Ex Officio

Posted in Education, Finance on June 23, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve been remarkably subdued and rant-free these days – partly because I’ve been too engaged with other things. However, I just came across a story in the Times Higher which put me in the mood for a short diatribe.

It seems that the Higher Education Council for England (HEFCE) has published a report entitled “Performance in Higher Education” which looks into university estates management. Among other things, this report states that in English universities academics are assigned an average of 13.2 sq m of office space per person, Scottish institutions offer 14.5 sq m, and Welsh universities a “whopping” 15.7 sq m. By contrast the average office space per person across all sectors in the UK 10-12 sq m.

The conclusion is that

The enduring perception of an office as a status symbol has contributed to the higher education sector lagging behind nearly all others in the efficient use of space.

An interesting inference, this, especially as it gives no definition of what is meant by “efficient”. Note also that it resorts to the pure cliché of the office as status symbol without a shred of evidence to support this as an explanation of alleged inefficiency. I have quite a large office – it seems Welsh universities are generous in this regard – but I don’t see it as a status symbol at all. It just means I use it for more things.

For one thing, I use my office for research. I can’t speak for anyone else but for me that means having a space to myself, free from distractions, for thinking. My room also contains many books and research papers that I use for both teaching and research. I also hold tutorials and discussion group meetings for which the large whiteboard is essential (although I would have preferred an old-fashioned blackboard). On occasion I also have private meetings with students and other staff at which confidential matters can be discussed in private.

Given the variety of activities carried out in a space which is only fractionally larger than the national norm, I would be quite confident of making a case that universities -or at least those that do both research and teaching –  already use their space more efficiently than other sectors.

And another thing. Many of us work in old buildings. Mine is a hundred years old. Converting it to an open plan environment would cost a fortune. Perhaps in order to effect the “cultural change” HEFCE desires universities should knock down the old buildings and put up brand new, smaller ones, with open plan offices? Pity in that case that capital funding has been slashed.

The HEFCE report states that “other sectors have … embraced a more open-plan scenario”. That may be the case, but other sectors are not universities and they don’t do the range of things we do. How am I supposed to hold tutorials in an open-plan office? And how would I be expected to do research with chit-chat going on all around?

Managers will probably argue that we could have dedicated rooms that could be booked for tutorials, etc. Fine. So we would have to decamp from our (small) offices to a bare cell with a group of students. If something comes up that makes me want to refer to a book or paper, I couldn’t pop over to my bookshelf and get it, I’d have to come back to my office. Or just not bother. There’d also be no space for impromptu meetings. No room for books either, but who needs them? Most university libraries don’t bother with them any more so why should staff?

I know exactly what would happen if these measures were introduced. First, academics would have to do their research at home. Opportunities for interaction between staff members, and between staff and students, would be greatly diminished. Students would no longer feel that the staff were accessible for advice and discussions, greatly diminishing the student experience. The impact on research would be extremely negative, as would be the effect on staff morale.

But who cares about teaching or research? It would be more efficient.

 

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The Cloud

Posted in Poetry with tags , on June 23, 2011 by telescoper

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,–
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

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Cosmic Clumpiness Conundra

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 22, 2011 by telescoper

Well there’s a coincidence. I was just thinking of doing a post about cosmological homogeneity, spurred on by a discussion at the workshop I attended in Copenhagen a couple of weeks ago, when suddenly I’m presented with a topical hook to hang it on.

New Scientist has just carried a report about a paper by Shaun Thomas and colleagues from University College London the abstract of which reads

We observe a large excess of power in the statistical clustering of luminous red galaxies in the photometric SDSS galaxy sample called MegaZ DR7. This is seen over the lowest multipoles in the angular power spectra Cℓ in four equally spaced redshift bins between 0.4 \leq z \leq 0.65. However, it is most prominent in the highest redshift band at z\sim 4\sigma and it emerges at an effective scale k \sim 0.01 h{\rm Mpc}^{-1}. Given that MegaZ DR7 is the largest cosmic volume galaxy survey to date (3.3({\rm Gpc} h^{-1})^3) this implies an anomaly on the largest physical scales probed by galaxies. Alternatively, this signature could be a consequence of it appearing at the most systematically susceptible redshift. There are several explanations for this excess power that range from systematics to new physics. We test the survey, data, and excess power, as well as possible origins.

