The "Unit" and Galactic fossil hunting

Does anyone know what the origin of calling people you are associated with a "Unit"? I'm seeing it everywhere these days. Mother Unit. Spousal Unit. Daughter Unit. It's really interesting how fast a new fad like this catches on and worrying that Internet communication seems to make us all clones.

I attended a really interesting presentation today by Mario Juric from Princeton. Mario talked about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This is a survey that has mapped a quarter of the sky (around 8000 degrees)  and has catalogued ~100 million objects. The presentation that Mario gave centred on his work relating to stellar density in the milky way galaxy as a function of distance from the centre. They have also done some analysis work on spectral data to ascertain metallaticitys of stars within the surveys range.

A really interesting outcome of this research is that he has possibly found artifacts of the Milky Ways past encounters with other galaxies or objects. This was deduced mainly by density anomalies in the data. What you should see is density of stars decreasing as you work outward from the centre. This holds true for most of the data but in at least two areas (and these "areas are huge), the density of objects sharply increases. The current explanation is that potentially, these are remnants of a past encounter. There are no current conclusions as the whether these areas also have velocity and/or metallicity differences but that is something they are working on.

I guess you could pose other possibilites for the these anomolies. Perhaps Dark matter is "clumpy" - but then we would have to explain why it clumped in these regions. How about an massive compact object such as a black hole that has now evaporated. As the massive velocity changes that this would bring are not seen currently, that seems unlikely. Others have suggested it is related to the warp of the galactic disk. If this is so, what caused the warp? Perhaps that brings us back to an encounter.

So it isn't just fossils from the Earth that describe our history. Cosmic fossils go back way before the Earth was even a galactic twinkle in Mother Natures eye.

Good luck China

Today, the Chinese space agency launches it's third manned space mission. The Shenzhou 7 mission will carry three "taikonauts" into space and include a 40 minute spacewalk hopefully on Friday. Recently, the ISM in Secondlife held an auction to sponsor the Chinese exhibits and I won the auction to sponsor the  CZ-3B. Here is my sponsorship plaque near the exhibit :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the actual model. This is a sister to the launch vehicle being used in today's launch - The Long March IIF. The launch today will be between 1pm and 2:30pm BST and the Chinese Space Authority will be webcasting the mission live such is there confidence. Future missions will assist in setting up a Space laboratory. Good luck China. I have everything crossed that things go well for you.

My secret fetish (Not secret for long)!

I have a fetish which I am now ready to reveal to the world. It is for notebooks. It's sad I know but I just can't resist buying them when I see them. One of my favourite pastimes is to fill them up with lots of lovely notes. Today, I found the notebook to put all notebooks to shame. Here it is :

I was so excited when I saw it sitting on the shelf I couldn't wait to buy it even though for a notebook, it was pretty expensive. Apparently, it's not really a Physics reference. Newton is the bear character. He "has a lot to say about life - and that's Newton's Law". I'm itching to go back to the shop tomorrow and buy another couple of them. What's more, it's the perfect size. A3 (I thinks that's the number for half A4?).

Marco Polo sample return

I'm so lucky. I live in a town that has a long history in Space flight. In fact, for as long as I can remember, Stevenage in Hertfordshire, UK has had pioneering companies involved in space related activities. The first was British Aerospace and now EADS Astrium. Astrium have been involved in a long line of groundbreaking missions including many built (but maybe not assembled) in Stevenage. The Beagle 2 and the Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Vern (ATV), to name two well known examples. Now, ESA are proposing a sample return mission to a near Earth object. The mission has been named Marco Polo and Astrium have been appointed the prime contractor.  What's more, the mission is a collaboration with the Japanese Space Agency JAXA, a potent mix of expertise. The proposed launch vehicle will be a Soyuz rocket.

So when someone asks you where all those ESA space missions are built. You can now tell them Stevenage in Hertfordshire, UK. It's where all the great European space stuff really goes on!

Changing for the better

Before my very eyes, studying science is changing me. The course syllabus says "You will start to look at the world in a different way". You certainly do. Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil for my morning cup of tea, I watched the water filled bowl sitting in my sink. The remnants of my dinner from the previous night. The tap was dripping into it. Obviously I didn't turn it off properly from my kettle filling chore. After a few minutes I realised that I was deep in thought about how the molecules of the water entering the bowl where dispersing. What did their motion look like? How fast were they travelling? How big were they? How long did it take the area of the water drop to be diluted into the background of the pre-existent molecules? How could I test all this. A coloured drop of water? Would the colouring in the droplet affect the outcome of the experiment? How would the temperature of the water affect it?

Without even realising it fully, my mind is developing into a machine that questions things in a far more detailed way then I ever did before. I notice things I didn't previously. I think about the hidden aspects of something. This is exactly how Einstein discovered Brownian Motion if you believe the stories. He watched the irregular motion of particles on the surface of a fluid - Perhaps Pollen on a pond? He wondered exactly what was making the particles move.

