Steampunk Funs!

Last night was the monthly meeting of the town Steampunk Association, of which I am a founder member despite not really having much of the clobber because money. And lack of making things abilities.

The group has been going strong for just over a year now, being recognised as a strong and creative unit on the (yikes) "scene" and our social events are always well attended. Last night, visitors from the Lincoln group, the spiritual home of Steampunk, came over and told us of Parasol Duelling, and other esoteric things. And Mr Frisby told us of the joys of bone playing.

I so need a pair of goggles to put round my hat!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 26.02.16

The Toxic Chemist and The Barking Dog

I was a scientist you know, once upon a time, a time so ancient it now feels like I had to dodge dinosaurs when making my way up to campus.

I had wanted to become and astronomer, so did all the usual things like visit Patrick Moore at his house and do all science A-Levels. But then I realised that I was never going to be good enough at maths and wasn't very much better at physics.

I did however enjoy chemistry, especially the theory side of things. I loved drawing molecules, and indeed inventing molecules; designing elegant organic reactions with the little fish-hook arrows to represent electrophilic attack, and marking great broad swathes of pencil to indicate covalent bonding.

The practicals I found a little more difficult. I was as clumsy as hell which meant it took me a while to construct my apparatus, and then when I had finally got my glassware and chemicals in order, I was so obsessive compulsive about the accuracy of my results that often I would end up not getting any.

But at school level these were only minor hiccups; my teachers were really encouraging and chemistry not being a popular subject, I got offers from all my chosen universities, including St Catharine's College at Cambridge.

Too bad I missed my required 3As by a mile.

Still I had a place elsewhere, and was really looking forward to going away. But not to study. By now, I had misgivings about science. I worried it wouldn't satisfy me intellectually. And I thought it would be too hard.

I was right. The theory I still enjoyed, no problems there. I even found myself able to solve second order differential equations, the bane of my maths career. But the lab classes...my god. Two three hour sessions a week, having to build huge Frankensteinian arrangements of tubes and bottles, and then fill them with some rather nasty chemicals without knocking the whole thing over.

By the time I'd built the apparatus, the class was over, and I'd have to stay late to get even the tiniest bit of actual you know chemistry done, while the supervising PhD students glared at me while their pints sat in the pumps in the bar.

I'd break things. I'd spill things. Once I sloshed a largish amount of ether all over my workbench, and spent the next half hour getting more and more insensible as the fashionable party anaesthetic of Victorian partygoers collected at face level. If my bunsen burner had been on I'd have gone up like the Hindenburg.

In the second year, it would have been 12 hours of lab a week. In the third, 18. I would have ended up more contaminated than Chernobyl. The delights of working with benzene and cyanide awaited.

It was time to get out. A classicist I became. But I've never lost my love of science. It's amazing when it works, and to demonstrate this, enjoy Sir Martin Poliakoff making a chemical barking dog!

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 14.12.15

The Harnessing of Geo-Thermal Energy

This is a subject that usually rises to the upper reaches of my mind whenever I hear climate-change sceptics (or septics, some might call them) or anti wind farm folk going off on one about renewable energy.

The generation of almost limitless power from the seething mass of magma that our continents float lazily upon.

It's the no lose renewable option. No house price depressing windmills or car melting solar panels; no worry about off shore wind farms scything migrating birds out of the sky, or tidal power generators interfering with the movement of fish. You just dig a pipe a few thousand metres into the ground, pour some water down it, and wait for it to flash off into steam and rise up some other pipes to drive a turbine. Nothing to see. Nothing to crash into. Nothing to make your "As seen on Escape to the Country" posh village home lose a few quid off its value.

Geo-Thermal energy is essentially nuclear in origin; fission reactions in Earth's core heat the molten mantle and drive things like volcanoes and hot springs. But this is a clean form of energy, water goes in, steam comes out. No carbon production or geiger clacking waste to dispose of. And the energies involved are so much higher than other renewables.

All this is for the future of course, reliable sources of shallow depth geo-thermal heat are not common. But imagine what could happen when we develop the technology to drill twenty miles down? The power is virtually without end. The science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon foresaw this as the future of the Earth in his classic "Last and First Men" where he wrote of the evolution of humanity over trillions of years.

The potential is there. As a science fiction lover, and writer myself I love wondering where it could end up. I suppose there are hazards too, relating to seismic activity and instabilities in the Earth's crust. People might fear that somewhere like Basildon will end up under ten feet of bubbling lava. But in the end, it will be worth it.

