Category Archives: Travel

April 30, 2019 · 9:49 pm

A Week at The Surf Experience

I don’t often take a sun holiday these days, but I had a fabulous time last week at The Surf Experience in Lagos, Portugal. I’m not an accomplished surfer by any measure, but there is nothing quite like the thrill of catching a few waves in the sea with the sun overhead – a nice change from the indoors world of academia.

Not for the first time, I signed up for a residential course with The Surf Experience in Lagos. Founded by veteran German surfer Dago Lipke, guests of The Surf Experience stay at the surf lodge Vila Catarina, a lovely villa in the hills above Lagos, complete with beautiful gardens and swimming pool. Sumptuous meals are provided by Dagos’s wife Connie, a wonderful cook. Instead of wandering around town trying to find a different restaurant every evening, guests enjoy an excellent meal in a quiet setting in good company, followed by a game of pool or chess. And it really is good company. Guests at TSE tend mainly to hail from Germany and Switzerland, with a sprinkling from France and Sweden, so it’s truly international – quite a contrast to your average package tour (or indeed our college staff room). Not a mention of Brexit, and an excellent opportunity to improve my German. (Is that what you tell yourself?- Ed)

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Hanging out at the pool before breakfast

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Fine dining at The Surf Experience

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A game of cards and a conversation instead of a noisy bar

Of course, no holiday is perfect and in this case I managed to pick up an injury on the first day. Riding the tiniest wave all the way back to the beach, I got unexpectedly thrown off, hitting my head off the bottom at speed. (This is the most elementary error you can make in surfing and it risks serious injury, from concussion to spinal fracture). Luckily, I walked away with nothing more than severe bruising to the neck and chest (as later established by X-ray at the local medical clinic, also an interesting experience). So no life-altering injuries, but like a jockey with a broken rib, I was too sore to get back on the horse for few days. Instead, I tried Stand Up Paddling for the first time, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s more exciting than it looks, must get my own board for calm days at home.

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Stand Up Paddling in Lagos with Kiteschool Portugal

Things got even better towards the end of the week as I began to heal. Indeed, the entire surf lodge had a superb day’s surfing yesterday on beautiful small green waves at a beach right next to town (in Ireland, we very rarely see clean conditions like this, the surf is mainly driven by wind). It was fantastic to catch wave after wave throughout the afternoon, even if clambering back on the board after each wasn’t much fun for yours truly.

This morning, I caught a Ryanair flight back to Dublin from Faro, should be back in the office by late afternoon. Oddly enough, I feel enormously refreshed – perhaps it’s the feeling of gradually healing. Hopefully the sensation of being continuously kicked in the ribs will disappear soon and I’ll be back on the waves in June. In the meantime, this week marks a study period for our students before their exams, so it’s an ideal time to prepare my slides for the Eddington conference in Paris later this month.

Update

I caught a slight cold on the way back, so today I’m wandering around college like a lunatic going cough, ‘ouch’ , sneeze, ‘ouch’.  Maybe it’s karma for flying Ryanair – whatever about indulging in one or two flights a year, it’s a terrible thing to use an airline whose CEO continues to openly deny the findings of climate scientists.

 

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October 20, 2018 · 9:51 pm

The thrill of a good conference

One of the perks of academia is the thrill of presenting results, thoughts and ideas at international conferences. Although the best meetings often fall at the busiest moment in the teaching semester and the travel can be tiring, there is no doubt that interacting directly with one’s peers is a huge shot in the arm for any researcher – not to mention the opportunity to travel to interesting locations and experience different cultures.

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The view from my hotel in San Sebastian this morning.

This week, I travelled to San Sebastian in Spain to attend the Third International Conference on the History of Physics, the latest in a series of conferences that aim to foster dialogue between physicists with an interest in the history of their subject and professional historians of science. I think it’s fair to say the conference was a great success, with lots of interesting talks on a diverse range of topics. It didn’t hurt that the meeting took place in the Palacio Mirimar, a beautiful building in a fantastic location.

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The Palacio Mirimar in San Sebastian. 

The conference programme can be found here. I didn’t get to all the talks due to parallel timetabling, but three major highlights for me were ‘Structure or Agent? Max Planck and the Birth of Quantum Theory’ by Massimiliano Badino of the University of Verona, ‘The Principle of Plenitude as a Guiding Theme in Modern Physics’ by Helge Kragh of the University of Copenhagen, and ‘Rutherford’s Favourite Radiochemist: Bertram Borden’ by Edward Davis of the University of Cambridge.

