SKA Matters

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on March 13, 2015 by telescoper

There’s been quite a lot going on recently to do with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), some of it scientific and some of it political, some of it good and some of it bad. At least those seem to me to be the appropriate descriptions.

First the scientific good news is the the SKA Board has decided which of the planned components of SKA should be constructed during the first phase, which has a budget of around €650M. Details can be found here but, in a nutshell, it seems that the SKA Survey Telescope, which was to be built around the existing pathfinder project ASKAP located in Australia is not going to be built in the first phase. This implies the low-frequency bit of SKA will be in Australia while the higher-frequency activities will be concentrated in South Africa. That seems a pragmatic decision to me based on the budgetary constraints and should lead to a lot of good science being done. At the very least it’s a clear decision.

This positive news has however been overshadowed by an unseemly spat over the choice of headquarters over the location of the SKA Headquarters which has culminated in a rather unhelpful story in Nature. SKA HQ has been temporarily housed at Jodrell Bank Observatory (in the Midlands) since 2012 and there are clearly some who would like it to be located there permanently. There is however a rival bid, from the historic Italian city of Padova, at whose university Galileo Galilei once lectured, and which remains one of the top universities in Italy.

I should put my cards on the table and say that I’ve enjoyed many visits to Padova in my career, starting when I was a PhD student back in the 1980s and have many fond memories of the place. The late co-author of my cosmology textbook, Francesco Lucchin was Director of the Department of Astronomy in Padova at that time. For many years Padova has been home to a large concentration of astronomers and is undoubtedly a centre of excellence. Moreover it is a city that is very well served by transport links, just a short distance from Venice so easily reachable by air, and also on a major railway line offering fast national and international services. It’s also a considerably better place to dine out than Jodrell Bank!

Specola

Padova’s astronomers are housed in the Castello Carrese which adjoins the Specola (above), a tower which was once a working astronomical observatory but, being right in the city centre, has not been useful for such purposes for many moons. When I first started going to Padova the Department of Astronomy was located in the tower and in some nearby buildings but the rest of the Castello Carrese was used as a prison. Now it’s been renovated and all the astronomers have been located there. I remember the frequent walks across the little bridge over the canal to a coffee bar where we often did some of our best research!

Given its strategically important location, Padova was bombed by Allied planes on a number of occasions in 1944 and 1945. My Italian colleagues would regularly draw my attention to the plaque near the entrance to the Specola pointing out that it was hit and badly damaged by Allied bombs during one raid.

Anyway I can certainly see the merits of locating SKA HQ in Padova but it’s not my decision to make. Those responsible have not yet made a final decision, but what’s sad is that a number of stories have been flying around in the media that imply that the UK is trying to exert undue political interference to stop SKA HQ being moved to Italy. Whether this is true or not I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned the powers that be are following proper process and that process has not yet been brought to a conclusion. Whatever the outcome, though, there’s no question that the language being used in the press coverage is very damaging. Let’s hope it can all be resolved amicably.

Now for a spot of lunch and then up to the Royal Astronomical Society where the topic of the Discussion Meeting is, somewhat ironically, Building an Open UK SKA-Science Consortium…

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Bloomdido – In Memoriam Charlie Parker

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , , on March 12, 2015 by telescoper

bird

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the death of the great saxophonist Charlie Parker (“Bird”) on 12th March 1955. I’ve written quite a few posts relating to Charlie Parker over the years but today has provided a good excuse to spend my lunchtime writing another one, this time featuring one of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite albums. First released in 1952 but in fact recorded in two separate sessions in 1949 and 1950, the album Bird and Diz was actually the last studio album made under the joint leadership of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two main architects of the bebop revolution; the track I’ve picked has the added advantage of featuring another great musical genius on piano, Thelonious Monk.

The Charlie Parker composition Bloomdido is yet another of his variations on the blues, though this one is a bit less intricate than some of the others he wrote. Here are the chords for Bloomdido:

Bloomdido

You can see that the progression is based around the standard three chords of a blues in B♭. The foundation is a  “tonic” chord (T) based on the root note of whatever key it’s played in, in this case B♭. This sometimes a basic triad consisting of the first, third and five notes of a major scale starting on that note or, as in this example,  including the dominant 7th so it’s B♭7. The next chord is the subdominant chord  (S), shifting things up by a perfect fourth relative to the tonic, in this case an E♭7 and then finally we have the dominant (D) which brings us up by a fifth from the original root note, in this case F7.

The basic blues sequence in B♭ would be four bars of B♭7 (T), two of E♭7 (S), back to B♭7 (T) for two, then the characteristic bluesy cadence returning to two bars of  B♭7 (T) via one bar each of F7 (D) and E♭7 (S). The sequence for Bloomdido has a few alterations, including a characteristic turnaround at the end instead of the tonic, but is otherwise fairly recognizable. I guess the first part of the title  is a play on the blues origin too, though I wonder if the second part suggests that some of the alterations are inspired by the A-section of the  Juan Tizol standard Perdido?

