor Peter Gallagher of DIAS. He brought along the actual 4″ object glass used in the expedition to Sobral (Brazil) in 1919. I have previously only shown a picture of it. The appearance of the actual lens drew a spontaneous round of applause from the audience, and I have to admit it was a remarkable feeling to hold a little piece of history in my hand!

Obviously I was careful not to drop this item. It is on permanent display in Dunsink Observatory, by the way, if you want to see it yourself. I hope it made its way back here safely!

After the talk was over I was chatting to a couple of members of the audience when Peter Gallagher took this nice picture actually through the lens:

Picture Credit: Peter Gallagher

I look rather old in this picture. Obviously a trick of the lens.

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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 December 9, 2019 by telescoper

We have published yet another new paper at The Open Journal of Astrophysics!

Here is a grab of the overlay:

The authors are Emilio Bellini (Oxford, UK), Ludovic van Waerbeke (University of British Columbia, Canada), Shahab Joudaki (Oxford) and David Alonso (Cardiff)

You can find the accepted version on the arXiv here. This is another one for the `Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics’ section, which is proving rather popular.

We would be very happy to get more submissions from other areas, especially Stellar and Planetary astrophysics. Hint! Hint!

P.S. Just a reminder that we now have an Open Journal of Astrophysics Facebook page where you can follow updates from the Journal should you so wish..

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Arrival of Storm Atiyah

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff with tags , , on December 8, 2019 by telescoper

I was a bit alarmed when I saw this weather forecast map on Friday. At first I thought it meant that Ireland was about to be swallowed by a black hole but when I realised it was Storm Atiyah I had the lesser but still significant concern that my flight home from Cardiff would be disrupted.

As it happened the flight was on time, though the blustery winds at Dublin Airport ahead of the storm made for a more than slightly bumpy landing.

I was in one of these:

It’s a Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 operated by FlyBe. I had a window seat on the right hand side so had a good view as we bobbled around on the way in to land. The wings being above the level of the cabin and my seat being next to the starboard engine I could see the right undercarriage come down as we approached. We weren’t quite level when we reached the runway though and I felt and heard the left set of wheels touch down while the ones on the right I could see were still in the air. I could also see weren’t moving exactly parallel to the runway but slightly crosswise. We travelled for quite a few seconds on one set of wheels before we had both feet on the ground, so to speak. During that time I thought we might go off the side of the runway. When the right set of wheels did touch down, however, causing a big splash of water, only a slight correction was needed to point us in the right direction and all was well.

Pilots are if course trained to cope with windy conditions and I’m sure everything was always under control but I bet pilots do have to concentrate hard on such occasions.

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Good News for Quantum Computing in Ireland (and Maynooth)!

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on December 8, 2019 by telescoper

I am sitting in Cardiff Airport waiting for my flight back to Dublin so I thought I’d pass on some good news that arrived last night.

Yesterday, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, TD, together with Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, TD, announced that 16 innovative projects have been successful under the second round of the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund administered by Enterprise Ireland. The projects will share €65 million out to 2022.

Graphic purporting to represent Quantum Computing

One of the projects selected for funding is called Quantum Computing in Ireland: A Software Platform for Multiple Qubit Technologies. To be eligible for this kind of funding, projects must involve businesses and this particular project includes IBM Ireland Ltd, MasterCard Ireland, Rockley Photonics and Equal 1 Laboratories, the latter two being SMEs based in the Dublin area. The project also involves the Tyndall National Institute (Cork); University College Dublin; and Maynooth University (full name: National University of Ireland, Maynooth). This is the first large collaboration in Ireland in this area.

The Maynooth involvement comes via the Department of Theoretical Physics, in the form of Dr Jiri Vala, so congratulations to him. I’m delighted that all the hard work that went into preparing and presenting this bid has paid off.

Maynooth will receive a relatively small (but still very welcome) slice of the financial cake (~€600k) but it’s nevertheless an important strategic success. In a difficult funding climate it is important for a small Department to get involved in collaborations, both nationally and internationally, and also to make the most of any opportunities that present themselves. That is not to say that we plan to neglect research in basic science, but this we have to strike a balance that allows both the flourish.

There’s another piece of good news for Quantum Computing in Ireland to report on top of this. The 2nd European Quantum Technologies Conference (EQTC 2020) will take place in late Noember next year in Dublin. The website is here.

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