To paraphrase, it means that the distribution of galaxies in the survey they study is clumpier than expected on very large scales. In fact the level of fluctuation is about a factor two higher than expected on the basis of the standard cosmological model. This shows that either there’s something wrong with the standard cosmological model or there’s something wrong with the survey. Being a skeptic at heart, I’d bet on the latter if I had to put my money somewhere, because this survey involves photometric determinations of redshifts rather than the more accurate and reliable spectroscopic variety. I won’t be getting too excited about this result unless and until it is confirmed with a full spectroscopic survey. But that’s not to say it isn’t an interesting result.

For one thing it keeps alive a debate about whether, and at what scale, the Universe is homogeneous. The standard cosmological model is based on the Cosmological Principle, which asserts that the Universe is, in a broad-brush sense, homogeneous (is the same in every place) and isotropic (looks the same in all directions). But the question that has troubled cosmologists for many years is what is meant by large scales? How broad does the broad brush have to be?

At our meeting a few weeks ago, Subir Sarkar from Oxford pointed out that the evidence for cosmological homogeneity isn’t as compelling as most people assume. I blogged some time ago about an alternative idea, that the Universe might have structure on all scales, as would be the case if it were described in terms of a fractal set characterized by a fractal dimension D. In a fractal set, the mean number of neighbours of a given galaxy within a spherical volume of radius R is proportional to R^D. If galaxies are distributed uniformly (homogeneously) then D = 3, as the number of neighbours simply depends on the volume of the sphere, i.e. as R^3, and the average number-density of galaxies. A value of D < 3 indicates that the galaxies do not fill space in a homogeneous fashion: D = 1, for example, would indicate that galaxies were distributed in roughly linear structures (filaments); the mass of material distributed along a filament enclosed within a sphere grows linear with the radius of the sphere, i.e. as R^1, not as its volume; galaxies distributed in sheets would have D=2, and so on.

The discussion of a fractal universe is one I’m overdue to return to. In my previous post  I left the story as it stood about 15 years ago, and there have been numerous developments since then. I will do a “Part 2” to that post before long, but I’m waiting for some results I’ve heard about informally, but which aren’t yet published, before filling in the more recent developments.

We know that D \simeq 1.2 on small scales (in cosmological terms, still several Megaparsecs), but the evidence for a turnover to D=3 is not so strong. The point is, however, at what scale would we say that homogeneity is reached. Not when D=3 exactly, because there will always be statistical fluctuations; see below. What scale, then?  Where D=2.9? D=2.99?

What I’m trying to say is that much of the discussion of this issue involves the phrase “scale of homogeneity” when that is a poorly defined concept. There is no such thing as “the scale of homogeneity”, just a whole host of quantities that vary with scale in a way that may or may not approach the value expected in a homogeneous universe.

It’s even more complicated than that, actually. When we cosmologists adopt the Cosmological Principle we apply it not to the distribution of galaxies in space, but to space itself. We assume that space is homogeneous so that its geometry can be described by the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric.

According to Einstein’s  theory of general relativity, clumps in the matter distribution would cause distortions in the metric which are roughly related to fluctuations in the Newtonian gravitational potential \delta\Phi by \delta\Phi/c^2 \sim \left(\lambda/ct \right)^{2} \left(\delta \rho/\rho\right), give or take a factor of a few, so that a large fluctuation in the density of matter wouldn’t necessarily cause a large fluctuation of the metric unless it were on a scale \lambda reasonably large relative to the cosmological horizon \sim ct. Galaxies correspond to a large \delta \rho/\rho \sim 10^6 but don’t violate the Cosmological Principle because they are too small to perturb the background metric significantly. Even the big clumps found by the UCL team only correspond to a small variation in the metric. The issue with these, therefore, is not so much that they threaten the applicability of the Cosmological Principle, but that they seem to suggest structure might have grown in a different way to that usually supposed.

