The World

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on January 28, 2010 by telescoper

The  poet Henry Vaughan was born in Trenewydd (Newton), near Brecon, in Wales, in 1622 and lived most of his life not far from there in the small village of Llansantffraed, where he also practised as a physician. He died in 1695. His twin brother Thomas Vaughan was a noted philosopher (and alchemist), so theirs was clearly an interesting family! Henry Vaughan followed in the footsteps of another famous Welsh metaphysical poet, George Herbert, although literary experts seem to argue about their relative merits, as literary experts are wont to do…

I’ve recently developed a bit of a thing for English (and Welsh) metaphysical poets and have included a few examples on here, partly because they are totally new to me and might therefore be new to people reading this blog, and partly because they often deal with grand themes about the Universe which gives me an excuse to include them on what I sometimes pretend is a science blog.

Like many of his ilk (including Thomas Traherne, who I’ve blogged about before) Henry Vaughan wasn’t particularly celebrated in his lifetime but he was increasingly appreciated after his death;  William Wordsworth acknowledged him as a major influence, for example. Recurring themes in Vaughan’s poems – like those of Wordsworth – are the loss of childhood innocence and a love for Nature. I’ve picked one of his most famous works as an example. It doesn’t have as strong an astronomical connection as some others, but the opening lines are so beautiful I hope you won’t mind!

The World

I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
The doting Lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit’s sour delights;
With gloves and knots, the silly snares of pleasure;
Yet his dear treasure
All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flower.

The darksome Statesman hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight fog, moved there so slow
He did nor stay nor go;
Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found,
Worked under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but One did see
That policy.
Churches and altars fed him, perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rained about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.

The fearful Miser on a heap of rust
Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust;
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves.
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugged each one his pelf.
The downright Epicure placed heaven in sense
And scorned pretence;
While others, slipped into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort, slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor despisèd Truth sat counting by
Their victory.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing and weep, soared up into the Ring;
But most would use no wing.
‘Oh, fools,’ said I, ‘thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way,
The way which from this dead and dark abode
Leaps up to God,
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
More bright than he.’
But as I did their madness so discuss,
One whispered thus,
This Ring the Bridegroom did for none provide
But for his Bride.

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The Seven Year Itch

Posted in Bad Statistics, Cosmic Anomalies, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on January 27, 2010 by telescoper

I was just thinking last night that it’s been a while since I posted anything in the file marked cosmic anomalies, and this morning I woke up to find a blizzard of papers on the arXiv from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) team. These relate to an analysis of the latest data accumulated now over seven years of operation; a full list of the papers is given here.

I haven’t had time to read all of them yet, but I thought it was worth drawing attention to the particular one that relates to the issue of cosmic anomalies. I’ve taken the liberty of including the abstract here:

A simple six-parameter LCDM model provides a successful fit to WMAP data, both when the data are analyzed alone and in combination with other cosmological data. Even so, it is appropriate to search for any hints of deviations from the now standard model of cosmology, which includes inflation, dark energy, dark matter, baryons, and neutrinos. The cosmological community has subjected the WMAP data to extensive and varied analyses. While there is widespread agreement as to the overall success of the six-parameter LCDM model, various “anomalies” have been reported relative to that model. In this paper we examine potential anomalies and present analyses and assessments of their significance. In most cases we find that claimed anomalies depend on posterior selection of some aspect or subset of the data. Compared with sky simulations based on the best fit model, one can select for low probability features of the WMAP data. Low probability features are expected, but it is not usually straightforward to determine whether any particular low probability feature is the result of the a posteriori selection or of non-standard cosmology. We examine in detail the properties of the power spectrum with respect to the LCDM model. We examine several potential or previously claimed anomalies in the sky maps and power spectra, including cold spots, low quadrupole power, quadropole-octupole alignment, hemispherical or dipole power asymmetry, and quadrupole power asymmetry. We conclude that there is no compelling evidence for deviations from the LCDM model, which is generally an acceptable statistical fit to WMAP and other cosmological data.

Since I’m one of those annoying people who have been sniffing around the WMAP data for signs of departures from the standard model, I thought I’d comment on this issue.

As the abstract says, the  LCDM model does indeed provide a good fit to the data, and the fact that it does so with only 6 free parameters is particularly impressive. On the other hand, this modelling process involves the compression of an enormous amount of data into just six numbers. If we always filter everything through the standard model analysis pipeline then it is possible that some vital information about departures from this framework might be lost. My point has always been that every now and again it is worth looking in the wastebasket to see if there’s any evidence that something interesting might have been discarded.