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A slide from the paper ‘Max Planck and the Birth of Quantum Theory’

My own presentation was titled ‘The Dawning of Cosmology – Internal vs External Histories’ (the slides are here). In it, I considered the story of the emergence of the ‘big bang’ theory of the universe from two different viewpoints, the professional physicist vs. the science historian. (The former approach is sometimes termed ‘internal history’ as scientists tend to tell the story of scientific discovery as an interplay of theory and experiment within the confines of science. The latter approach is termed  ‘external’ because the professional historian will consider external societal factors such the prestige of researchers and their institutions and the relevance of national or international contexts). Nowadays, it is generally accepted that both internal and external factors usually often a role in a given scientific advance, a  process that has been termed the co-production of scientific knowledge.

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Giving my paper in the conference room

As it was a short talk, I focused on three key stages in the development of the big bang model; the first (static) models of the cosmos that arose from relativity, the switch to expanding cosmologies in the 1930s, and finally the transition (much more gradual) to the idea of a universe that was once small, dense and hot. In preparing the paper, I found that the first stage was driven almost entirely by theoretical considerations (namely, Einstein’s wish to test his newly-minted general theory of relativity by applying it to the universe as a whole), with little evidence of co-production. Similarly, I found that the switch to expanding cosmologies was driven by almost entirely by developments in astronomy (namely, Hubble’s observations of the recession of the galaxies). Finally, I found the long rejection of Lemaître’s ‘fireworks’ universe was driven by obvious theoretical problems associated with the model (such as the problem of the singularity and the age paradox), while the eventual acceptance of the model was driven by major astronomical advances such as the discovery of the cosmic microwave background. Overall, my conclusion was that one could give a reasonably coherent account of the early development of modern cosmology in terms of the traditional narrative of an interplay of theory and experiment, with little evidence that social considerations played an important role in this particular story. As I once heard the noted historian Hasok Chang remark in a seminar, ‘Sometimes science is the context’.

Can one draw any general conclusions from this little study? I think it would be interesting to investigate the matter further. One possibility is that social considerations become more important ‘as a field becomes a field’, i.e., as a new area of physics coalesces into its own distinct field, with specialized journals, postgraduate positions and undergraduate courses etc. Could it be that the traditional narrative works surprisingly well when considering the dawning of a field because the co-production effect is less pronounced then? Certainly, I have also found it hard to discern any major societal influence in the dawning of other theories such as special relativity or general relativity.

Coda

As a coda, I discussed a pet theme of mine; that the co-productive nature of scientific discovery presents a special problem for the science historian. After all, in order to weigh the relative impact of internal vs external considerations on a given scientific advance, one must presumably have a good understanding of each. But it takes many years of specialist training to attempt to place a scientific advance in its true scientific context, an impossible ask for a historian trained in the humanities. Some science historians avoid this problem by ‘black-boxing’ the science and focusing on social context alone. However, this means the internal scientific aspects of the story are either ignored or repeated from secondary sources, rather than offering new insights from perusing primary materials. Besides, how can one decide whether a societal influence is significant or not without considering the science? For example, Paul Forman’s argument concerning the influence of contemporaneous German culture on the acceptance of the Uncertainty Principle in quantum theory is interesting, but pays little attention to physics; a physicist might point out that it quickly became clear to the quantum theorists (many of whom were not German) that the Uncertainty Principle arose inevitably from wave-particle duality in all three formulations of the theory (see Hendry on this for example).

Indeed, now that it is accepted one needs to consider both internal and external factors in studying a given scientific advance, it’s not obvious to me what the professionalization of science history should look like, i.e., how the next generation of science historians should be trained. In the meantime, I think there is a good argument for the use of multi-disciplinary teams of collaborators in the study of the history of science.

All in all, a very enjoyable conference. I wish there had been time to relax and have a swim in the bay, but I never got a moment. On the other hand, I managed to stock up on some free issues of my favourite publication in this area, the European Physical Journal (H).  On the plane home, I had a great read of a seriously good EPJH article by S.M. Bilenky on the history of neutrino physics. Consider me inspired….

