So to shift the mood let me just mention how amazing I find the images from Pluto: a more geologically active world than expected. Why? My guess is something to do with the tidal interaction between Pluto and Charon. And why on earth (or "on Pluto") does it have huge mountains? Great stories to come, I'm sure.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/Gordan Ugarkovic
I came across this word in a journal article about Regiomontanus, the 15th century German astronomer and mathematician. He was a bit of a prodigy, at the age of fourteen producing his own table of planetary positions that was more accurate than the published ones of the time. In the time before calculators, Sitzfleisch was an essential attribute for such work. Probably it still is vital in research, although what you sit doing has changed.
Regiomontanus is a major figure in my wee talk at lunchtime today, one of the events for the Ingenious Impressions exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery. One of his books is included in this wonderful exhibition of incunabula. The talk's only ten minutes - no need for much Sitzfleisch.
Regiomontanus must have had Sitzfleisch in abundance, even as a boy. I find myself wondering what he looked like as a dancer.
Almost immediately I came across these words: "...most of us find arithmetic easier than thinking." This is so true! I'm going to stick these words under the noses of my Access Maths students. Mostly Access Maths is about mastering standard techniques: how to find the solutions of a quadratic equation, how to find unknown sides or angles in arbitrary triangles, how to calculate the area lying under the graph of a curve (well, not any curve, those defined by functions we've learned how to integrate). These are not "arithmetic" but the same point applies: one can learn how to carry out these exercises without really understanding the ideas behind them; without really thinking. In fact they can be systematised so completely that there is software to carry them out (try Wolfram Alpha for instance).
There is an irresistible pull of gravity towards the calculations you can do without thinking. You're learning something new for the first time, you're not quite sure why other people think you should learn it, you know you need to pass the exam to continue next year/get a job/avoid getting a job.... "Thinking" is hard so let's look for "arithmetic" ways through the course. So every now and again I stick the occasional non-standard question in, and over the year I try to encourage people to develop the general habits of thought that will help with these previously unseen kinds of problem. But there are always people who want to know "how do you do that problem?"
How interesting, then, to also come across another blog post about a book I haven't read which seems to be all about avoiding that pull of gravity right at the start of education; about making Maths interesting by emphasising concepts and ideas rather than memorising techniques and for standard sorts of problems. When I meet people they bring grown-up motivations. They meet me, and Maths, in the course of a greater project of making their way through life and they're looking for strategies to get them through the course. If involvement in what we might call the internal life of the subject turns out to be the best way to deal with the course, well, that's a pleasant surprise. As children they don't yet have those motivations; mere "arithmetic" holds no interest for them. But ideas, thinking, well, that'll drag you in every time,
I also remember one distinguished, semi-retired member of staff, not in Physics but a closely associated department, lamenting the demise of true "Natural Philosophy", at the expense of what he called "unclear physics" (which probably included elementary particle physics at that time). In retrospect I'm really not sure why he said this; perhaps he felt that particle physicists, hypnotised by the dizzying array of "fundamental" particles they'd uncovered, had stopped thinking about what they were doing and got suckered into a sort of sub-atomic butterfly collecting. Anyway I guess he felt it was important to think about what you were doing and why you were doing it, as well as how to do it. Put like that, why would anybody argue?
I thought about all this again when I read this article in the Guardian. At first sight it's about a "war on the humanities" but really it's about the huge changes sweeping British universities.
The whole climate of higher education is changing. Like climate change in the natural world, some sections of the landscape are more vulnerable to these changes than others (look at the case of high-altitude glaciers, for example). Most of that article is about the changes in ideology in the universities, in thinking about which subjects should be taught and why, in who makes these decisions and how, in universities' relationship with the state and politicians. These changes have happened in a way that means their effects are more immediate and severe in the humanities but they are changes to the whole of the university system, not just the humanities.
I made the mistake of looking at the comments. An article about the changes sweeping higher education spawned a pathetic squabble between scientists and humanities types: "scientists are children," "humanities are a waste of time," etc. Oh dear. Scientists really don't profit, for more than a week or two at most, if free enquiry ("academic freedom") is stifled. And a surrender to short-term, utilitarian aims will come back to bite them. Worst of all, all those broad-thinking, articulate people from the humanities, who might have been able to come to their defence, will have been chased out of the universities completely - well, apart from the one or two institutions that can continue to purvey a sort of classical education to a tiny, privileged elite.