Si

The Pros and Cons

Black Holes and Revelations

I have now finished my superb Futurelearn online course on Gravity, and in the final week the subject of study has been Black Holes.

They are, as you might have expected, completely crazy places. Sadly, unlike the 1979 Disney movie "The Black Hole", they are not filled with lost souls being taken to hell while Maximillian Schell watches from atop a burning rock fused with his robot creation; also called Maximillian and BTW one of cinemas most memorable androids.

They are in actuality far stranger than that. What most folk would consider the "boundary" of a Black Hole, the Event Horizon beyond which light can no longer escape its clutches, is a baffling place where due to relativistic time dilation you can never see something cross the horizon, just see a last frozen image of it before it slowly fades from view. Nothing more can ever be known about anything that crosses this boundary.

Within the Event Horizon, time and space decide they are reversed. Space only points in one direction now, towards the singularity, the infinitely small centre of the black hole where all mass falls, and time can run anyway it wants, so indeed you might perhaps see your own back, and your own past and future, as you fall into the singularity.

Which you wouldn't be able to do, because if you hadn't already been fried by the tremendous amount of X and Gamma rays that are found around black holes, the spaghettification of your body by the intense gravitational field will be your unpleasantly stretched out fate.

Then there is information? Is it preserved in there to be slowly re-emitted by Hawking radiation, or does it imprint on the surface of the event horizon like a hologram? Or is it scrambled, or lost forever?

The concepts are mindblowing.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 03.12.15

Philosophizing at the Death of the Universe

I've just completed the fourth week of my excellent and highly thought provoking Futurelearn course "Gravity", and we've been discussing the supremely headscratchy topics of dark matter - matter that we wouldn't notice if we walked into a room stuffed with it despite the fact there's 5 times more of it than normal matter in the universe - and also dark energy, energy that drives the expansion of the universe, and forms nearly 70% of the Universe despite the fact we've never detected it.

Dark energy in particular is a concept to put your brain through a blender. It corresponds, it is theorised, to the vacuum energy permanently blazing away in space time, an energy produced when a particle and its anti matter equivalent are produced FROM NOTHING and then annihilate each other back into nothingness so fast that we can never possibly detect them.

At the quantum level, creating matter and energy from nothing is allowed. Providing it goes back into nothingness faster than fast can be, this is allowed. Whereas light and gravity act as a brake on the expansion of the universe, vacuum energy does the opposite. It sucks space-time away from itself. And it is doing so at a faster and faster rate.

The expansion of the Universe is accelerating. It will never stop, contract, fall back on itself in a big crunch. The Universe will go on forever.

This sounds fabulous, but it isn't really. It doesn't mean that life will go on forever. Space-time will expand forever, but the Universe will die. Fundamental particles like protons will all decay; the atoms that make up you and me, many of which were around at the time of the big bang, will all splutter out into massless ghosts. As the Universe expands faster and faster, we will see less and less of it as it disappears over a kind of cosmic horizon provided by the speed of light. The longest living stars, red dwarves, will eventually peter out and the universe will be dark and cold, apart from black holes spinning silently in the blackness. And even they too will waft away bit by bit, trillions upon trillions of years hence. No life. No light.

I find it distressing, from a philosophical point of view. In a sense, it means that life is pointless, no matter it does anywhere in the universe to improve itself, it is doomed to fail. There's no point to anything. We cannot defy the laws of particle decay.

Yet I still wonder what hope there could be for life? The only hope that I can see would be to start another universe, a universe with renewed matter and vigour, and leave our ageing protons behind and transfer to a new vessel, within the new universe. Shades of "Being John Malkovich", I realise! Anyone who knows how to start a Universe, your Nobel prize awaits.

Or we could hope that the multiverse theory of everything is correct, that our Universe is merely one of many universes floating around within an 11 dimensional membrane, occasionally triggering new Big Bangs when they brush up against themselves. Here, life could find a way of tunnelling from one universe into an other, or a newly created one, and continue to do so as energy potential runs out in each Universe it colonises on a timescale that makes eternity look like the blink of an eye.

For I do no want life to fizzle out, in a cold sweep of darkness' cloak.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 19.11.15

Surfing on the Wave of the Universe

I've now finished my third week of my Futurelearn Gravity course, which has now achieved a level of mindbendingness that a thousand mile high Uri Geller could not achieve even if he lived in a universe  comprised of nothing but spoons.

