I embrace my "strange kind of streak"

There certainly is a strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today - I don't know how to explain it but it sort of makes you crawl.

Skip this post if you're still planning to read H P Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth. Otherwise, stand by for another horror story.

I joined DACE in 1991. It was an exciting move for me: a new role, of a sort that seemed intrinsically valuable, but one that would make real use of the sort of expertise I represented. I would still be a research-active astronomer, but with a job that looked out from the university, that aimed to provide something useful to people in the wider community. The Access course in particular seemed like - and is! - something that could make an enormous difference to its students' lives.

It was more of a change than I'd realised. Not the teaching, but the conversations that take place in the academic discussion of Education. The nature of those discussions, the sort of questions that are asked and the sorts of answers offered, are very different from physical science. It took me ten years to begin to appreciate some of those conversations. I still remember the precise meeting in which I found myself thinking, "Good grief, I understand what (person X) is talking about."

It seemed to me that many of those conversations would make little use of my talents, and that I lacked other talents needed to contribute to them. For almost all of that time I thought of myself as an astronomer working in adult education. I thought it was important that I kept my research life alive, that I kept working at being a proper university expert in my subject. I went only rarely to meetings on the subject of adult education. Nonetheless the years rolled on and I became something different from a Physics department academic.

The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth has laid eyes on creatures that nobody should see and live. An atmosphere of decay and unease grows to a climactic parade of horrors. But it's the twist at the end that makes that story something special: the narrator himself is one of the creatures, and he begins to perceive the inevitability of a future rather different from the one he imagined. Initially only madness and degeneration lie ahead but at last he is reconciled to the only possible course of action: embrace his true nature, evil to men possibly but authentic to him. Flee the sanatorium! Plunge into the ocean! Live with your fellows among the Cyclopean wonders of the sunken city! "Perhaps it is madness that is overtaking me — yet perhaps a greater horror — or a greater marvel — is reaching out."

Three redundancy situations in six years have taught me: I cannot escape my true nature. Perhaps once I could have been like other university academics but the streak of adult education runs too deep now. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

Jack Bruce

I was sad to hear of Jack Bruce's passing. In Cream he was one of the creators of psychedelic and heavy rock. Every kid that picks up a bass guitar learns the riff for Sunshine of Your Love. Those sounds are all around us now, part of the everyday sonic environment.

After that he was in Tony Williams Lifetime, the band that inspired Miles Davis to explore rock music. Jazz-rock also is all around us now, even for people who don't choose to listen to it: TV show themes, film music, even in bloody elevators and when your phone enquiry gets put on hold. Lifetime was pretty much the first jazz-rock band. Full-stop. So there's Jack Bruce helping to kickstart all of that, too. His place in either of his bands would have made him one of the chief architects of the sound of the modern world. To have been in both makes him something very special indeed. We could make a really strong case that he was "Scotland's greatest musician." And that's without mentioning the very many other records and bands he contributed to, many of these really interesting, experimental (like Carla Bley; Michael Mantler; amazing gigs you can find bits of on YouTube).

Recently I'd been listening a lot to Monkjack, one of his solo records. No band, just him singing, piano, one other musician playing Hammond organ; essence of Jack Bruce. It's beautiful - deeply felt, clever, classy classy music. Here he is, not so long ago, with a lovely performance of Weird of Hermiston.

I'm sorry he's gone, a wee bit earlier than many. Our thoughts have to be with his family and close friends. But what a legacy.

Positronium

Science continues to find that homeopathy doesn't work. I know homeopathy has sincere adherents who don't think about scientific evidence in the same way as the rest of us. I admire those people who are constantly in debate with them and I'm glad my own area of science is a long way away from this sort of topic. So I was quite taken aback to come across this account of positronium homeopathy.

Positronium is a sort of an atom but a very exotic one, with only a fleeting existence. Like an atom of hydrogen it consists of two elementary particles with equal and opposite electric charges. Like an atom of hydrogen one of these particles is an electron, familiar (as far as any subatomic particle is "familiar") as a constituent of the atoms around us. Unlike a hydrogen atom the positively charged particle is a positron. A positron has the same mass as an electron but a positive, rather than a negative charge. It is the electron's antimatter counterpart, a sort of evil twin. When an electron and a positron come together they cancel one another out (the word used is "annihilate") and the mass of both particles is converted into energy, in the form of light, according to Einstein's most famous relation E = mc².

Antimatter sounds like something out of science fiction (and one of its most famous occurrences must certainly be in the propulsion unit of the Starship Enterprise). Nonetheless it exists. The first discovery of a positively charged electron was in 1932 by the American scientist Carl Anderson. Now they are put to work every day in our hospitals (know somebody who's had a PET scan? Guess what the "P" in "PET" stands for).