So ultimately I have no doubt that Natural Philosophers really need to have the other kind around.Just as people who live near sea level should be worried about those disappearing glaciers.
I'm using the blog as a place to assemble some bits and pieces of information about the Astronomy weekend being offered by the Centre for Open Studies, in cooperation with the Scottish Youth Hostel Association. On the weekend of 13 - 15 November 2015, Douglas Cooper and I will be tutors for a weekend titled, Looking at the night sky. Here's the course description from the Open Studies course programme (or at least the one we used last year):
We will introduce the night sky, stars and constellations, telescope usage and first steps in astrophotography. Our venue will be Loch Ossian Youth Hostel, a beautiful setting distinguished by its remoteness and consequent dark, star-filled skies. Workshops, computer activities and games in the event of unsuitable weather. See Centre for Open Studies website for details.
So, a weekend introducing Astronomy, in a dark, remote location. Here are some more details:
Where is this place? Loch Ossian is at the eastern end of Rannoch Moor, marked on this map. No public road goes there. Unless you're up for a long walk from the nearest public road (which would be lovely, for those who enjoy such challenges), you get there by train to Corrour station. Corrour station is on the West Highland line, the train line that goes from Glasgow (Queen Street station) to Oban or Fort William. People coming from further south might prefer to leave a car at Rannoch or Bridge of Orchy stations, from where Corrour is just a couple of stops along the West Highland line. The Youth Hostel is about 20 minutes' leisurely walk along a "well made track" from the train station. We'd definitely encourage people to bring their own equipment - telescopes, binoculars, cameras - but you should assume you will need to bring it on the train and then in your rucksack along that well-made track.
There are many more luxurious places one could stay in the Highlands. The sheer remoteness of Loch Ossian will be an additional pull for some.
We're going to the Highlands of Scotland in November. Let's be honest: the weather could be awful! No telescope that you look through with your eyes can compensate for rain and clouds. Even if this happens we'll still be able to discuss the night sky, some modern ideas of planets, stars and the Universe, and telescopes and astrophotography in a remote and beautiful setting.
More on Scottish dark skies here; of course there is now a Dark Sky Park in Galloway, and the island of Coll has been designated a Dark Sky Island.
Youth hostel The SYHA website has more information on Loch Ossian Youth Hostel. You can see that it is comfortable and well managed with due attention to sustainability in a potentially fragile location. We should mention that accommodation will be in its two shared dormitories. No single rooms - sorry. We will supply more hostel information to anybody who signs up.
By the way, just in case there's any doubt, you don't need to be a "youth" to use a Youth Hostel!
What will we be doing? On the Friday and Saturday nights we will look at the sky, clouds allowing, with our own eyes and with telescopes and binoculars, and take some first steps at astrophotography. Douglas and I will help you in this. As we look we can discuss the nature of what we're seeing - some of the best conversations I've ever had about stars, planets, galaxies etc. have been as a wee group of people viewed them in a telescope. If the night is clear we'll keep going until people run out of steam, and start slow and lazy the next morning if necessary.
Bring many layers of warm clothing. Douglas and I will have a couple of telescopes with us so don't worry if you don't have anything appropriate yourself, or if it's too difficult to bring it to Loch Ossian.
During the day we'll look at a variety of telescopes and discuss their pros and cons, talk about what's in the night sky just now, how the sky changes, how to plan an observing session, and have a couple of wee talks on modern astrophysics, the natures of the objects we can see, straying a little into big or exotic topics like black holes and the Big Bang. We'll try to respond to suggestions and questions. We'll also have a close look at our very own nearest star, the Sun - "daytime astronomy" (My own research is on the Sun. Solar astronomers talk about "night-time Astronomy", meaning the whole of the rest of the subject!). We'll bring a couple of ideas for astronomical games, etc., for light relief - especially if the clouds do not cooperate and we're stuck inside in the evenings.