Finally on the home straight

Yesterday, I delivered the final assignment on my current course. I had to drive all the way to Cambridge to deliver it so that it wasn't late. As I heard it plop on my tutors mat a wave of relief came over me and my shoulders must have dropped about 2 inches. Only 1 assignment (CMA) and an exam to go and then I have finished 2008's presentations and  I can truly concentrate on S207. Everything starts to get very real after the arrival of the name and address of your tutor, the dates for your first tutorials and you see the date for the first TMA looming large.  I need to make sure I use the face time with other students provided by the tutorials.  It is becoming clear to me that studying is so much better when you can interact with others in the group. It will also help me over my shyness of group discussions.  Being able to actually stick my hand up and ask those questions I always want to ask would be fantastic. With that aim in mind, I also intend to go to more IOP lectures. The ones I have been to (with one exception) have been so good for practicing your "Networking" skills and of course for learning about what other people are doing. As time goes on, I'm feeling less of a fraud :)

Standing on the shoulders of giants

On the way into the office this morning I was thinking about all those great people who have given us our understanding of the world. Thales, Aristotle, Archimedes, Eratosthenese, Bacon,De vinci, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galilei, Cassini, Huygens, Faraday, Maxwell, Rutherford, Planck, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, Schrodinger, Dirac, Heisenberg, Bhor, Oppenheimer, Feynman..... But wait.. Who comes next? I can name many many who have contributed to our understanding of the universe since 1950 but they are no longer "household names". Mention the pre-1950's names I listed to anyone and they will have heard of them. Mention any of those that have come since, and I bet at least 70% of them will not be in the psyche of those not studying Physics or Astronomy. Why is this? You would think that with modern media and especially, the internet, The names of those related to the major breakthroughs in the Physical Sciences would be more widely known.  Most people, when asked to name a post 1950's Physicist, would probably name Stephen Hawking and that's it. Has the real breakthroughs in understanding the physical world stalled over the past 40 years or have we become so used to hearing about them that we have become immune to the impact of those discoveries? Maybe people are just no longer interested. It was upsetting to me that the biggest stories around the LHC First beam day last week where centred on the scaremongers warnings of the end of the world. But perhaps that's what sells newspapers.

A physical adventure

When I started my adventure into the world of Physics and academia, I used to look at some of the papers pre-published on arxiv.org and wonder if I would ever be able to understand the beautiful equations, tables and graphs that they contained. For the uninitiated they are truly scary. But the more I study, the more of those squiggles and abstract pieces of writing I do understand. So reading them, even if you don't fully understand them, is a valuable part of the educational process.

I'm also a very shy person. I hate being amongst crowds of people. This is especially true when the crowds of people have a massive potential for showing up my lack of knowledge and understanding. I wimp out. Being in a room full of people doing such great and interesting work and feeling that you really don't belong there is a terrible feeling. I had a conversation with someone at an IOP event once which went along the lines of :

Person : "I'm working on the Elastic theory of low-dimensional continua and its applications in bio- and nano-structures - And you?"

Me : "I'm a 2nd year Physics undergraduate at the Open University"

Person : "That's nice.......See you then...."

However, the comment Simon Singh made on BBC news 24 during the LHC first beam day ("I got out of particle physics because everyone was smarter then me"), made me think seriously about this. I know it hampers my development and I have really been trying to come to terms with the shyness. I think being a mature student I feel I have less validity then those that had the opportunity to go to University early on in life and now able to make a contribution to *real* research. I have this underlying feeling that I have "missed the boat" and "will never catch up".  I hasten to add that those in the Physics/Astronomy community don't make me feel this way. They are the most open and welcoming bunch of people (in the main) I have ever met. I do this to myself.

But wait. I am studying. I started late in life but have always had a real passion for the subject. I find it quite hard going at times which probably makes this a more nobler pursuit for me then those that find it easy. I'm holding down a full time job, and have other pressing life issues and I still choose to spend almost all my spare time pursuing this passion. Perhaps that makes me eminently qualified to be part of the world of physics. The feeling that the more I know, the less I understand also seems to be saying I am reaching the point where all the things I have learned will stop being a disparate bunch of facts and equations and finally make sense as a whole.

Big Bang Day - The highlights

Some of them slightly off-topic . Some made me chuckle (No, skinny people can "chuckle" too), and some made me sad.

Worst Quote - Simon Singh on BBC News 24. "I gave up particle physics because everyone was smarter then me"

Funniest Moment - 3....2.....1.....ohhh! Lyn Evans counting down to the first event.

Most annoying moment - No CERN webcast feed. They invented the web and damn, they don't know how to use it!

