Festival Interceltique de Lorient

I spent last week in Brittany, France at the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, the largest celtic music festival in the world. The festival was as good as ever, with parades, concerts and performances from pipe bands, music groups and dance troupes from all the great celtic nations.

Le grand defile interceltique

The sheer scale of the celtic world could be seen from the number of delegations – from Asturias (Spain), Galicia (Spain), Brittany (France), Cornwall (England), Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Acadia (Canada), Australia and the Isle of Man. There were concerts every day in the afternoons and evenings, not to mention the Nuit Magiques, chereographed performances on a giant scale in the local football stadium – some say the Lorient Nuit Magiques were the inspiration for Riverdance.

Nuit magique at the Stade Moustoir

Best of all were the sessions in some of the local pubs, with Irish, Bretons and others swapping tunes into the early hours (this is where where yours truly comes in). The sessions were a treat for any musician, with tunes in Quay St orThe Galway Inn, not to mention monster sessions with performers fresh from their gigs at the Pub Glen late into the night. This was the best part for me, as I enjoy playing music with musicians from slightly different traditions. I think folk music has an edge over other types of music when it comes to this sort of jamming – and if there is one thing better than a lively Irish session, it’s a session where there is a mix of cultures and traditions. Also, it’s very moving to hear a tune/song you’ve known your whole life played in a more minor, modal key – an older, deeper version that makes your version seem like a pale modern echo.

Fast tunes and sad songs with Brian Coombe in Quay St

In the thick of it in the Pub Glen.

This year I was asked to do a short solo gig, in a beautiful old mill by the river. It was really good fun to do, and the practice I had to do left me on top form for the sessions. Nothing quite like sitting in a session with friends new and old when it suddenly goes supernova. Not to mention the wired social life when the musicians finally down their instruments…

Overall, this is a great international music festival – a feeling of an inheritance that is shared, yet different. I’m constantly amazed at the sheer diversity of European culture and its effect on the world…there’s a nice discussion of this on the festival website

Free speech, AIDS and the HIV virus

Johnny Steinberg has a depressing article on skepticism and the HIV virus in this week’s edition of New Scientist.

The article starts with the story of Christine Maggiore, a 52-year old who died in 2008 from infections typical of AIDS. Apparently, she had tested positive for HIV 16 years ealier, but shunned anti-retroviral therapy (ART), the therapy that is known to hinder AIDS developing from the virus. Her choice, you  might say; until you read that she also denied the treatment to her infant daughter, who died of AIDs-related illnesses at age 3.

Steinberg then goes on to describe the HIV denial movement, starting with arch-skeptic Peter Duesberg. Duesberg’s work with retroviruses – the class to which HIV belongs – led him to conclude that all such viruses are essentially harmless. In fact, many scientists shared Duesberg’s skepticism of the HIV- AIDS link in the late 1980s, but support rapidly fell away as clinical evidence linking HIV to AIDs mounted. In Duesberg’s case, rather than revise his views in the face of emerging epidemiological evidence, he chose to hang on to his old theory – a position he has stuck to ever since.

Professor Peter Duesberg of the University of Berkeley

The publicity afforded to Duesberg and other skeptics has had serious consequences for society. According to the New Scientist, a recent survey suggested that 25% of the US population currently question the link between HIV and AIDS. Even more seriously, NS cites the case of South Africa, a country where AIDS has made devastating inroads. Because President Mkebe chose to believe the skeptics, he strongly resisted the use of ART therapy in South Africa – it is now estimated that over 300,000 AIDS victims died unnecessarily there.

So what is at the root of this sort of skepticism? I have to agree with Steinberg when he states that “no amount of evidence will overturn the entrenched beliefs of some”. Combine this with the tendency of the media to highlight studies that show unorthodox results and you are well on the road to the public misunderstanding of science.