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March 18, 2013 · 12:04 am

Back at Cambridge

This week I’m back in Cambridge University, attending  a cosmology conference at  DAMTP, the famous Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. I’m delighted to be back – Cambridge is only a short hop from Dublin and it is such a great place to visit, with its beautiful colleges, bijou shops and lively student life. I arrived late in the afternoon, and walked to the town centre in a light rain; tourists everywhere were complaining about the English weather but I thought the rain and the falling light set the scene perfectly as I walked along past the ancient colleges.

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St John’s College in the rain this evening

This time around I’m staying in Clare College, one of the oldest colleges in the university. Its beautiful front quad is just off Kings’ parade to the front, while the back of the college straddles the River Cam all the way back to the University Library. The rooms are lovely (no tv – wouldn’t have it otherwise). In fact, working at my little desk and watching the rain across the quad makes me feel quite nostalgic, like a student again – perhaps in another universe there is a younger me starting out in this fabulous university .

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Clare College in the daytime

The conference, Infinities and Cosmology,  is not on theoretical or experimental cosmology, but on the philosophy of cosmology. It forms part of a new Oxford-Cambridge initiative  aimed at bringing physicists and philosophers together in order to improve our understanding  of the universe and its origins, from exploring the meaning of the initial singularity to the philosophical implications of theories such as cosmic inflation and the multiverse. This particular conference was organised by John Barrow , Jeremy Butterfield and David Sloan, names that carry a lot of weight in the intersection of physics and philosophy, and visiting speakers include other heavy hitters such as Anthony  Aguirre, Mihalis Dafermos, George  Ellis and Simon  Saunders. You can see the conference program here.

That said, mixing philosophy with physics is not an approach that meets with universal approval – Stephen Hawking once declared that  ‘philosophy is dead’, while Laurence Krauss has also been pretty scathing about the contribution of philosophers to physics.  Both are physicists I hugely respect, but I think this initiative is more about making physicists aware of their deepest assumptions than about  converting philosophers into cosmologists.  Also, those of us with an interest in the history of cosmology notice that scientific progress has often been hindered by unexamined philosophies – from Aristotle’s geocentric model of the solar system to Harlow Shapley’s faith in a single-galaxy model, from Einstein’s assumption of a static universe to the steady-state universe of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. More recently, I have long suspected that some of the resistance to inflationary models arises from a simple dislike of the exceedingly large numbers involved – an objection that is understandable, but not really tenable from a philosophical point of view.

So I’m not expecting that philosophers will suddenly shine light on well-known problems in big bang physics – it’s more that we physicists can profit by examining the philosophical assumptions we operate under. In general,  scientists  are pretty good at being aware of underlying scientific assumptions, but sometimes a general philosophical viewpoint is often overlooked precisely because it is so widespread. Another  advantage is that philosophy gives us a useful language in which to articulate underlying assumptions.

To give one example, consider the following. The  ‘big bang ‘ model predicts a universe that was once in a hot, tiny, dense state,  expanding and cooling ever since. There is a great deal of evidence to support this model, but it runs into mathematical difficulties as time zero is approached (part of the problem is that we do not have a theory to describe gravity on the smallest or ‘quantum’ scales).  These are technical problems that every cosmologist battles with, but they might one day be resolved, leaving us with a consistent theory of a universe with a definite beginning. In that case, questions that few physicists ever consider become very important:

–          In a universe with a definite beginning, when did the laws of physics becomes the laws of physics?  Were they somehow ‘born’ with the universe, or did they come into being at a later stage. In other words are they emergent, rather than fundamental? If so, what entity or entities did they emerge from?

–          Could it be that space and time themselves are not fundamental but also emergent? In other words, is it possible that space and time were not born with the universe, but are made up of something more fundamental than either? (One clue here is Einstein’s discovery that space and time are not absolute but affected by motion and by gravity).  Could it be that they are non-fundamental as well as non-static?

–          If so, doesn’t this create problems of causality in the case of time?

This is just a flavour of the sort of questions one encounters in the philosophy of cosmology.  Right now, I’d better turn in so I’m wide awake for  tomorrow. In the first lecture, George Ellis, one of the world’s leading theoretical cosmologists, will give a talk ‘Infinites of age and size, including issues in global topology’ .  I suspect I’ll need my wits about me….

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February 16, 2013 · 9:15 pm

Mid-term in Chamonix

Last week was mid-term and I had a few days skiing in Chamonix in the French Alps. Chamonix lies in the shadow of Mont Blanc, the highest of the Alpine peaks, and the area is famous for its challenging snowsports and mountain climbing. It was surprisingly easy to get to (1 hr 30 mins from Geneva airport) and the skiing certainly didn’t disappoint.