The problem is that we can’t measure the gravitational potential on these scales directly so our tests are indirect. Counting galaxies is relatively crude because we don’t even know how well galaxies trace the underlying mass distribution.

An alternative way of doing this is to use not the positions of galaxies, but their velocities (usually called peculiar motions). These deviations from a pure Hubble flow are caused by lumps of matter pulling on the galaxies; the more lumpy the Universe is, the larger the velocities are and the larger the lumps are the more coherent the flow becomes. On small scales galaxies whizz around at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second relative to each other, but averaged over larger and larger volumes the bulk flow should get smaller and smaller, eventually coming to zero in a frame in which the Universe is exactly homogeneous and isotropic.

Roughly speaking the bulk flow v should relate to the metric fluctuation as approximately \delta \Phi/c^2 \sim \left(\lambda/ct \right) \left(v/c\right).

It has been claimed that some observations suggest the existence of a dark flow which, if true, would challenge the reliability of the standard cosmological framework, but these results are controversial and are yet to be independently confirmed.

But suppose you could measure the net flow of matter in spheres of increasing size. At what scale would you claim homogeneity is reached? Not when the flow is exactly zero, as there will always be fluctuations, but exactly how small?

The same goes for all the other possible criteria we have for judging cosmological homogeneity. We are free to choose the point where we say the level of inhomogeneity is sufficiently small to be satisfactory.

In fact, the standard cosmology (or at least the simplest version of it) has the peculiar property that it doesn’t ever reach homogeneity anyway! If the spectrum of primordial perturbations is scale-free, as is usually supposed, then the metric fluctuations don’t vary with scale at all. In fact, they’re fixed at a level of \delta \Phi/c^2 \sim 10^{-5}.

The fluctuations are small, so the FLRW metric is pretty accurate, but don’t get smaller with increasing scale, so there is no point when it’s exactly true. So lets have no more of “the scale of homogeneity” as if that were a meaningful phrase. Let’s keep the discussion to the behaviour of suitably defined measurable quantities and how they vary with scale. You know, like real scientists do.

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Sweet Fanny Adams

Posted in History, Literature with tags , , on June 21, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve been travelling more than usual recently and have been taking the opportunity to catch up with a stack of books I bought but haven’t had time to read. The latest is a hefty tome by Judith Flanders, entitled The Invention of Murder, a detailed, scholarly, meticulously researched but highly readable discussion of “how the Victorians revelled in death and detection”.

This isn’t just one of those “true crime” shockers – although there is plenty of shocking material in it, as will become obvious – it’s about the insight that crime gives into how society works. Murder casts a particularly garish and disturbing light on Victorian culture, as it was in that period that violent crime became a form of entertainment, which it remains today with shows like CSI.

High profile murders spawned a host of bizarre cultural phenomena in the Victorian age, including stage melodramas and puppet shows in which crimes were re-enacted for the public, cheap publications called penny-dreadfuls, and the infamous “broadsides” -cheap unregulated newspapers which were the ultimate in gutter-press, reporting the gory details in grotesquely lurid details. The detective story had its birth in this era too, fuelling public fascination with crime and detection. And then of course there were the public hangings, regularly attended by tens of thousands of people. These grisly spectacles carried on until 1868, after which time they were held inside prisons out of the public gaze. Crowds still gathered even then, to watch the black flag being hoisted to indicate the end of a life.

Rather than going through the whole book systematically, I thought I’d just pass on a few things that particularly struck me as I read it. You can read a review of the whole volume here.