Various potential anomalies – mentioned in the above abstract – have been identified in this way, but usually there has turned out to be less to them than meets the eye. There are two reasons not to get too carried away.

The first reason is that no experiment – not even one as brilliant as WMAP – is entirely free from systematic artefacts. Before we get too excited and start abandoning our standard model for more exotic cosmologies, we need to be absolutely sure that we’re not just seeing residual foregrounds, instrument errors, beam asymmetries or some other effect that isn’t anything to do with cosmology. Because it has performed so well, WMAP has been able to do much more science than was originally envisaged, but every experiment is ultimately limited by its own systematics and WMAP is no different. There is some (circumstantial) evidence that some of the reported anomalies may be at least partly accounted for by  glitches of this sort.

The second point relates to basic statistical theory. Generally speaking, an anomaly A (some property of the data) is flagged as such because it is deemed to be improbable given a model M (in this case the LCDM). In other words the conditional probability P(A|M) is a small number. As I’ve repeatedly ranted about in my bad statistics posts, this does not necessarily mean that P(M|A)- the probability of the model being right – is small. If you look at 1000 different properties of the data, you have a good chance of finding something that happens with a probability of 1 in a thousand. This is what the abstract means by a posteriori reasoning: it’s not the same as talking out of your posterior, but is sometimes close to it.

In order to decide how seriously to take an anomaly, you need to work out P(M|A), the probability of the model given the anomaly, which requires that  you not only take into account all the other properties of the data that are explained by the model (i.e. those that aren’t anomalous), but also specify an alternative model that explains the anomaly better than the standard model. If you do this, without introducing too many free parameters, then this may be taken as compelling evidence for an alternative model. No such model exists -at least for the time being – so the message of the paper is rightly skeptical.

So, to summarize, I think what the WMAP team say is basically sensible, although I maintain that rummaging around in the trash is a good thing to do. Models are there to be tested and surely the best way to test them is to focus on things that look odd rather than simply congratulating oneself about the things that fit? It is extremely impressive that such intense scrutiny over the last seven years has revealed so few oddities, but that just means that we should look even harder..

Before too long, data from Planck will provide an even sterner test of the standard framework. We really do need an independent experiment to see whether there is something out there that WMAP might have missed. But we’ll have to wait a few years for that.

So far it’s WMAP 7 Planck 0, but there’s plenty of time for an upset. Unless they close us all down.

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Astronomy Look-alikes, No. 11

Posted in Astronomy Lookalikes with tags , on January 26, 2010 by telescoper

I’m sure I’m not alone in being alarmed by the similarity between distinguished astronomical historian Dr Allan Chapman and fictional serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter. And to think he’s a member of the RAS Dining Club …

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Letter to Lord Drayson from George Efstathiou

Posted in Finance, Science Politics with tags , , on January 25, 2010 by telescoper

I just had a note from George Efstathiou, Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, about a letter he wrote to Lord Drayson about the STFC crisis. It’s  very much in line with what I was saying a few days ago. It’s good to see someone with some clout stepping into the ring, taking the gloves off, and not pulling his punches (That’s enough boxing metaphors, Ed.)

With George’s permission, I’m including the full text of his letter below; the added links are mine.

-0-

25 January 2010

Lord Drayson
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Castle View House
East Lane
Runcorn, WA72GJ

Dear Lord Drayson,

I would like to make a few comments concerning your structural review of STFC. I was a member of the Astronomy and Planetary Sciences Board of SERC (1991‐1993) and a member of PPARC Council (2001‐2004) and so I have some experience of previous funding systems.

Overall, I support the proposals put forward by the Royal Astronomical Society Forum and the Institute of Physics. It is extremely important that research grants remain in a reorganized Council rather than transferred to EPSRC. A transfer of the grants line to EPSRC, particularly at a severely reduced level following the STFC prioritization exercise, would recreate the difficulties experienced in the days of SRC/SERC that PPARC was designed to solve. (Namely, the long‐term nature of Particle Physics and Astronomy projects and their reliance on large international organizations).

In analysing the nature of a restructured Council, it is worthwhile reviewing some of the reasons for the difficulties at STFC, and the role of the Chief Executive in exacerbating those difficulties.