Never work with Children and animals moment - School child when interviewed - "What good do Electrons do me anyway?".

Saddest news of the day - A 16 year old girl from India committed suicide because she believed the story's about the world ending were true.

Most exciting moment - The release of the first ATLAS beam event images.

So, "Big Bang Day" comes to a close and the engineers can hand off the equipment to the scientists and their work can now begin. Everyone I am studying with is really looking forward to finding out more about the experiments and results over the coming years.

Incidentally, spare a thought for those of use who are NOT school age and have decided to formally study physics later in life. A lot of the news today was about inspiring young people into Science. This is extremely important to be sure, but there are also plenty of us mature students out here who believe we still can make a difference.

Public engagement in Physics

So tomorrow is the big "Switch on" of the Large Hadron Collider. I can't help thinking that it will be a little like Y2K. In the minds of everyone it's going to be this massive event. Scientists poised over "the" big red button. At 08:30 BST, the Chief will countdown from 10....9....8.... All eyes will be on dials and widgets that say "optimum performance".....7....6....5...4.... The excitement around the world will be palpable....3...2..... The dissenters will be holding hands waiting for the end off the world...1......BIG RED BUTTON PRESSED. Immediately, hundreds of screens around the sophisticated control room will burst into life and scientists will scream with delight as evidence of the Higgs Boson is delivered. The standard model of particle physics will be complete. Everyone can go home happy.

No! It will certainly be an exciting event but I think to most people, especially the "end of the world is nigh" folks, it will be a bit of an anti-climax. I doubt it will be exciting television and definitely not exciting radio. But how then, do you get the public to engage with the science when often, the exciting parts come after years of very hard and painstaking work? How can the perception of the scientist as mad, anti-social people working alone in some damp basement be changed? How can physicists especially communicate the work they are doing and show that funding physical science and astronomy is fundamental to the advancement, and, dare I say it, even the survival of the human race.

Scientists like Professor Brian Cox are changing the way the public sees big projects such as the LHC. And it is right that we do this. After all, if public money is being spent on these projects the public should have access to the knowledge and some understanding of what they money is being spent on. It is true that scientists don't engage the public enough. In the UK, we have a shortage of science and maths teachers and I think this is mainly because the subjects are seen as inaccessible to the average person in the street. Controversy seems to make people sit up and listen. For the LHC, its access to the main broadcasters have been via the "end of the world" stories it has brought about. Perhaps the originators of these stories are doing the scientific community a favour and we should turn the media interest it brings to our advantage by telling the public about the science of these projects and its benefits. For those of us that want to learn, we find scientists, on the whole, accessible to us. If you ask a question, often, they are more then willing to answer. This is not true of many other areas. We need to develop a common language which allows everyone to engage in the conversations about scientific progress on a level an individual finds interesting and relevant.

What does "Success" look like?

One of my former bosses asked me this on a number of occasions in relation to individual projects. I've recently been asking myself the same thing after spending quite a lot of time researching some stuff for the SL groups I look after. This time though, it's "Life" success rather then short term projects.  During this research, I've been looking fairly intimately at two figures; Brian Cox and Colin Pillinger.

At first, it seemed to me that "success" in the careers of these two individuals took them away from what they really love doing. But the more I think about it, the more I think that perhaps they were doing what they always wanted to do.

So. Professor Brian Cox. A theoretical Physicist at the University of Manchester and a spokesperson for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He is currently working on the ATLAS experiment but we see him mostly giving lectures, TV and radio interviews trying to engage the public in the experiments they are due to begin on September 10th. These presentations are aimed at the general public and so do not have a high level of Physics in them. Rightly so. But how does a highly trained and driven individual cope with doing this kind of work? It's really something anyone could do. I wondered wouldn't Brian feel more comfortable concentrating on the actual physics of the experiments? Does this look like success for Brian? Well, yes. I suppose the purpose of any academic is to further our understanding of things and teach those insights to others. And that is precisely what he is doing.

Colin Pillinger is best known as the driving force behind the Open University's pioneering mission to Mars to search for life. It was his initial enthusiasm that brought this mission to reality. But again, he is not best known for the science content, but for engaging the public and seeking funding for the project. His quirky character was the perfect vehicle for the public. He comes across as the sightly eccentric yet loveable scientist. Talk to most people involved with the Beagle 2 project and they will tell you Colin is not exactly loveable. He worked people HARD! But this is what success is for Colin. A single minded determination to see the project succeed. Sadly, in it's primary mission aims, it did not. However, the wealth of information and skills gained by the team that worked so hard, is worth heaps. Again, we see Colin popularising science and bringing the public along for the ride.

Most of the scientists you can name have one thing in common. Their love of communicating science. If I can say one thing about the scientific community and that is they are (mostly) willing to impart their knowledge to anyone who will listen.  And if you want to listen to them, that is what success looks like.