Some people tell me they find Charlie Parker’s music “too technical” and that somehow if music “needs to be explained” it’s not good music. I don’t understand that attitude at all. I find this music so fascinating and exciting to listen to that I want to try to dig a little bit into it and find out what’s going underneath the surface. It’s particularly striking what a difference a few substitutions and passing chords can make to the overall harmonic “feel” of a piece like this compared to a standard blues sequence, for example. But you don’t need to study the chords to appreciate the sheer beauty of the music that Charlie Parker built on these harmonic foundations; his solo on this track, as on so many others he recorded in his short life,  is just sublime even if you don’t realise how hard it is to play! I guess it all depends whether your way of enjoying a thing is to sit back and let it wash over you, or for it to inspire you to find out more. Many of the physicists I know are deeply interested in music. Perhaps that’s because they’re the sort of people who don’t just think “wow that’s beautiful”, they tend to think “wow that’s beautiful – how does it work?”.

Charlie Parker and Albert Einstein died in the same year, just over a month apart, the former in March 1955 and the latter in April. They were two very different geniuses but it’s as difficult to imagine physics without  Einstein as jazz without Bird.

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Forthcoming Attraction: Dark Energy and its Discontents

Posted in Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 11, 2015 by telescoper

Busy again today, so just time for a spot of gratuitous self-promotion. I shall be giving a public lecture on Friday 24th April 2015 at the very posh-sounding Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. Here is the poster, which explains all. Will I see any readers of this blog there?

Bath_lecture

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To His Coy Mistress

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on March 10, 2015 by telescoper

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
A hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

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Parametric Resonance – It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on March 10, 2015 by telescoper

It’s a small universe world. This  lunchtime I turned up to the local Cosmology discussion group for a talk on reheating after inflation during which the topic of parametric resonance came up. To illustrate the concept the speaker showed this nice video, and there was my esteemed former University of Nottingham colleague and fellow jazz enthusiast Roger Bowley explaining all!

 

 

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Four Times a Supernova

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on March 9, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve been a bit pressed for time recently (to put it mildly) so am a bit late catching up on a wonderful observation (by Kelly et al.) reported in last week’s issue of Science. Here’s the abstract:

In 1964, Refsdal hypothesized that a supernova whose light traversed multiple paths around a strong gravitational lens could be used to measure the rate of cosmic expansion. We report the discovery of such a system. In Hubble Space Telescope imaging, we have found four images of a single supernova forming an Einstein cross configuration around a redshift z = 0.54 elliptical galaxy in the MACS J1149.6+2223 cluster. The cluster’s gravitational potential also creates multiple images of the z = 1.49 spiral supernova host galaxy, and a future appearance of the supernova elsewhere in the cluster field is expected. The magnifications and staggered arrivals of the supernova images probe the cosmic expansion rate, as well as the distribution of matter in the galaxy and cluster lenses.

And here’s a nice picture of the system which I ripped of from a nice report in Physics World:

PW-2015-03-05-Commissariat-supernovae

Multiple images of background objects caused by gravitational lensing have been observed before, but the key thing about this particular “Einstein Cross” is that the background object is a type of exploding star called a supernova. That means that the light it emits will decay over time. That light reaches us via four different paths around the intervening galaxy cluster so monitoring the different evolution in the four images will yield direct measurements of the physical scale of the cluster and hopefully  answer a host of interesting cosmological questions.

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Tony Blair, dread creature of the forbidden swamp

Posted in Uncategorized on March 8, 2015 by telescoper

Withering. Wonderful. Worth reblogging.

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NAM 2015 Open for Registration

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , on March 7, 2015 by telescoper

A bit busy today so I just have time for another quick plug of this year’s  Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting, which will be taking place at the splendid Venue Cymru conference centre, Llandudno, North Wales, from Sunday 5th July to Thursday 9th July 2015. I’ve posted most of this before, but I thought I’d post it again because today is the day that registration opened; you can sign up by following the link from here.

To whet your appetite, here are some pictures of lovely Llandudno  I took at the last National Astronomy Meeting there, back in 2011.

The draft science programme is available and you can also find a full list of parallel sessions here. You can also  submit proposals for contributed talks and posters for any of the sessions, including the one I’m organizing described below.

 

If you’re on Twitter you can keep up-to-date with developments by following their Twitter feed:

I’m actually on the Scientific Organizing Committee for NAM 2015 and as such I’ll be organizing a part of this meeting, namely a couple of sessions on Cosmology under the title Cosmology Beyond the Standard Model, with the following description.