One was the fact that many Victorian trials were farcical. There was little understanding of what to do with physical evidence, so more often than not the prosecution relied on allegations about the character of the defendant to get a conviction. If you were poor you had no access to legal counsel and, since you belonged to a demonized underclass, pretty much doomed if committed to trial. The same went if you were “foreign”, especially if that meant “Irish” and especially if you were also catholic. Judges routinely summed up the evidence in an outrageously biased way; the defence were allowed no summing up at all, regardless of whether the defendant could afford a lawyer. There were few restrictions on press reporting of trials, with the result that newspapers openly presented views of guilt or innocence before trial in a manner that was grossly prejudicial; among the worst offenders were the Times and the Observer, papers which we now consider to be “quality”. Juries typically took 10 minutes or less to reach a verdict and the time between sentencing to death and execution was usually 48 hours, so there was no time for an appeal.

The public executioner for much of the Victorian period was a man called William Calcraft. I don’t know if he was incompetent or just plain cruel, but he favoured the so-called “short drop” which meant death by strangulation rather than by a broken neck. Often the victim – and I use the word advisedly because for me such an execution is also murder – took several minutes to die in agony. One description in the book tells of a woman – convicted on the scantiest of evidence – so terrified by the gallows that she was unable to stand and had to be put on a chair to be hanged. The hangman miscalculated the drop and she took four minutes to die. How any human being could bear to watch such an event is beyond me, but thousands did.

Over and over again there are stark examples of the grinding poverty that reigned during the Victorian era. The underclass lived in filthy overcrowded and dangerous slums, in conditions too miserable to be imagined. Poor single women often had little choice but to turn to prostitution. Annie Chapman, for example, was murdered by Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel in September 1888. On her last night she had no money to pay for a bed in a lodging house, so had gone onto the street to earn some cash. After her death her belongings were itemized: apart from the clothes she had been wearing, her worldly goods consisted of two combs and a used envelope.

And then there were the children. Infant mortality was high and working class children in the Victorian era died so often of neglect that society had largely become hardened to the idea of killing a child. One example is the particularly appalling murder of a young girl called Fanny Adams in 1867:

Fanny’s head was perched on two hop poles, while on the ground was one of her legs, still with its stocking and boot on. Her right arm, then a hand, then her torso were found nearby. Her other foot, and left arm, were in the next field. Her intestines had been removed, and were not found until the next day, together with her heart.

Almost immediately the phrase “Fanny Adams” became popular slang for a cheap type of chopped meat you could buy in tins, thence it passed into navy slang as “Sweet Fanny Adams”, meaning “nothing at all” and remains in use to this day, sometimes abbreviated to “Sweet FA”. Nothing at all, it seems, was the value of an innocent child’s life.

Today it sounds unbelievably cruel that people could make a joke about such a terrible crime, but I guess that just tells you how brutal life was. I’d always thought “Fanny Adams” was a euphemism for “Fuck All” but its origin is clearly far darker. I’ll never been able to use that expression again without thinking of its origin and, perhaps, after reading this, neither will you…

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The PostDoc Apocalypse: How it spreads (via The Upturned Microscope)

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on June 20, 2011 by telescoper

Part One of this proved quite popular, so I thought I’d direct you to Part Two…

The PostDoc Apocalypse: How it spreads (Click on the image to enlarge) Click here for Part 1 … Read More

via The Upturned Microscope

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One Day I’ll Fly Away

Posted in Music with tags , on June 20, 2011 by telescoper

En route to the airport again, this suddenly popped into my mind. The tune was a hit for Randy Crawford in 1980 when I was still at school, but this version, which I like a much more than the original single, was made just about five years ago. It’s a lovely song by a much underrated singer, featured here with the Joe Sample Trio.

 

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LHC Hasn’t Destroyed Earth Yet (via Today’s New Reason to Believe)

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on June 19, 2011 by telescoper

I thought I’d reblog this as it relates to the pronouncements about the LHC by Otto Rössler I mentioned yesterday.