We've been talking about the Inflation of the Universe, a theory that states that while the universe was still opaque to light - charged atomic particles absorbed it all at this time - rather than expanding in a constant progression, it suddenly began to expand effectively faster than the speed of light.

The driving force for this was, if you can believe it, energy created by matter and anti matter colliding with each other, this matter being effectively created out of nothing before wiping itself out before it can violate laws of conservation of energy. Eventually the universe encountered a second vacuum that was at a lower energy, and so the expansion slowed to what we know today.

I had no idea how one vacuum could suddenly become one with different properties and felt very stupid for doing so. Luckily, it was pointed out to me that no-one else on the planet does either.

Myself, being a writer with an interest in science rather than a scientist - you don't need to be as intelligent - I preferred to imagine the universe as a big bucket of fluorescent yellow dye. Drop this into a fast flowing stream, and the dye spreads out rapidly, colouring the flow in neon hues as it surfs along the babbling, seething waters representing the vacuum energies our universe rode. But then, an oil slick from a badly run farm stops the flow, stops the expansion, and the dye moves sluggishly along, until eventually, the oil dissipates somewhat, and the dye can flow a little freer again.

It really is a thought provoking course, but one that results in increased tea consumption and chocolate biscuit eating. You need to keep your blood sugar up for this!

Here are some clever people who can draw and talk better than I can write.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.11.15

Tangled up in the Fabric of Space Time

I'm studying another Futurelearn online course, and it's a real brain killer.

All the Futurelearn courses I've done - and there have been ten of them on a variety of subjects - have been great, but none has been as thought provoking as this one. The debate on the comment threads has been of an extremely high level, and the chief educator, one Pierre Binetruy of the Diderot University in Paris, is an excellent lecturer with a bone dry sense of humour.

Such concepts as Galilean Frames of Reference, and Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity, have been covered in such a way that even a tired out working fellow such as myself can get to grips with them.

If only to a level that I can blag it in conversations at the pub with my friends.

Where am I really enjoying getting utterly lost is in the concept of "Space-Time". The favoured method for explaining how the universe expands is with the aid of an inflating balloon. Dots getting further apart as the balloon blows up represent galaxies moving apart from each other, the greater the distance between them, the greater the displacement. Within all this, phrases like "Imagine the surface of the balloon is the fabric of Space-Time."

We hear it again when the reason gravity works the way it does. "Imagine this mattress is the surface of Space-Time, and this brick is a large mass...see how things fall in towards it as Space-Time is distorted. If the mass is great enough, even light beams may appear to bend."

Aha, thinks I, Space-Time must be a physical thing if it can be distorted by masses, and post such in he discussions, only to be shot down - politely - by proper science people saying "Well, not really, it's not really a tangible thing, imagine it more of a terribly terribly terriblyterriblyterriblydifficultsciencemoresciencebrainbentbrainmangledbrainfried concept."

So I'm still left with my tangible Space-Time, a tight skin of rubber, or a wafting satin sheet drying in the breeze, smeling gloriously of pink bottle Lenor, before the wind blows it off the line and it wraps itself around me in super symmetric knots. Galaxies gathered along filaments, 23 dimensional superstrings.

N and P. The branes. The Eleventh Dimension that wraps the entire Universe round yet is closer to you than your own clothes. Harmonics in space. The vacuum that isn't a vacuum but rather spits out and reabsorbs energies as subly-sub atomic particles come into being for trillionths of seconds.

None of it is understandable. All of it as beautiful. Not beautiful as a bird or flower I might photograph of a summer's day, but the beauty of it being simply every damn thing there ever was or could be.

Enjoy this film of the universe from near, to farther than far can be.

Si

All text Copyright CreamCrackeredNature 05.11.15

"On the Move" with Oliver Sacks

The recent death of the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks made me more determined than ever to read his final work, his autobiography "On the Move". I owed it to him, for I owe him my sanity.

Once upon a time there was a university student prone to distressing bouts of obsessive thoughts, rages, and who's strange ticcing behaviours had been remarked upon, and made fun of, for years. By my final year at University, with finals approaching, I just didn't know what to do any more. I'd seen counsellors and psychiatrists throughout my studies, and none of them knew what was happening to me. I was really struggling to cope.

One mental health nurse suggested schizophrenia. That went down really well.