Perhaps we scientists are partially to blame. It seems to me that we do a poor job of communicating the consensus position – and how it is achieved – on important issues, from global warming to the MMR vacinne. There will always be scientists who question the mainstream, even in the face of overwhelming evidence; such is human nature and we cannot censor such views in a free society. Not to mention the fact that science progresses by asking the unthinkable. Perhaps the solution is to convince the media not to allow ‘maverick’ scientists disproportionate publicity – and for the elders of science to take the communication of science to the public more seriously. In Ireland, there isn’t a single university that has a Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science..

Update

In the same issue, New Scientist have an excellent editorial on the importance of scientific heresy. There is no contradiction here – the questioning of ‘accepted science’ from within is a vital part of scientific discovery and long may it continue. It is the misrepresentation in the media of the scientific consensus on a given topic that is of concern..you can find more information on this topic on Seth Kalichman’s ’s blog denyingaids.blogspot.com

Institute of Physics Spring Weekend

This weekend I was at the annual spring meeting of the Institute of Physics in Ireland in Wexford. I always enjoy these weekends – more relaxing than a technical conference and a great way of keeping in touch with physicists from all over Ireland. As ever, there were good seminars, a physics pub quiz and discussions of science and philosophy over breakfast, lunch and dinner (not to mention a 32-strong Wexford choir who gave superb after-dinner entertainment). At the same time, there was a serious side to the weekend with committee meetings, the Annual General Meeting and a highly competitive poster competition for postgraduates.

The theme of the seminars on Saturday was ‘Physics for Life’ and it mainly concerned advances in medicine/ biology that have resulted from research in fundamental areas of physics such as atomic and molecular physics (Bob McCullough of Queen’s University Belfast), solar physics (Louise Harra of University College London), nano-photonics (Brian MCraith of DCU) and molecule manipulation using ‘optical tweezers’ (Martin Hegner from Trinity). I won’t attempt to describe each talk, but you can find abstracts of the talks here.

My favourite was a general talk on causality in complex systems by world-famous cosmologist George Ellis: ‘Top-down action in the hierarchy of complexity’. This was a fascinating overview of the subject of causation, focusing on the influence of feedback from top-down processes on bottom-up causes. There were lots of great examples and the speaker was fully convincing in his conclusion that ‘no complex system can have a single cause’. I couldn’t help thinking how true this is of climate change. Some media pundits describe global warming phenomenon in terms that too simple; by citing man-made CO2 as the only factor in climate, they give great ammunition to climate skeptics who point to other factors. (The point is that while CO2 is not the only factor in global climate, it is now clear that the man-made increase in CO2 is a significant driver of warming.)

Top-down causality: George Ellis

Sunday saw a new IoP initiative – instead of more seminars, four well-known physicists were given the ‘This is your Life’ treatment in sequence. It was a great success, with the legendary Tony Scott of UCD interviewing Ronan Mc Nulty (on the LHCb experiment), Sile McCormaic (on her path to the world of cold atoms) and Ray Bates (reknowned Irish climatologist who was one of the first in the area of climate modelling).

Best of all, the very first interviewee was Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, the Belfast-born astrophysicist famed for her discovery of radio pulsars. (She is also President of the Institute of Physics). Professor Bell gave a fascinating overview of her life in physics, from failing the 11-plus exam to Cambridge. Of particular interest was her description of the postgraduate work leading up to the famous discovery: the long build of the radio-telescope from raw materials, perservering to the end as team members drifted off, the discovery of an unknown source, convincing her supervisor she was onto something, the disappearance of the source and the stress of a possible mistake and lost thesis, the re-appearance of the source, the classification of the first pulsars….terrific stuff.

Tony Scott interviewing Jocelyn Bell-Burnell

Professor Bell’s story was reminiscent of the discovery of the microwave background by Penzias and Wilson (see post here), but with one big difference. Bell was a highly trained astrophysicist, who understood clearly that she might have discovered an important phenomenon. For this reason, it is still highly controversial that, while her supervisor Antony Hewish was awarded the Nobel prize for this work, she was not. Was it because she was still a postgraduate? Because she was a woman? Perhaps we will never know. Apparently, there was a very good BBC documentary on the story a few months ago – I misssed it but I’ll try and track it down.