LHC Hasn’t Destroyed Earth Yet As I predicted nearly two-and-a-half years ago, it looks like the Earth will survive the most powerful accelerator ever built. A recent article validates my prediction. On September 8, 2008, I recorded a Science News Flash podcast addressing concerns that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would produce a shower of black holes that would, in turn, consume Earth from the inside out. I predicted that Earth would not only survive the experiments perfor … Read More

via Today's New Reason to Believe

You might also want to read this older blog post about the kerfuffle when the LHC was switched on. I quote:

Rössler turns out to be quite a strange fellow. He is an MD who stayed in academia, moved into biochemistry, and then made a name in the relatively new field of chaos theory. He seems to think of himself as a visionary, having founded a new field of physics called “endophysics,” which is supposed to take into account the observer’s inner state. Or something like that. Have you heard of it? Neither had I.

Recently, at the age of sixty-eight, Rössler, despite having no particle physics or blackhole physics credentials, announced that he had found important new results, alarmingly relevant to the destructive potential of microscopic black holes in LHC proton-proton collisions. Rössler variously estimates the likelihood of such blackhole production by LHC as being from 10% to 50% though he appears to have pulled these numbers out of a hat.

And there’s also this most excellent video that John Butterworth told me about because he’s in it…

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Ode on Indolence

Posted in Poetry with tags , on June 19, 2011 by telescoper

Since I’m too lazy this Sunday to do anything too strenuous, I thought instead I would post the poem that was read to us on Friday morning. Appropriately enough it’s the Ode on Indolence, written around 1819 by John Keats. The opening epigram is actually from the New Testament (Matthew 6: 28-29), which, in the King James version I have, reads

28. And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

The poem isn’t just about being lazy, of course. It’s actually about the importance to the creative mind of having time for restful contemplation, i.e. just sitting and thinking about things. Call it meditation if you like. I’m sure that’s essential for artists and poets, but I also think we scientists need it too although finding time to think is increasingly difficult when you’re on a treadmill designed to mass produce “research outputs” for assessment by the factory bosses…

‘They toil not, neither do they spin.’
I
One morn before me were three figures seen,
     With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced ;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
     In placid sandals, and in white robes graced ;
They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
     When shifted round to see the other side ;
          They came again ; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return ;
     And they were strange to me, as may betide
          With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
II
How is it, Shadows ! that I knew ye not ?
     How came ye muffled in so hush a mask ?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
     To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days ? Ripe was the drowsy hour ;
     The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
          Benumb’d my eyes ; my pulse grew less and less ;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower :
     O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
          Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness ?
III
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
     Each one the face a moment whiles to me ;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
     And ach’d for wings because I knew the three ;
The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name ;
     The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
          And ever watchful with fatigued eye ;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
     Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
          I knew to be my demon Poesy.
IV
They faded, and, forsooth ! I wanted wings :
     O folly ! What is love ! and where is it ?
And for that poor Ambition ! it springs
     From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit ;
For Poesy !—no,—she has not a joy,—
     At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
          And evenings steep’d in honied indolence ;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
     That I may never know how change the moons,
          Or hear the voice of busy common-sense !
V
And once more came they by ;— alas ! wherefore ?
     My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams ;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
     With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams :
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
     Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of May ;
          The open casement press’d a new-leav’d vine ,
     Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay ;
O Shadows ! ’twas a time to bid farewell !
          Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
VI
So, ye three Ghosts, adieu ! Ye cannot raise
     My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass ;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
     A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce !
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
     In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn ;
          Farewell ! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store ;
          Vanish, ye Phantoms ! from my idle spright,
     Into the clouds, and never more return !

 


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Life is Space

Posted in Art with tags , , , on June 18, 2011 by telescoper

I just got back home from Berlin, an hour later than I’d hoped owing to having spent an unenjoyable hour circling in a holding pattern east of London waiting for Air Traffic Control to give us clearance to land at Heathrow. The reason for the delay remains mysterious. “Showers” was what we were told, but since when was a plane prevented from landing by showers? And when we landed the airport taxiways and apron were dry anyway. Very strange.  Still, the trip had been such fun that even this less than ideal ending didn’t cast much of a shadow over it.