Recent observations, particularly those from the Planck satellite, have provided strong empirical foundations for a standard cosmological model that is based on Einstein’s general theory of relativity and which describes a universe which is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales and which is dominated by dark energy and matter components. This session will explore theoretical and observational challenges to this standard picture, including modified gravity theories, models with large-scale inhomogeneity and/or anisotropy, and alternative forms of matter-energy. The aim will be to both take stock of the evidence for, and stimulate further investigation of, physics beyond the standard model.

It’s obviously quite a broad remit so I hope that there will be plenty of contributed talks and posters. NAM is a particularly good opportunity for younger researchers – PhD students and postdocs – to present their work to a big audience so I particularly encourage such persons to submit abstracts. Would more senior readers please pass this message on to anyone they think might want to give a talk?

If you have any questions please feel free to use the comments box (or contact me privately).

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Essays in Physics

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , , , on March 6, 2015 by telescoper

In the course of a rare episode of tidying-up in my office I came across this. You can click on it to make it bigger if it’s difficult to read. It was the first paper of my finals examination at the University of Cambridge way back in 1985. Yes, that really was thirty years ago…

wpid-wp-1425648226410.jpeg

As you can probably infer from the little circle around number 4, I decided to write an Essay about topic 4. I’ve always been interested in detective stories so this was an easy choice for me, but I have absolutely no idea what I wrote about for three hours. Nor do I recall actually ever getting a mark for the essay, so I never really knew whether it really counted for anything. I do remember, however, that I had another 3-hour examination in the afternoon of the same day, two three-hour examinations the following day, and would have had two the day after that had I not elected to do a theory project which let me off one paper at the end.

I survived this rigorous diet of examinations (more-or-less) and later that year moved to Sussex to start my DPhil, returning here couple of years ago as Head of the same School in which I did my graduate studies. To add further proof that the universe is cyclic, this year I’ve taken on the job of being External Examiner for physics at the University of Cambridge, the same place I did my undergraduate studies.

Anyway, to get back to the essay paper, we certainly don’t set essay examinations like that here in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex and I suspect they no longer do so in the Department of Physics at Cambridge. I don’t really see the point of making students write such things under examination conditions. On the other hand, I do have an essay as part of the coursework in my 2nd Year Theoretical Physics module. That may seem surprising and I’m not sure the students like the idea, but the reason for having it is that theoretical physics students don’t do experimental work in the second year so they don’t get the chance to develop their writing skills through lab reports. The essay titles I set are much more specific than those listed in the paper above and linked very closely to the topics covered in the lectures, but it’s still an opportunity for physics students to practice writing and getting some feedback on their efforts. Incidentally, some of the submissions last year were outstandingly good and I’m actually quite looking forward to reading this year’s crop!

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Brighton’s Green Nightmare

Posted in Brighton, Politics with tags , , on March 5, 2015 by telescoper

Two years ago I posted an item about the effects of industrial action by Brighton & Hove’s refuse collectors, the ironically-named company Cityclean. Strikes and other industrial action have happened intermittently over the last year, but it has been difficult to establish when Cityclean are working and when they are not because the typical level of service is absolutely abysmal. Apparently the latest strike is supposed to have finished, but some drivers are still “working to rule”.

Brighton_rubbish

The fact of the matter is that this state of affairs is the rule in Kemptown, the part of Brighton I live in. The refuse collection service is shockingly unreliable and more often than not the street resembles a rubbish tip, whether or not there’s a strike.

It’s quite obvious who is to blame for all this. Cityclean is managed, badly, by the local Council which is controlled by a shambolic Green Party more interested in splurging money on vanity projects like the infamous i360, and trying to wreck the budget-setting process, than providing decent services for local people. Given the importance the Green Party pretends to attach to recycling and sustainability, it is appalling that the fraction of refuse that is recycled is just 24%, one of the lowest rates in the entire country. The local Greens think the council should take over running bus services too. If they do as good a job of that as they do with the refuse collection service then I’ll probably be walking to work most days of the week.

I keep hearing from people living elsewhere who a flirting with the idea of voting for the Greens in the General Election and Local Elections forthcoming in May. I very much doubt that there will be any “Green Surge” in Brighton, unless it comes in the form of a noxious ooze emanating from mountains of uncollected garbage. I am pretty sure the Green will get wiped off the face of the Council in Brighton and Hove. If you’re actually thinking of voting for them elsewhere, take a look at the mess they’ve made here and I’m sure you will change your mind.

Britain’s only Green MP (Caroline Lucas) is looking to retain her seat in Brighton Pavilion at the General Election. To attempt to achieve this she has initiated a frantic campaign to distance herself from the antics of the Green Party’s representatives on the local council. I find that attitude completely hypocritical and I hope she fails. If she really doesn’t agree with her party she should stand as an independent. I won’t be voting for her anyway. Apart from everything else I’m not in her constituency..

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