As always, the most humbling part of the weekend was the postgraduate posters. The level of research made one feel seriously inadequate. You can find the results of the competition on the IoP website; choosing the winners must have been very difficult. I particularly enjoyed two posters from UCD on the LHCb experiment (an indirect measurement of luminosity using muon production rates, and the measurement the cross-section of Z boson -muon decay). Even there, Ronan had to explain to me how antiquarks arise in proton-proton collision; must revise my quark physics!

Poster session at the meeting

All in all, a super weekend, courtesy of the Institute of Physics. Now it’s back to earth and those corrections…

It Must Be Clear

On Wednesday, I’ll give a seminar on Academic Writing to our research students as part of their generic skills course. Of course, my own experience is in technical writing for science journals, but our school of research has discovered that most postgrads find tips on writing very helpful, irrespective of discipline.

I guess the ability to state what you mean unambiguously is an important skill for any academic, whether you are writing an abstract, a grant proposal or a technical paper. In my experience, mathematicians and scientists do this rather well (contrary to public opinion). For example, I have often noticed that the written text in books on mathematics is usually extremely clear. Perhaps one reason is that we have to develop this skill – conveying the true meaning of relativity or quantum theory is difficult enough without introducing extra ambiguities due to clumsy punctuation.

Ah, punctuation. It’s amazing how good punctuation can clarify the most difficult of concepts, while poor punctuation can render a passage almost meaningless. The basics of punctuation are quite simple to learn and I’ve never understood why so few take the time to refresh their grammar. For example, did you know there are four types of comma? Or that the famous comma-and rule is a myth? (it depends on the context).

However, there is more to good writing than decent punctuation. In poor writing, the problem often runs quite deep – for example muddled thinking produces muddled writing. Another problem is lack of imagination. Some writers tacitly assume the reader already knows what is meant – they simply cannot imagine that the sentence they wrote can be read differently. A third sin is that of overload, again because the writer has not considered how this will read to someone new to the subject.

When I was writing my own PhD thesis, my supervisor refused to correct chapters of text. Instead, he insisted on seeing bullet points for each section, preferably hand-written. I still hear his voice when writing ;

What are the points you wish to make in this section?

Why is this point here and not earlier?

Does it hang together?

Use a new paragraph for every new idea

In real life, it’s fascinating how the professions write differently. Journalists often write well, but tend to state their opinions as established facts. Economists write more accurately, but must be read two or three times. Lawyers tend to use even more obtuse language, rendering the meaning impenetrable. Worst of all are writers in business and politics – they seem to enjoy using vague phraseology, deliberately allowing the text to mean whatever the reader wishes it to mean. To scientists, this is a terrible sin – if you don’t have a clear point to make, why write the piece at all?

You can find the slides I will use for the talk here. In the meantime, here are some hilarious examples of poor punctuation:

Julianna walked on her head a little higher than usual

I must get on my lover

No dogs please

Fan’s fury at cancelled match!

A panda bear is an animal that eats, shoots and leaves

A good book on punctuation, if a little longwinded

A new President

I just caught President Obama’s inauguration speech on our college tv. All of us were highly impressed, from the senior professors to the cleaning women (even my students were riveted). Very impressive and quite moving. I suspect Obama will make a great President and a big difference to the world. It reminded me of old footage of Kennedy, you got a glimpse of the US the rest of us used to be proud of. I suspect many nations around the world are heaving a sigh of relief..

A new President

There were several prominent references to corporate greed, to unsustainable energy consumption and to America’s reduced standing in international affairs. He sounded like he meant it. It will be interesting to see whether an intelligent man who is clearly well-motivated will be able to stand up to the vested interests of ideologues and big business…

So a new President for a new era. I notice that when Democrats get elected they talk a lot about America and American values, whereas Republican presidents talk about republican values…interesting

P.S. Forgot so say the most important bit – during the speechthe new President also said the magic words “restore science to its rightful place”. At long last…

Update: James wants to know where the rightful place of science might be (see comments).