Firstly, Keith Mason has openly pursued a policy of transferring funds into areas with potential for short term economic impact at the expense of grant funding to Universities. STFC funds have therefore gone into facilities, innovation campuses and initiatives such as the Aurora programme. Together with a sympathetic Chairman and a Council that included three members of the Executive, this policy went (largely) unchallenged for the first two years of STFCs existence, though I know of not a single research scientist who agreed with it. Financial mismanagement of this policy finally caught up with STFC last year, leading to savage cuts of more than 35% in the grants line (the only `flexible’ part of the STFC budget). These cuts are more savage than the deepest cuts experienced during the Thatcher years. Mason’s attempt to downplay these cuts by referring to previous low points in grant funding is, frankly, risible. Government should be indignant at Mason’s attempt to write‐off the investment in science between the years 2002‐‐2007, which was intended (and succeeded) in improving the volume and quality of research in Universities.

As an example of the tension between economic impact and scientific excellence, BNSC published the Space Exploration Review recommending an increase in funding of £150m per annum and highlighting the MoonLITE bilateral mission. A few days later, the STFC prioritization exercise ranked MoonLITE `below alpha’. Any restructuring must tackle the difficulties of tensioning projects which may have economic benefits but little scientific merit against academic excellence. In my view, academic excellence should be the priority for any restructured Research Council.

Secondly, Mason has held the view (most recently expressed at the Astronomy Forum meeting earlier this month) that the UK has too many scientists involved in exploiting facilities in comparison to the number engaged in developing, building and operating facilities. Again, I know of not a single research scientist who agrees with this view. The science budget has increased significantly over the last decade. The expansion of astronomy and particle physics in UK Universities has been a rational response to the increased availability of funding. As a member of the 2008 RAE Physics panel I was able to see at first hand how this investment has translated into research of the highest international quality. The deep STFC cuts to the grants line will inevitably weaken the research base in UK Universities and may even threaten the viability of some Physics departments. The shock wave following these cuts will eventually be felt across the entire UK science base. Any restructured Research Council must sustain an acceptable balance between support of UK Universities and investment in facilities.

STFC has not given high enough priority to scientific excellence. This is the primary cause of the problems over the last three years. It is why scientific excellence will suffer following the STFC prioritization exercise. This unfortunate outcome has been achieved during a period of increased funding to STFC and despite the allocation of financial bailouts.

Any restructured Research Council must have academic excellence at its core. It must also have a Chief Executive who recognises and values academic excellence.

Yours sincerely

George Efstathiou

cc Professor Michael Sterling, Chairman STFC
Phil Willis, Chair, House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee

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St Thomas

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , on January 25, 2010 by telescoper

Walking past a Jazz club during my recent trip to Copenhagen – sadly, I didn’t have time to go in – I remembered the many times I’d heard the great Danish bass player Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (known universally to Jazz fans as NHØP) playing there in the past. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 2005, at the age of 58, bringing to a close a career that had started when he was only 17. He was an incredible virtuoso, playing his unwieldy instrument in an astonishingly nimble fashion. As a result he was number one choice as accompanist whenever leading jazz artists toured his native Denmark where he remained most of his life, despite frequent invitations to join big name bands abroad. Although he appeared quite frequently on TV in the United Kingdom with Oscar Peterson in the 1970s, he never really became as widely known as he should have been given what a great musician he was.

I looked around on youtube to find an appropriate example of his playing, and found this superlative performance which I’d never seen before and which also offers a fine helping  of the great Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone.  He will be 80 later this year and is still playing with the immense drive and imagination that he has shown since he began his career at the age of 11. He also wrote the tune, St Thomas, which has a strong caribbean feel to it, and which is based on a song from the Virgin Islands that his mother sang to him when he was a child. I’ve seen him play a number of times live, including at Ronnie Scott’s club in London and at the Royal Festival Hall, and wherever it was he always set the place on fire.

I hope the lilting calypso beat,  infectiously happy tune and, most of all, superb playing by every member of the band here will give you as warm a feeling as it did me when I first heard it. The other members of the quartet alongside Sonny Rollins are Kenny Drew on piano and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums, but listen out for NHØP’s fantastic bass solo, starting around 4:41. Brilliant.

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The Management

Posted in Finance, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on January 24, 2010 by telescoper

After my little trip to Denmark last week, it’s now time to settle into the routine of academic life. Teaching starts tomorrow, and I’m actually quite looking forward to it. I find teaching very rewarding, in a way that’s quite different from research, to the extent that I would hate to see further separation between the two in British universities. Call me old-fashioned.