Fee Last year the fee was £130. It might go up a bit; we'll have it fixed exactly very soon - before the brochure goes to press this year. The fee includes accommodation, all meals and tuition. You are responsible for getting there yourself. There are enrolment instructions at this link but you can't enrol yet - soon! Bookmark our website, maybe keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook.
Tutors I work in the Centre for Open Studies, University of Glasgow. Among other duties I teach and organise courses for the public in Astronomy and Physics. I've been doing this job for a long time so I've heard lots of questions and worked out my answers to them. I believe I can speak understandably with all sorts of different people and you can maybe judge that from some of the other posts on this blog (this one, for example, or this one).
Douglas Cooper is a mainstay of several Central Scotland Astronomical societies and a skilled astrophotographer (i.e. photographer of objects in the night sky). You can see some examples of his images here and here. Some of his images of the aurora and noctilucent clouds have been featured on spaceweather.com.
I hope this sounds interesting and indeed exciting and that we might meet at Loch Ossian. I might update and refine this posting over the next couple of weeks. If you have pressing questions you can always email me.
Credit for the light pollution map: P. Cinzano, F. Falchi (University of Padova), C. D. Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder). Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.
I'd spent my 90 minutes looking through some of the material donated to the University by Jessie Wilson, daughter of the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner CTR Wilson. In a few weeks' time I'm giving a Hunterian Museum Insight talk about him. It was quite a privilege to handle some of his original cloud chamber photos and select a couple that will accompany the talk.
I've been interested in Wilson's story for years now. While I'm suspicious of personality cults around scientists I think we should celebrate our great scientists' achievements as we celebrate those of musicians, writers, sportsmen and women. A man who found his inspiration in the first place in the Scottish mountains offers an appealing way into stories of fundamental science, of subatomic particles and supernova explosions. I've given my "Lochaber to the Cosmos" talk to many different kinds of group in very many different places - and will do so again tonight, at the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory (sold out, apparently - I'm excited to be visiting it for the first time, by the way).
There are some other reasons for spending time with this tale. It's often been commented that the cloud chamber would have waited a long time for its invention had it not been for a very particular combination of events, people, coincidences of place and personality. So this story underlines that it's people who do science, not machines or robots or faceless organisations. That often comes up in discussion when there are professional scientists in the audience.
Maybe you and I will meet soon to talk about Wilson, Ben Nevis, the cloud chamber and the origins of cosmic ray science, tonight at the SDSO, on 17 March at the Hunterian - with a couple of Wilson's original pictures to hand - or somewhere else. Hope so!
It's a DVD of the Doctor Who Xmas special from a few years ago, The Runaway Bride". This is the story that introduced Catherine Tate as Donna, who became a Doctor's assistant. Poor Donna, her wedding day didn't work out the way she expected. Instead of a honeymoon with her new husband she's been whisked off to the beginnings of the solar system by a quirky alien guy. You can watch for yourself here; head to about the two minute mark.
It's for the brief look at the beginnings of the solar system that I carried this DVD to a class. It's really well done. I think it might really have looked like that, with lots of lumps of icy rock of all sizes, banging into one another, sticking together, breaking up again, and a new Sun in the middle. The Doctor's words about this too are spot on. It's done so well I feel I can let people watch it for a minute and say, "that's probably what it would have looked like" (well, up to the point where the alien spaceship appears). From there we only need a few wee steps to start discussing questions like, "why are the gas giant planets further from the Sun?"
Science done well in TV science fiction, doesn't always happen and other Doctor Who episodes have been, let's be honest, dire.
I wanted to sing the BBC's praises for their solar system origin depiction. Other ingredients of this story really wind me up. It makes me so cross that they decided to show the Tardis flying around in full view with people hanging out of it. That's not how it works! It dematerialises and then materialises again in a different time and place. It doesn't fly around, or not in our conventional spacetime anyway. It's not a helicopter! Grrrr!
(I left the sweary words out)
It's funny, a lot of Doctor Who is so far from any sort of science that it's just fantasy. There's little need to worry about consistency. If the people who make the programme now want to change the rules a bit from those I imbibed as a kid, because they think it'll make it more amusing or visually appealing or something, it shouldn't really matter. But it does.
So, BBC, please, no more TARDIS flying around. Not clever, not funny.