Natural processes produce positrons, as do events in man-made particle accelerators. My own interest focuses on the energetic events of solar flares, in which positrons are sometimes produced. Once they exist, positrons don't hang around for very long. There's usually an electron for them to annihilate with. But before annihilating, for a ten-millionth of a second or less, the positron and the electron orbit one another as an atom of positronium. I like to think of them in a sort of dance, eyeball to eyeball, each recognising in the other its equal, its opposite and its imminent extinction. Finally they annihilate one another, producing a spectrum line in gamma-rays that we can detect and learn from.

Composed only of two very simple objects, the positronium atom gives very precise tests of the quantum theory of electromagnetism, so it has been studied in great detail in the laboratory. It lets us test very precisely elements of our basic understanding of the world.

Matter and anti-matter can both exist but there is more matter than anti-matter. If there were equal amounts of both, they would have annihilated each other very early in the history of the Universe. The Universe would be filled with light but there wouldn't be atoms and molecules i.e. ourselves. So the question, "why is there more matter than anti-matter" is a fundamental question about the Universe.

After all this I'm both sad and a bit cross to discover talk of "positronium homeopathy". In its yin-and-yang components, its brief existence, its annihilation, and the matter-antimatter asymmetry at which it hints, positronium is a very beautiful and exotic aspect of the physical world. There's more than enough real, deep beauty and weirdness there without making up a lazy, unsubstantiated fairy story.

An evil tree

Probably it is not evil. In Pollok Park it must see so many passers-by that any routine evil-doing would have become well-known. Of course it might choose shrewdly its victims and the moments to take them. A park in a big city will supply them fairly regularly: alone and melancholy, remote from or devoid of friends and family. Nobody will notice if they never return from some restless nocturnal stravaig. The end of unrest might even be a kindness.

Probably it is not evil. Nothing happened to me. I was able to photograph it. But I was there in daylight; other people were around; I am not unloved.

Probably it is not evil. It is not after all an ill-favoured Ash Tree. Still, Let's hope they chop the thing down. Yes, Let's hope they chop the thing down.

Swans

Let's start in familiar territory. In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking dragged God into the popularisation of Physics. In what was probably only ever meant to be a throwaway comment he suggested that success with a unified theory of the fundamental forces and particles would be equivalent to "knowing the mind of God". The G-word was invoked by more than one of the scientists involved in the COBE experiment. COBE measured the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the ripples in the early universe that eventually developed into the clusters of galaxies we see today; no stars, no planets, no us without those ripples. One of its Principal Investigators, George Smoot was (probably mis-)quoted: this discovery was "like seeing the face of God".

What would the face of God look like? (Atheists, please don't stop reading) I'm not convinced that sight of it would be pleasant.

You've lived for a few months in a huge, ancient, rambling house bought with the substantial wealth your mysteriously absent father somehow accumulates. You don't go to school. In the mornings, impatiently but with some flair, your mother teaches you mathematics, philosophy, history, some sciences, a couple of foreign languages, all of which you gobble up effortlessly, unaware you're years ahead of your contemporaries in attainment. In the afternoons Mum drinks sweet wine and watches DVD's of Doris Day movies. You're left to roam the house, to speculate on the functions of the peculiarly shaped furniture left in the upstairs rooms and the significance of the sombre grotesques painted on the wood panels of the less well-lit corridors.

One day at the end of an upstairs corridor you open a door you've ignored until now. You're surprised to find a previously unsuspected staircase, steep, narrow, uncarpeted, leading to a previously unknown part of the house. At the bottom of the stairs a few doors open off a corridor, empty, musky rooms with little interest. Under the stairs there is a small cupboard door which you open. After some moments peering into darkness you're astonished to see two large eyes looking back at you, solemn and expressionless. As you stare the face gets easier to see and you realise that it is shining more and more brightly itself. Your eyes start to hurt and you're aware of awful danger but it's too late. Brilliant mind is unprepared and body inadequate to deal with what happens next. The last episode of intolerable pain combines with an impression of incandescent beauty and you're grateful for the sense of transcendence that fills your last moments.

Last night I saw the American band Swans play live at the Arches here in Glasgow. Swans' fearsome reputation is nicely summarised in this review of a gig in Boston a couple of months ago. I was vaguely aware of their music but didn't know it well and had never seen them live before. As friends know I enjoy music that pushes at the edges in some way, technically, sonically, just emotionally. Although slightly wary, particularly of the stories of extreme volume, I thought I'd give Swans a go.