The rightful place of science is where it can be heard by decision-makers, so that world leaders can make decisions based on the best objective scientific advice available. One of the first things the Bush administration did was to move the office of science advisor far from the inner circle of the White House (physically as well as metaphorically). He also installed political hacks and Big Business cronies to top positions in major scientific bodies such as NASA… a huge tactical error irrespective of your political viewpoint.

The result was a campaign of misinformation on science, with many consequences – the most serious of which was the effective stalling by the US of any meaningful international action on global warming for 8 years, to the incredulity of most other nations.

Already, Barack’s choice of scientific advisors has been spectacular – if you want to get a feeling for the views of US scientists on this, have a look at the blogs listed under ‘particle physics’ in the blogroll opposite..

Young Scientist Exhibition

I spent last Friday and Saturday at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in Dublin.  The CALMAST group at our college do a great job of communicating science to young people and I took a day out to go up and help out with physics demonstrations at their stand at the exhibition. They had super demonstrations covering all the sciences, including a robot that moves and talks, a show on Robert Boyle and simple demonstrations of the science of first aid . My own job was to demonstrate the physics of magnets, plasma balls and the like. It’s fun to do and great see the interest in young people, some kids find it utterly fascinating.

Robert Boyle (Eoin Gill) at the WIT stand (Boyle was born in Waterford)

Galileo (Astronomy Ireland)meets Boyle (WIT)

The WIT robot BENJI meets the Minister for the Environment

Such stands are really a sideshow to the main event. The Young Scientist is a highly successful science competiton for Irish secondary schools, where students from hundreds of schools submit detailed science projects. I didn’t get a chance to see all the projects, but there were some very interesting physics projects, ranging from a study of the surface brightness of disc galaxies to a mathematical model of the human face using factals. Two maths projects that caught my attention were a suggested new avenue for the solution of the Riemann Hypothesis via the Robin formulation and ‘ efficient numerical tests of of Robin’s reformulation of the Riemann hypothesis’ (the latter won 1st prize for individual project). Both these projects were from the same school – extraordinary what inspiration good secondary teachers can give. The overall winner of the competition was an ingenous method of determing the health of cattle using washing-up liqud, you can read about it here.

Of course, the real question is whether such projects and the whizz bang demonstrations next door motivate young people into choosing science as a career. I think they do to some extent as inspiration outside the classroom is often the key to a choice of career. Even if not, a lifelong curiosty about the subject can be fostered.  However, I admit it’s a difficult thing to prove..

New Year resolution:book

My main NY resolution is that I’m thinking of changing the topic of my book. Last semester, I gave a few public talks on particle physics to mark the opening of the LHC at CERN (see ‘My Seminars’ tab for slides). More used to giving talks on the Big Bang, I couldn’t help noticing that it is definitely easier to explain the physics of the universe than the physics of the sub-atomic. Also, there seems to be that bit more interest in cosmology..I guess this is because the study of the origin of the universe has implications for religion and philosophy and so has a wide appeal.

Everybody wants to know whether the Big Bang model is just theory or established fact. And what exactly happened at time zero? (good question). There are also all those sexy topics like Black Holes, Dark Matter, the Arrow of Time etc. Of course A Brief History of Time (Hawking) catapulted cosmology into the public imagination, but I think the interest was always there…

So possibly a change of direction in the New Year. Perhaps‘The Puzzling Universe”, a short, succinct book on the origin of the universe, might be a better seller than “The Story of Atoms”. (I have no interest in writing a popular book that is not popular). Also, I can imagine a spinoff newspaper column on the subject, always a good sign..It’s true there are now lots of books on this subject at the popular level, but that’s no harm. Anyway, many of them either cover far too much (Hawking, Bryson) or are by authors who have little experience of teaching the subject at elementary level. Must ask the students, see which subject they think will sell…

One thing that worries me is that some of the best science books for the public remain relatively unknown, not sure why this is.  For example, I really enjoy the books of Paul Davies, but they are not as wide selling as they should be. Another example is Marcus Chown – I read Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You over Christmas , a really excellent book. Really good explanations of quantum physics, general relativity and whatnot, all with highly original analogies. Hmm..we’ll see.