In the University bookshop, I idly picked up a copy of his anthology "An Anthropologist on Mars", opened it at random to a chapter on a surgeon with Tourette's Syndrome, and found myself reading standing up in the bookshop, beginning to end.

Reading about me.

A year later, I was given my formal diagnosis, and the improvement in my well being was immediate, simply because I knew it "wasn't my fault" any more, and I wasn't mad. Still been a rocky path, but I'm still here!

As for his book, there are many surprises to learn about the cuddly, bearded fellow, the one essentially played by Robin Williams in "Awakenings", the cinematic adaptation of his book of the same name. You can see from the picture that he was a leather clad biker, a neurological  Kerouac-ian hero, a traveller. A bear of a man.

He was also a drug addict for a large part of the 1960s who nearly killed himself with amphetamines, a Muscle Beach powerlifter and record holder, and a gay man who was celibate for 35 years at one point. Indeed the account of how he lost his virginity, which would be essentially rape in modern terminology, is shocking in his calm acceptance of the situation.

What he also makes clear that he was never a great researcher in neurology, rather his fame came from his sympathetic care of his patients combined with his deep observational skill. He has been criticised for exploiting his patients, but to me he stays on the right side of the ethical tightrope - bringing the study of the intricacies of the brain to mere mortals, without compromising his position as a carer. However, he does make it clear that he had to shelve a documentary on one of his Tourette patients after they made threats against him, and his use of terms like "idiots" to describe certain conditions is very jarring to the modern reader.

Indeed,  it is his accounts of his freewheeling early life and forays into writing case studies, that form the most readable section of the book. After the 1968-73 period where he describes his work with his "Awakenings" sleepy sickness patients, things begin to flag rather as has life settles down and he gives up his motorbike. A major section towards the end, where he describes a new theory of "neuronal evolution" will almost certainly blow the synapses of a non-expert reader. Fans of his case study writing may also be disappointed, but obviously those works are available to read in their own right.

But overall it is a fascinating account of a deeply human and important man, and I enjoyed it greatly.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 10.10.15

The Cyclopean Eye of the Soviet LK Lunar Lander

Regular readers of long standing may be aware of my love of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.

Within that I'm a great admirer of the Soviet space programme of the cold war era. Yes, I know it came from an awful system, but it was worked on by good men such as Alexei Leonov , the cosmonaut-artist slated to be the first man on the moon by the Soviets.

That there was a Soviet Lunar programme was not well known until the 90s and the collapse of the Soviet Union following the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not long after that that I watched enthralled as the first television documentary about it entered the hangar where the proposed Russian lunar module, the LK Lander, had been in storage since the programme was cancelled.

It epitomises something else I always liked about the Soviet space programme - the 50s sci-fi "valve-punk" design of their spacecraft, and the low-tech feel of everything. That is not to denigrate their equipment in any way; the Soyuz spacecraft is still taking people to the International Space Station 50 years after it first flew and has long outlasted the Space Shuttle.

The LK Lander illustrates this beautifully. Compare it with the more advanced, but less characterful, NASA Lunar Module.

Image from the Science Museum

It looks like it ought to house an HG Wells Martian invader.

Of course, it never flew to the moon in the end. It would have been very risky for its single cosmonaut to operate, and the Apollo 11 landing more or less destroyed its raison d'etre. Then the enormous explosion of its proposed N1 Launcher in one of the largest artificial non nuclear blasts ever, confined it to its hanger for the rest of time.

Until now. The Science Museum has it on display, in their Cosmonauts exhibition I'd dearly like to see. If any of my readers go, let me know what it is like!

Si

Ave Atque Vale to the Green Revolution...for Now...

Here in Newark we have, unbelievable, just concluded the May 7th election process. A candidate in my local council ward had died just before the vote, and so it was postponed until last Thursday.

The consequence of this was that anyone who had missed out locally first time round piled into this ward, and thus we had a ballot paper a yard long and 6 crosses to spend on it, like the world's most politicised "Spot the Ball" competition.

A strong slate of local Greens and Independents all stood, but in the end, they were wiped out of existence by the Conservatives, who took all 6 seats to end up dominating the council even more than they had done previously. All this in the ward with the fewest registered Tory supporters too.

And so the 2015 political process finally ends, one that had promised much for the Greens, but one where hatred of Scots and the hatred of White Van men for the unemployed and poor finally won out. One seat and a couple of narrowish defeats.