I spent yesterday at the studio of renowned artist Olafur Eliasson who is probably best known for his installation The Weather Project which appeared in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2003/4. If you want to get an idea of why it made such an impact, take a look at this short clip

That work made him one of the world’s most famous contemporary artists, but he has of course done many other things besides.

About two years ago, Olafur invited me to his (then) new Institut für Raumexperimente, which is situated in the same converted brewery as his own studio, to talk to his students about my work on cosmology. I had a great time then so when I received an invitation to take part in another event at the studio, I gleefully accepted.

This event was in a series of extremely informal workshops called Life is Space. In fact this was the fourth; you can get an idea of the previous one here. The day revolved around a series of “experiments” involving all kinds of sensations and phenomena – sound, movement, laughter, even tickling – involving contributors and audience to a greater or lesser degree. Among the guests were scientists, artists, architects, musicians, poets, dancers – all sorts of creative people, really. Including the people working in Olafur’s studio and the guests the total number of participants was about 150, so it was a large event.

The day wasn’t really planned or rehearsed but (or perhaps because of this) was fascinating and, for me, quite inspirational. It was certainly a very different experience to the usual science conference.

I knew I was going to enjoy the day right from the start, because it opened with a reading of a poem by John Keats  which I think I’ll post on here in due course..

Lacking the ability to present any “real” experiments of my own I decided to talk about various thought (or, as they say in Germany, gedanken) experiments to illustrate the idea of a horizon in cosmology, but also managed to weave in a few other ideas that had been suggested by previous contributions. I wasn’t consciously trying to construct a narrative for a day which had been deliberately designed not to have one, but it seemed to turn out that way because I was on relatively  late in the day and I found lots of connections with earlier experiments sprang into my mind. Just as well because I hadn’t prepared anything!

In between the experiments there was a lot of time for informal discussion, all of it hugely stimulating, and we were given a splendid lunch and dinner at which the conversation and wine flowed freely. The participants were not only extremely knowledgeable about science but also very keen to learn more – I’ve got an inbox full of requests for information about various things I mentioned, which will take me some time to reply to.

The only disappointing part of the day for me was the contribution of Otto Rössler right at the end. This chap is a biochemist who achieved a certain amount of notoriety in 2009 for his claim that when it was switched on the Large Hadron Collider would create black holes that would destroy the Earth. He still thinks so, apparently, despite the evidence that it hasn’t. I was very embarrassed by his diatribe yesterday because it betrayed a staggering lack of understanding of basic physics but at the same time was delivered with an air of absolute confidence that he is right and everyone else is wrong.  He gave a description of the properties of a black hole that a 1st year physics student would be ashamed of and at which I almost laughed out loud. It also turns out he believes that the cosmic microwave background was discovered in the 19th century (which it wasn’t) and that  the Big Bang theory is wrong and that anyone who believes in it  has been brainwashed.

I was getting a bit hot under the collar as his incoherent monologue meandered on. I thought of interjecting, but didn’t want to end the day with acrimony and in any case I thought it was self-evident that he didn’t know what he was talking about. When proceedings drew to a close and we went outside for pre-dinner drinks, it became clear that most of the non-science participants had pretty much the same opinion as me. “Is that guy a fucking crank or what?”, one participant asked me. “Yes” was all I could say.

I wonder if  Prof.  Rössler had been invited to provide comedy value?

Anyway I finally staggered back to the Hotel about midnight, tipsy, but at the same time invigorated. I wish science conferences were as much fun as this!

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A Summer Wish

Posted in Poetry with tags , on June 17, 2011 by telescoper

Live all thy sweet life thro’,
Sweet Rose, dew-sprent,
Drop down thine evening dew
To gather it anew
When day is bright:
I fancy thou wast meant
Chiefly to give delight.

Sing in the silent sky,
Glad soaring bird;
Sing out thy notes on high
To sunbeam straying by
Or passing cloud;
Heedless if thou art heard
Sing thy full song aloud.

Oh that it were with me
As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.

Oh that my work were done
As birds’ that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew.

by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894).

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