Inevitably, though, it’s been research that’s been occupying my mind for the past few days. I’ve posted a couple of times recently about the ongoing review of the way astronomy and particle physics research are funded here in the United Kingdom (see here and here). The Science Minister, Lord Drayson, seems keen to find a way to stop research grants  being massacred by overruns elsewhere in the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). His aim appears to be come up with a plan before the end of February to find a way of preventing the situation from getting any worse for science. No doubt the idea of a dedicated British Space Agency will also be thrown into pot, so that the bit of STFC’s current portfolio that deals with space things will probably be hived off elsewhere.

The major question that is occupying the minds of scientists – but perhaps not those of the bureaucrats – is whether the research grants currently dispensed by STFC will continue to be held by whatever STFC morphs into or whether they should go elsewhere, probably to EPSRC.  I sense a predisposition towards the former possibility among many of my colleagues. I recognize that the EPSRC route is not without its problems, but I fear that if we remain with STFC then not only is there a very strong probability that recent history will repeat itself but that the damage done by the current STFC structure will be irreparable.

Behind all this is the issue of why STFC is in such a mess in the first place. When it came into being in 2007, it was immediately saddled with an £80 million operating deficit. Why? There are two theories. One is that it was a mistake, resulting from inept STFC management. The other is that the creation of STFC presented various grey eminences that inhabit the superstructure of British science politics represented by RCUK  with an opportunity to slash expenditure on “useless” science (i.e. particle physics and astronomy) without having to go through the tedious rigmarole of public consultation. I don’t know which of these is the truth but, given the choice, I’d put my money on the latter.

Note the behaviour of STFC’s Chief Executive after the yawning gap was discovered in his organization’s finances. If it was a result of management incompetence then he should have been fired. If he was stitched up by RCUK then the only honorable thing to do for someone with the best interests of science at heart was to resign in protest. Neither of these things happened. This leads me to the interpretation that Professor Mason was a willing participant in the game, a  point of view that is supported by his performance at the Town Meeting in December 2007 where the STFC’s delivery plan was presented to an audience of scientists. The document containing the delivery plan is notable for its upbeat and self-congratulatory tone containing no hints of the financial catastrophe engulfing the organization. It was clearly designed to say exactly what the Chief Executive’s political masters wanted it to say. The gross dishonesty of this publication was revealed by Professor Mason’s presentation, wherein he told us scientists something rather closer to the truth, that STFC was facing financial oblivion. It was an appaling performance.

After a botched and panicky initial attempt to cut science projects, and a public dressing down by the House of Commons select committee, it took another two years for its latest Programmatic Review to emerge. Once again, though, the management of STFC put an absurdly glowing light on the wreckage of UK astronomy, nuclear and particle physics; calling it “Investing in the Future” and making light of the devastating cull of research grants and projects that it is proposing. The message that I glean from all this is that STFC’s problems stem from deliberate policy at a high level, probably at the Treasury, and carried out enthusiastically by a hierarchy of yes-men who will do whatever they are told regardless of what it means for science. Some of these creatures may have started out as scientists, but they’ve definitely gone native when lured into the Whitehall jungle.

Of course the public purse is limited. We have to decide how much to spend on different bits of science. Astronomy or particle physics (or any other discipline, for that matter) has to make its case. Somehow a balance must be struck between all the competing demands for cash. Maybe Britain does have too many astronomers. Or too many particle physicists. Who knows?  My point is: who decides? This kind of thing is too important to be settled behind closed doors by  individuals who lap up whatever their masters feed them like mother’s milk.

The STFC debacle  is just one manifestation of the rampant managerialism that is strangling British civil society. Gone are the days when scientists knew best about science, doctors knew best about medicine and teachers knew best about education. Now we’re all subservient to managers who think they know best about everything. Things are no better at EPSRC, an organization notorious  for its top-down structure, mania for meaningless initiatives, and wholehearted endorsement of the ill-considered impact agenda. What I am saying is that the Haldane principle is dead and buried.

While I was in Copenhagen last week attending the inauguration of the Discovery Center I was struck by the differences between how research is funded in Denmark and in the United Kingdom. This new initiative in particle physics and cosmology is funded as a rolling programme by the Danish National Research Foundation (Danmarks Grundforskningsfond). Way back in 1991, Denmark part-privatised its pension system and a large chunk of the resulting cash was invested in scientific research. The organization funds programmes across an entire range of disciplines (including arts and humanities)  for periods of10 years (or, more precisely, 5 years with an extension to 10 after satisfactory performance; most get extended). The primary criterion for funding these programmes is scientific excellence and the vast bulk of the funds goes to funding PhD students and postdoctoral researchers at Danish universities.