Still the much vaunted UKIP surge didn't happen, and unlike the Green Party, UKIP's whole raison d'etre will be oblivionated one way or another by the EU referendum. The environment issues won't go away, and nor will a whole lot of other scientific and rational ones in a world where mania and madness seems ever more prevalent.

These are the issues the Greens will have to visit to be actually large scale relevant. Opposition to GM food needs to be dropped, likewise nuclear energy can't still be seen to be the great demon of our time. People need food and energy more than they need brown rice rhetoric. They need science more than they need Arthur Pendragon.

There are still massive gains to be made, and many people that can be won over, if you appeal to their brains.

Enjoy the latest garden discoveries!

Si

The Philae Lander has Awoken!

Back in November, I wrote with sad eyes slightly shining, of how the Philae lander carried to Comet 67P by the European Space Agency Rosetta mission had finally run out of power after its landing on the comet's surface.

It had apparently settled in a dark ditch upon the surface, and was thus unable to properly recharge its batteries with its solar panels. After 60 hours of activity, the much anthropomorphised "plucky" little spacecraft finally went to sleep as its batteries dies, tweeting heroically all the while.

Here's what I wrote at the time.

But now, I read that the ESA have made contact with Philae again. As was hoped at the time - rather optimistically, I thought - the decreasing distance of the comet to the sun as it approaches perihelion has meant that the lander is now getting enough sunlight to charge its batteries and operate.

There is now the chance that we will see for the first time what happens on a comet's surface as a comet makes its closest approach to the sun, which could make for a heck of a spectacle as volatile gases erupt off the warming surface to form jets, and other material streams out to form the cometary tail.

But never mind the science, not when today's evens have given the ESA an opportunity to produce another cute cartoon!

Si

Dazzled by an Iridium Flare

I was having my usual late night potter around at midnight last night, taking a gentle late night tour of the sky.

I've been neglecting my astronomy I know, I keep saying! There just aren't enough hours in the day or night to do everything, and I have to rest occasionally. Using binoculars makes my eyes tire very quickly at night these days. But luckily, the sky has more than enough to keep the naked eye interested.

So it proved last night. Approaching low from the south, rising up to meet the bright orange star Arcturus, was a faint satellite. I could see however that it was brightening up, so I figured out quickly what it was.

The Iridium Satellites

These are communications spacecraft who's highly reflective panels direct sunlight onto a narrow strip of the Earth below as the satellite passes about 900km up. I've seen them before, the brightest ones reaching about the same brightness as Venus, around -4 for a few seconds before the sun-satellite angle becomes unfavourable for the observer and the Iridium craft fades away again.

This one, however, became almost as bright as a half moon. It cast shadows, had a halo lighting up a quarter of the sky, and it all but hurt my eyes to look at.  It drowned out the stars for a moment, and it almost felt like a celestial god was shining a torch on my face, it was dazzling.

Outside of the moon, this was the brightest object I've ever seen in the night sky.

A twitter contact down south thought it might have been a flash of lightning.

It was actually Iridium 32, and it had reached a magnitude of a shade under -8.

You can use the "Heavens Above" website to predict views for Iridium Flares - and also things like International Space Station passes. This is the pass I observed last night. If you enter your location, it will predict and locate bright Iridium Flares for you.

They really are spectacular.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.06.15

A Return to Astronomy!

It seems like so long since I had a proper observing sessions outside with my 10x50s, so even though I had an early start today, a crisp clear sky last night was so tempting that I risked sandpapered eyes to do some astronomy.

Astronomy with company at that, for as I craned my neck skywards, a hedgehog was snuffling invisibly, but loudly, through leaf litter and undergrowth as it hunted for invertebrate treats.

Above, the sky was panther dark and studded with stellar gemstones; the topaz Arcturus, pale sapphire Vega, setting citrine Capella, and the blood ruby of Antares, the heart of the Scorpion low in the South.

But it is only when you turn the binoculars on the sky that the true magic appears. Even at this early stage of summer when it is low in the sky, the Milky Way in Cygnus forms a tumbling river of stars waterfalling down into the North. There is the faint constellation of Coma Berenices, an echelon of faint celestial geese chasing Leo the Lion down into the West.

And then there are the globular clusters, smudgy and grey in binoculars - I observed Messier 3, 5 and 13 last night - but even a small telescope resolves them into glittering balls of stars.