The opening number started slowly and quietly, with a sort of slow, psychedelic music. This is OK, like space rock but better, I thought; and of course the lyrics were more interesting, straight to some existential statement. "There are millions and millions of stars in your eyes," sang Michael Gira, a couple of times. His arms were outstreched in messianic style. I knew some upsurge was imminent but I was still shocked by the huge blast of sound that erupted, a furiously strummed chord, crashing drums, sustained without change for maybe a minute. My trousers flapped, maybe also my jacket. For a moment I thought I might throw up. The noise stopped, the space rock sounds resumed briefly and then the noise started for another minute or so; tens of seconds at least. This pattern repeated five or six times and the song came to an end. It struck me that these enormous blasts of noise were not just kids making a racket - these guys are my age and they've been doing it for decades - but a very deliberate reaching for a transcendent state through sheer volume and a sort of heavy metal minimalist repetition: what would it feel like with "millions and millions of stars in your eyes"?

(I shouldn't even mention heavy metal. Entertainment for kids. Cartoon music compared to this.)

Just a few songs kept this incredible, overwhelming racket going for a couple of hours. Early on I felt I might just leave but I resisted that urge; the point was to take the noise, to learn from it. I didn't feel physically sick again after the first song. I did wonder more than once if the bones of my ribcage might be shaken loose. Once I put my finger in my ear to see if there was blood (there wasn't).

Most of the intense music I enjoy reaches for transcendence by very technical means, playing fast, loud certainly, achromatic, building tension with odd time signatures and additive rhythms, exploring the extended possibilities of the instruments; free jazz starting from John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman for instance, or the "avant" end of progressive rock. Swans' music is not hugely technical. It struck me that this is deliberate, part of its mechanism. It would be wrong to put guitar solos in this music, or polyrhythms or cleverness, it would rob it of its sheer weight. It would be dishonest. Nonetheless there is a subtlety and art in it, because they are able to increase tension slowly, over say ten minutes, from a state already almost overwhelming in its intensity.

Towards the end of the gig I'd stopped thinking, waiting for something different to happen. I simply felt the sound and its changes from one moment to the next, lived in the middle of it. I was a recalcitrant child brought to heel, led to the correct behaviour by insistent repetition. I understood the look of ecstacy on Michael Gira's face.

It struck me that the Arches had become an extreme place, somewhere with a strange and terrible beauty, with amazing rewards for those with the stomach to tolerate it but a place that many would choose to avoid; maybe back to Herzog territory. Pals know that I've enjoyed a lot of gigs that would make most peoples' hair stand on end but this was still a stand-out of extreme intensity. Did I enjoy that gig? I'm still not sure. I'm also not sure if I would go to see them again but I'm glad I've been once.

"Spirituality" and "transcendence" are words often used in connection with Swans' music. I think that fearsome, repetitive noise aims to look on the face of God (although they might not say it that way). I also think these transcendent experiences enrich life whether or not you consider yourself religious. Many of my fellow scientists have had interesting, thoughtful things to say on religion (a wee example). Before they drag God casually into science popularisation, however, I think they should experience Swans live.

Cells at war

suppose all the cells in your body were individually conscious and capable of analytical thought and moral judgements. They begin to realise that the entity they're all part of, yourself, wants to do things that harm many of them (for example, drink too much whisky). Why you want to do this is a mystery to them. They, especially the brain cells, are the medium for such emergent thoughts and desires but don't individually share in them.

They begin to glimpse what's going on and don't like it, even although they, in a sense, generate it. What could they do about this situation?

Wondering about wonders of the night sky

I said to my 5 year old son a few clear nights ago, "Get your coat and shoes on and come and see Jupiter through the telescope." This was met with some enthusiasm.

It was a cold, clear night and Jupiter and the Moon were to the south and I set the small scope up on my driveway with my son prancing around me happily. I found the Moon first so I could align the finderscope and then after a little fiddling with screws, I called him to have a look. He continued prancing for another minute or so and then came over.

"Oooh! That's very bright" he said. The moon is very bright through even a small telescope.

Then I swiveled it onto Jupiter. I could see the disk, faint banding and three of the four Galilean moons. I then called my son over again and he looked through the eyepiece.

"But that's rubbish!" he said.

Clearly he expected this

 

but got this

He listened quietly to my attempt at explaining what he was seeing, but seemed unconvinced. I hope my few words lodged somewhere in his mind.

The next night I was doing something similar with a telescope with an evening class at Glasgow University observatory. There was much less prancing around. They were very impressed by the Moon, pleased and interested at Jupiter but disappointed by the smudge that was the Andromeda galaxy. Of course, when you explain that the smudge is a galaxy of several hundred billion stars and that the light they just saw left those stars over 2 million years ago, then that smudge takes on a new significance.

We were also treated to a meteor, a couple of satellites and for a moment we were all perplexed by a strange, flickering orange "star" drifting across the sky to the north. After a bit of theorising, we concluded it was a chinese lantern, which we then confirmed with binoculars and a fleeting glimpse as it zipped across the telescope's field of view.

The night sky is beautiful to the naked eye, but it has an even deeper beauty that can only be appreciated with your mind.