A representative of the foundation (whose name I have regrettably forgotten) spoke at the official inauguration of the Discovery Center to describe the parent organization’s philosophy. In a nutshell his message was: “You’re the scientists. You know about science. We don’t. We’re here to help you hire the best people, then get out of your way. Excellence is what we want to fund, wherever it lies. That’s our only agenda.” As it happens, two out of the nine programmes funded in the last round, including the Discovery Center, were in particle physics.

Of course I was jealous. I was also struck by how similar this organization sounds to the suggestion I made in a blog post before christmas. Of course Denmark is a much smaller country than Britain and it has  a very different economic structure. I’m not saying we could simply copy what the Danes have done without any modification. But the  real reason why such an organization could never get set up in Britain, is that The Management would never allow it…

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Astronomy (and Particle Physics) Look-alikes, No. 10

Posted in Astronomy Lookalikes, Opera, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on January 23, 2010 by telescoper

I was struck by the similarity between the design of the  ATLAS detector, at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, and that of a recent production of Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz  in Valencia, Spain. How’s that for cultural impact?

Pity it had to be this Opera though. I hate it. Somebody should do a similar thing with the Magic Flute, which is actually all about particle physics…

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Cardiff City 1 Bristol City 0

Posted in Football with tags , , on January 19, 2010 by telescoper

It seems like ages since my last football blog post, but tonight has provided me with another opportunity. My local team, Cardiff City, was drawn against Bristol City in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. This promised to be quite a tasty fixture because Bristol City are the nearest English club to Cardiff and there’s consequently something of a local rivalry between the two. A couple of weekends ago I settled down to watch the match (away at Bristol) on the television, as it was shown live on welsh channel S4C. Unfortunately, the snow descended, the pitch froze and the game was postponed. When eventually played the result was 1-1 which meant, under FA Cup rules, a replay at the team initially drawn as the away side. Hence tonight’s fixture.

Cup ties like this often generate their own special kind of atmosphere, but it would be an exaggeration to say that this happened this evening. The attendance was pathetically small (only 6,731), partly because it was a very cold night and partly because the game was again being shown live on S4C. I left in good time from my house in P0ntcanna and found that it took me only 15 minutes from my front door until I was taking my seat in the stadium at Ninian Park. I’m certainly well placed for sporting venues where I live: football, rugby and cricket all within a quarter of an hour’s walk from my house!

The game started unimpressively. Both teams seemed lethargic, they were reluctant to press the ball in midfield, the quality of passing was poor and there were no clear-cut chances at either end. Then, after about 30 minutes, Cardiff’s teenage midfielder Aaron Wildig (who has just broken into the first team) picked up an injury and was replaced by Michael Chopra. This made a big difference to Cardiff’s attacking play and from then on they looked the more likely to score. Nevertheless it was an undistinguished first half which ended predictably at 0-0.

I warmed myself with a pint of ice-cold beer during the interval, and the game started again with Cardiff playing at a better tempo than in the first half. Although it was still a rather scrappy game, it started to get a bit stretched and both teams managed to string a few passes together and find a bit of space. Cardiff probed and made half-chances, but still didn’t look particularly likely to score primarily because they don’t have a particularly clinical finisher in the team, Chopra’s sporadic contributions notwithstanding. Thir best chances came when the Bristol City goalkeeper tried one of his speciality fumbles or botched clearance kicks. His name, by the way, was Gerken which sounded like gherkin on the public address; on a cold and frustrating evening this provided much-needed amusement.

Because the 4th round ties are being played this coming weekend, this game had to reach a conclusion tonight. I was beginning to worry we would have to sit through extra time and penalties, but at least I knew the ball would have to hit the back of the net at some point. I girded my teeth and gritted my loins for the long haul, wishing I had worn my thermal underwear too.

However, my fears turned out to be ill-founded. About 75 minutes into the game, Whittingham’s excellent pass found Chopra in space wide on Bristol City’s left inside the penalty area. The angle looked very tight, but he did brilliantly well to fire in a low shot that sped across the face of the goal. The danger seemed to have passed when it cannoned off the far post but, fortunately for Cardiff, the ball bounced off the woodwork into the path of the Bristol City defender Bradley Orr. I don’t know whether he was trying to put the ball out of danger wide of the post for a corner or just trying to get out of its way, but the result was that he smashed it with considerable force into the back of his own net. It was quite a comical moment, but they all count.