Then when you turn the Hubble onto them, you see this...

Si

Messier 13, courtesy of NASA/ESA/Hubble

What are your Favourite Stars?

A rather gossipy title, by my standards, but where I'm sitting at the moment, in a works canteen, there is little nature to enjoy, and the sky is the same battleship grey it has been all day. Green fields seem to emit a swampy vapour, and there is not a bird to be seen.

So, one is naturally drawn to contemplate the Universe. Well, I am, anyway.

As regular readers have probably realised, I tend to stargaze any clear night I can, either more serious sweeps with my binoculars, or a more relaxed, contemplative, naked eye observation. The night sky is endlessly fascinating to me, and I could talk of my love for Mu Cepheii, the deep red "Garnet Star" christened by Herschel or perhaps my endless hunting for the famed La Superba, Y Canum Venaticorum. This star is reputed to be the reddest thing in the entire sky, and my neck craning binocular searches are designed to prove to myself that this might be the case.

So far, I'm not convinced. The Garnet Star wins every time.

But in many ways, it is the seasons that define my life, not with any kind of Vivaldi-ish romanticism, but the rather more humdrum need to have a safe cycle to work in light conditions, without blizzard winds sweeping over roads darkly glistening with black ice. And to get to work without my agonised fingers dropping off with frostbite as if I was a foolish mountaineer.

So, it is the stars of early morning that catch my eye, the stars of summer that mark the commencement of spring when you can see them when you leave for work at 6am. So my most beloved stars are Vega, the metal blue guardian of warmer nights, and Antares, the low heart of the Scorpion, the constellation that stalks the horizon in a hopeless search for Orion placed safely by the gods on the other side of the heavens.

When I leave my home and can see both Vega, and Antares, I feel that the difficult months are over, and I will soon be chasing butterflies through the parks of Spring.

Si

First Sight of the New Comet Lovejoy

A little over a year ago, I was writing excitedly about spotting Comet Lovejoy, a 4th magnitude object seen in the morning sky in Cancer near the famous beehive cluster. It was a bitter night, and it seems I was well dressed and "fortified" against the cold.

2013 Comet Lovejoy Observation

Last night was probably colder, and hampered by a near full moon dominating the southern sky. I also had a 6am cycle to work ahead of me and was nervously anticipating another icy and nervy slideathon on untreated roads. I thought I had no chance of spotting it.

But I grabbed the 10x50s, tried to get out of the way of the trees and streetlights, and waved my binoculars underneath Orion like a drunk with a shotgun. I thought I had no chance of seeing it, but below Rigel, to the north-east of a star that may have been 11 Eridani, I came across a grey green elongated blurry patch in the binocular field of view.

Passing through a very barren part of the sky, it was the new Comet Lovejoy, 2014 edition, dallying with the trees and rooftops. Even with the strong moonlight it was easy to see, but harder to describe; it was rather like looking at a more condensed version of the galaxy Messier 33, a ghostly smear on the dark window of the sky. It seemed to be longer in the direction of Rigel and Orion's belt, but it was hard to make out real detail. 

But it was a comet, and I don't see many! I suspect in a week or two, as the comet moves higher and further into the evening sky, and the moon gets out of the way, it might present quite an impressive binocular sight although I doubt it will be a naked eye object from my urban garden. 

To find it, use this guide ; Position of Comet Lovejoy through January  - to put it simply, for the next week, look to the right of Orion in the sky with your binoculars, from the darkest spot in your locality you can find.

Si

Final Geminid 2015 Report

Well, the final report is one of disappointment after the 2015 Geminid meteor shower started so well here in Newark!

My first proper observation session took place at 2am on the night of the 12th-13th. It was well below zero, but warmly dressed, it was strangely pleasant reclining on a garden chair in the frost, watching the stars crisply pierce the black vault above.

In the 45 minute session I had, I observed 8 Geminids, none brighter than 2nd magnitude and most fainter. The last quarter moon was providing some interference in the East, but bright meteors were still easily visible. In fact the brightest I saw were two sporadics of first magnitude streaking North - South through Leo, against the tide as it were.

The night of maximum, the 13th-14th (Saturday-Sunday) commenced with me making a 7km run around the streets, including a trip up Clay Lane and to the Elm Avenue cricket ground. Here skies were dark, and I was certain of seeing meteors, or so I thought.