Pesky exams

Since Christmas Day I’ve been busy correcting exams, but I just finished today yipee! I like to get them out of the way early so I can get back to the snow-world for a few more days before college starts up again…

Most academics hate correcting exams more than anything, but I don’t really mind that much – it always takes less time than expected (unlike research) and I like any job that has a definite beginning, middle and end (with room for targets, breaks and treats along the way). I also learnt years ago that it’s easier to stay focused if I correct exams script by script. Some lecturers dislike this method and claim it makes more sense to mark in parallel – i.e. correct all the first questions, then all the second the questions etc. I have never adopted this method as I’m terrified of making a mistake when the marks are totted up at the end. I feel there’s much less chance of this happening if one goes through the script question by question, as you get a feel for how a particular student is getting on…

Anyway, I finished at midday today and celebrated by going shopping. First thing I saw was a good skisuit for €99 and snapped it up (I used to be so proud of my ski instructor jacket, but have finally tired of being slagged over my gimpy outfit!). So it’s not all work and no play. Oh no. How’s this for cool – I’m off on Wednesday to some posh hotel in Montreux (Swiss riviera) to join friends from the Frankfurt Ski Club for their annual New Year’s Ball – after which we’re all staying over for a few days’ skiing in the nearby resort. Yipee.

Lake Geneva in winter- Viola Stockinger

And yes, I’m flying into Zurich again (see post below), more gorgeous train journeys through the snow..

That said, I do feel a bit guilty about all this flying, the main reason I hope one day to convert from being a good skier to a good surfer (a sport I can do at home). Unlike Lubos Motl, I don’t have the excuse of being a global warming skeptic – I find it hard to believe that the majority of the world’s climate scientists are fools or knaves. So sorry about those polar bears…

New evidence on black holes

This week, the media are giving great coverage to a study that confirms the existence of a super-massive Black Hole at the centre of our galaxy. The 16-year study has given new evidence of the size and distance (from us) of the BH, by tracking the movement of stars circling the centre of the Milky Way.

“Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist,” said Professor Reinhard Genzel, head of the research team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

The black hole is 27,000 light-years from Earth and four million times more massive than the Sun, according to a paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal. Observations were made using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

According to Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society, the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit.

Black holes  may have a role in helping galaxies to form

You can read more on this story in today’s Irish Times or on the BBC website.

Interestingly, the BBC originally ran the story as ‘BH found at center of the Milky Way, and have now changed it to ‘BH confirmed at centre of Milky Way’, reflecting the fact that the new study presents new evidence rather than first evidence of the phenomenon.

In any case, it’s exciting news – yet another phenomenon that was once thought to be a totally unrealistic prediction of theory (general relativity in this case).

P.S. It should be pointed out that Ireland is not a member of ESO – between that and CERN we’re not doing too well are we?

Outside the universe

What is outside the universe?

A colleague asked me this question on Friday. Good to see college leaders take the time to ponder the important questions.

The stock answer is nothing – or rather, there is no outside, simply because the technical meaning of the word ‘universe’ is  all of matter, energy, space and time. So ‘outside the universe’ is a bit of an oxymoron – like asking what is north of the north pole, or what happened before the beginning of the universe.

It’s an important question and at the root of many misconceptions in cosmology. Consider for example the expansion of the universe. There is very strong evidence that our universe is expanding (see post on Hubble graph). However, this expansion is not really like the expanding balloon so beloved of science writers, because the universe is not expanding into space in the manner of a balloon inflating in a room. Instead it is space itself that is expanding (really spacetime). This is also why the theory of cosmic inflation can posit an exponential expansion of the universe (many times faster than the speed of light) in the first fraction of a second, without contradicting relativity (which forbids travel faster than the speed of light in space).

That said, the question has got more complicated recently. If inflation is right, it seems we have to accept the possibility that a great many universes may have been spawned in the first fractions of an instant – the multiverse. Hence might one ask about ‘outside a particular universe’? I think this is essentially the same question, except it is now ‘what is outside the mulitverse?’. A question which has the same answer, which is nothing .Or better, there is no outside. We think. So far.

Artist’s impression of the mulitverse