From then on, it was all Cardiff. They had made a good decision to keep going forward rather than try to sit on their lead. They don’t look the best defensive team I’ve seen, by a long way. There were two chances after that for Cardiff to score again, including one really good one for Chopra which he missed when it looked easier to score. Chopra is an enigmatic player, sometimes brilliant, sometimes ordinary.

Bristol tried to get back into it, but didn’t really threaten and betrayed their feelings a bit with a string of wild tackles, many of which went unpunished by an extremely indulgent referee. After a very long 4 minutes of extra time, the referee finally decided to blow his whistle and send Cardiff City into the next round. They will play Leicester City in the 4th Round on saturday. I might go, if I get back from my travels in time…

OK, so it wasn’t the greatest game I’ve ever seen but I still think it’s a shame there were so few supporters there. Along with many football clubs, Cardiff City has quite a few financial problems at the moment but I think if they showed a bit of imagination they could get the fans a bit more on their side. These cup games are not covered by season tickets, so why not cut the price to get more people in? Surely it’s better for the team to have a bigger crowd paying smaller prices, than one that’s depressingly empty?

You can read the BBC report on the match here.

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There’s a certain slant of light

Posted in Poetry with tags , on January 18, 2010 by telescoper

Once again I haven’t had time to put together anything of much significance for the old blog today so, as usual when this happens, I’ll cheat by posting a poem. I picked this one for its wintry and appropriately melancholic theme; it is by the great American poet Emily Dickinson. I bought a collection of her poems in a very cheap edition in a bookshop in the States many years ago, but have never really managed to figure many of them out. I gather she features much more regularly in Eng. Lit. classes on the other side of the Atlantic than over here in Britain, and its probably my foreigner status that makes me find her poems so difficult.

This a very famous example of her work. At one level it expresses the unsettling effect that changes in light can have on the human psyche, but that’s just the start. The deeper meanings elude me, except that it is probably to do with the poet’s uncomfortable relationship with organized religion.  At least when she was young,  Emily Dickinson was a devotee of the Transcendentalist movement, which saw human experience, Nature and God as aspects of a transcendent unity. The  view expressed in this poem is certainly nothing like that. This is a fractured, lonely world where Nature and God are both alien and oppressive influences.

The strange use of punctuation and capitalization is also very typical.

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes —

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are —

None may teach it — Any —
‘Tis the Seal Despair —
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air —

When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath —
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death —

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Herschel News

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on January 17, 2010 by telescoper

I’ve been a bit slow to mention recent news about the European Space Agency‘s Herschel mission so this is by way of a quick update.

The first thing is to remind you that there was a big meeting of Herschel scientists in Madrid just before Christmas, which was attended by quite a number of Cardiff astronomers. It also happened to coincide with  less happy events. The purpose of this meeting was to share the preliminary results from the Science Demonstration Phase of Herschel’s operations. I did a quick post about some of the results, but didn’t have time to cover everything, which I still don’t. However, the complete set of presentations is now available online and I’d encourage you to sample some of the amazing results. Matt Griffin gave a nice overview of the key results at the RAS Ordinary Meeting just over a week ago.

You may recall that the Herschel telescope is fitted with three instruments:

  • The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS)
  • The Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE)
  • The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI)

The last of these instruments is basically a high-resolution spectrometer which, among other things will be great for detecting spectral lines from molecules, including good old H2O. In fact here’s a nice example of a water line seen in a comet

The problem is that HIFI has actually been switched off for quite a while – 160 days in fact – after a fault developed in its power supply. There is a backup power-supply, of course, but the engineers didn’t want to switch it over until they had figured out what had gone wrong, which took quite a while.  However, last Thursday, the HIFI instrument was switched back on and is now working fine. The full story can be found here. It was also covered quite a bit in the general media, including  the BBC.

While HIFI was offline, the calibration and verification of PACS and SPIRE went ahead at a good speed and now HIFI will have to catch up which has meant a bit of juggling around with schedules but, other than that, it’s all systems go…

Finally, I’ll just point out in case you didn’t know or have forgotten, that the Herschel Mission has its own wordpress blog, which is regularly updated  and is well worth checking out.

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