As it happened, during the 45 minute run with these frequent meteor stops, I saw no meteors, despite the gloriously clear skies. Of odd looks from dog walkers and car drivers, wondering who this neck craning athlete was, there were many. Of shooting stars, there were none.

However, during a 15 minute session later on where I observed from a well lit street, I saw 5 meteors at around 8pm and was really hopeful of a fantastic night of illuminations. Ha ha. In the great tradition of British weather, clouds rolled in from nowhere at around 9pm and blanked the sky out for the rest of the night.

Cruel. So cruel.

The night of post maximum was the same, and the one after. Finally, on the Tueday night, I saw my final Geminid of the shower, a proud but strangely sad specimen heading East leaving a short trail.

No more.

It could have been so darn good!

Is Going Green Really a Goer?

I've been studying an Oceanography course with Futurelearn the last couple of weeks, and unsurprisingly lively discussions have come up over certain "Green" elements of the course; use of tidal power to generate green energy, and the effect glacial and polar melting has on ocean currents and thus climate.

General concensus - tidal power better than windfarms but must be lagoon based rather than barriers, and whatever happens with Arctic ice melt, it won't be like "The Day After Tomorrow."

And so, after a roundabout, ocean current like voyage through the recesses of my brain, thoughts on the Green Party's recent failure to get on next year's UK General Election TV debates arrive on this blog.

Now I'm no sort of political analyst whatsoever, but traditionally the Greens always had this sort of super-earnest, organo-bearded perception problem in the eyes of the public at large;

In Green-Land in days of yore, the above would often be found stuck on the back of the below

This carries on into the present day. I suspect the real reason the Greens are not getting in on the election debates, or on television is not to do with their perceived lack of support compared to UKIP - see this link on the "green party surge", but more the case that they just "don't make good television."

In other words, Farage and his ilk are good for getting people watching with all their soundbite friendly, whatever they actually are, policies that enrage or enliven depending on which sort of person you are. People who love UKIP watch them. People who hate UKIP watch them.

Complex, rational policies on subjects like science that don't fit easily into Zoo TV formats do not get an airing. This is where the Greens lose out. Tidal lagoons are less fun than booting out foreigners for a brighter tomorrow.

I have long thought that the UK political scene needs an injection from a secular, science and knowledge based party, with high profile media friendly backers. I thought it would have to be a new party, called "Reason" or some such thing, with some big name TV science types on board.

Nowadays I think the Greens could be the answer, being a party that at least is coming in from a scientific and knowledge background. But they need to get snappier, get a higher profile, and target seats stuffed with students and educated types. Policies like opposition to nuclear energy have got to be rethought - no more stickers on 2CVs - and if they believe in the NHS, and renationalising things like the rail network, make an unashamed big thing about it.

After all, plenty of other people share these beliefs.

But a lot of the brown rice policy has got to go. Talk of doubling tax on beer and cigarettes won't gallup in this economy. Talk instead of new hi-tech industries and spaceports, the sort of stuff that the 1984 Conservatives ought to have looked at before deciding replacing our dying old industries with the financial sector. Look where that got us. Be secular. Give our kids a proper education, and encourage a culture of learning and reading at home.

Obviously, no more David Icke types. But why shouldn't the Greens look for defectors like UKIP did?

Given the state of the country, and the fluxious state of UK politics, a party like the Greens could end up being heavily influential if they only end up with three or four seats.

Like many people, I want a new politics. But not one that involves pretending to cry at poppies.

A Naughty Look at Comet Jacques 26.08.15

I should have been in bed. I really should have been in bed. But after my usual evening faff of sandwich making and medication taking, I took a look outside and found a clear sky smiling velvetly down at me.

I should have gone to bed, I had a cycle ride and an early start at work, but I couldn't help it. I don't like wasting skies clear enough to see the milky way plunging its way down through Cygnus. So out came the 10x50s, and out went I.

I warmed up with the usual appreciation of the Cygnus milky way, written about so many times, before trying to find Messier 2 from memory. A very faulty memory as I've just realised I was looking in totally the wrong place by Pisces' tail. Not very smart. However, I was able to see Messier 15 in Pegasus, before I adjudged my eyes dark adapted enough to try and find the comet.

I had a rough idea of where it would be although I hadn't consulted any maps or suchlike, but was still surprised to find it so quickly. To be honest, in my 10x50s , it isn't an amazing sight, but it's the excitement of seeing it that counts. It reminded me rather of the appearance of Messier 33 Triangulum Spiral, if a little easier to see due to being more condensed, it had the same sort of skewed elliptical appearance.

I'd say position wise it formed a rough equilateral triangle with gamma and beta Cassiopeii, magnitude about 7. But I didn't really have long to study it, for my eyes were growing heavier by the second, reproaching me with the thought of a 6am start.

So I let the comet be, for it must be awful to have all those folk gawping at you with their binoculars and telescopes all of the time. Bedtime it was.

Will Storr - Of Heretics and Skeptics

Or, a warning for the ultra-skeptics amongst us.

I’m not a book reviewer. I’m not a scientist. If I was, I’d be writing a proper piece  using reams of notes, annotated margins, and perhaps dictaphone recordings of interviews with some of the protagonists. Tucked behind the mantlepiece would be a copy of my contract with the Times Literary Supplement.

Instead I’m writing this in a works second string canteen, with a mound of banana peel by my left elbow, and a brain possibly of insufficient ability to attempt this task.

“The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science” is a book by Will Storr, a writer with an apparent religious family background, and issues with mental health in his past. In it, he makes Louis Theroux style visits on “independent thinkers” - a hardline creationist homophobic preacher, devotees of extreme yoga therapy, homeopaths, UFOlogists, and in one memorable chapter, Holocaust denier (or perhaps no longer) David Irvine and a merry band of right wingers as they tour the Extermination camps of Europe.

He also spends time with the Skeptic movement movers and shakers, as they attempt a mass homeopathy suicide, and original Skeptic hero James Randi.

The book is fascinating, although sometimes you feel that the time he spends with his subjects is almost cut short just as his visits get into their stride - something you never feel with Theroux, say - and that he has to throw some proper, but tough to follow, science as a little bit of padding. However, this may just be myself as a non-scientist who prefers the character case studies.  Saying that, the chapter dealing with Recovered Memory Syndrome is truly dramatic, and here Storr really does get to grips with the damage that can be caused by dabbling with this sort of therapy, especially when the investigator is so convinced the abuse exists that any rational refutation is ignored.

And this is the crux of what the book is about. He finds that in some cases, the Skeptics are just as dogmatic, if not more so, than the so called cultists, and a lot less sympathetic in a kind of striving for uniformity of thought. Their methodology is also called into question, when really there experiments should morally be far more stringent than those they seek to discredit.

Ultimately, however, all the evidence in the world is pointless if your brain is going to ignore anything that doesn’t agree with your own innate prejudice, deeply ingrained by years of seeing the world from your own perspective. This is something called “Confirmation Bias”, a way of skewing the world to fit your own vision that both the cultists, and the Skeptics, and myself, are guilty of. And to me this is quite frightening.

How can we be possibly open minded, if our brains won’t let us? Is everyone who says that they are truly open minded, nothing other than a bigoted liar who sees only what they want to see?

It is disturbing. And a point brilliant explored by this book.

Copyright Creamcrackered 05.08.14

Astronomy is Still a Pimmsy Business

I haven't blogged much about matters astronomical lately, which makes me sad. The trouble is that there hasn't been much in the way of clear or moonless skies when I've been off shift, with plenty of frustrating nights where it looked like it would be clear early on, only for clouds and haze to roll in when I'm ready to head out with my binoculars.

But, when I do get out, I like to be all posh and civilised about it, and take out a glass of Pimms and lemonade along with my 10x50s. Witness the last couple of evenings, where a last quarter moon was deemed no obstacle to some observation sessions.

They weren't thorough deep sky object hunts, more a slow sweep along the milky way just happy to take in the multitude of stars, clustered into sparkling little knots here, so thick they looked like a dippable bowl of sherbet there.

I embarrassed myself by forgetting how to find the Vulpecula Coathanger.

Elsewhere Messier 31 and Messier 13 were easily visible despite the moon, the galaxy and the globular. Messier 39 in Cygnus also easily seen, but tracking the milky way into Lacerta to spot the open clusters there was more tricky.

Perseus is rising at 2am, and so the Mirfak cluster, with its fascinating little 7-8th mag orange interloper amidst the hot blue-white stars, and the double cluster were observed.

Finally, took in yet another look at Kemble's Cascade, the waterfall of stars in Camelopardalis, but it is still a little low this time of year.

I emptied the glass, took in a naked eye sweep of the heavens in the sultry summer air, and then headed to bed.