I stayed with my brother and his family in a tiny chalet in Les Praz, a small village just outside the town of Chamonix. The great advantage of this village is that it offers easy access to La Flègere, a large ski area on the opposite side of the valley to the crowds at Chamonix. We had one day’s skiing out of Flegère, another at Argentière, the next resort along the valley, and the final day at Le Tour, further down the valley again.

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The village of Les Praz in Chamonix

The skiing was great in each case; lots of snow, steep pistes  and clear skies almost every afternoon. An extra thrill was the fact that one could ski over the Swiss border and have lunch in Switzerland. Of the three resorts, Flegère was my favourite; plenty of trees, nice unpisted runs under the lifts and not too many people.

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The lonely skier

That said, I retain my preference for skiing in Austria. One reason is that, like many French resorts, Chamonix has relatively few gondolas, a large number of button lifts  and uncovered chairlifts. Button lifts are quite tiring on the feet after a while, while exposed chairlifts can get very cold – a concern at altitudes above 1500 m where the midday temperature is often below -10 degrees Celsius. In Austria, almost all the main resorts have installed a healthy distribution of small, efficient gondolas and covered chairlifts (in the latter case, the chairs are heated by solar panels in the plastic cover). There were also far fewer restaurants and cafes on the Chamonix slopes, which I found quite surprising for such a famous resort (coffee breaks are important for the tired skier). So while the French are justifiably proud of their resorts, I still prefer Austria!

All in all a very good ski holiday, highly recommended…

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September 19, 2012 · 4:44 pm

VM Slipher and the expanding universe

In an earlier post, I mentioned an upcoming  conference in Arizona to celebrate the pioneering work of the American astronomer Vesto Slipher. As mentioned previously, 2012 marks the centenary of Slipher’s observation that light from the Andromeda nebula was Doppler shifted, a finding he interpreted as evidence of a radial velocity for the nebula. By 1917, he had established that the light from many of the distant nebulae is redshifted, i.e. shifted to lower frequency than normal. This was the first  indication that the most distant objects in the sky are moving away at significant speed, and it was an important step on the way to the discovery of the expanding universe.

Vesto Melvin Slipher (1875-1969)

The conference turned out to be very informative and enjoyable, with lots of interesting presentations from astronomers, historians and science writers. It’s hard to pick out particular talks from such a great lineup, but three highlights for me were Einstein, Eddington and the 1919 Eclipse Expedition by Peter Coles, Georges Lemaitre: A Personal Profile by John Farrell and Slipher’s redshifts as support for de Sitter’s universe? by Harry Nussbaumer. The latter compared the importance of the contributions of Slipher, Hubble, Einstein, De Sitter, Friedmann and Lemaitre (to mention but a few) and was a focal point for the conference. My own talk ‘Who discovered the expanding universe? – an open bus tour’ was quite similar to Harry’s , with some philosophy of science thrown in, while Micheal Way’s talk Dismantling Hubble’s Legacy? also touched on similar ground.  However, there was little danger of overlap since viewpoints and conclusions drawn from the material varied quite widely! You can see the conference program here.

A slide from Peter Cole’s talk on the Eddington eclipse experiment

A slide from John Farrell’s talk showing a postcard from Lemaitre to Slipher, announcing the former’s visit to the Lowell observatory

Harr Nussbaumer, author of ‘The Discovery of the Expanding Universe’,  in action

Front slide of my own presentation

The best aspect of the conference was the question and answer session after each talk. There was quite a divergence of opinion amongst the delegates concerning the relative importance of the various scientists in the story, which made for great discussions (though I suspect that much of the argument arises from differing views concerning the role of the theoretician vs the role of the experimentalist). You can see a list of speakers and abstracts for the talks here and the slides for my own talk are here.

There was plenty of material here for the relativist; indeed, quite a bit of discussion concerned the relative contributions of Friedmann and Lemaitre (told you it was a good conference). In particular, the Israeli mathematician Ari Belenkiy gave a defence of Friedmann’s work in his talk Alexander Friedmann and the Origin of Modern Cosmology, pointing out that the common assertion that Friedmann took no interest in practical matters is simply untrue, given his work in meteorology, and that the relevant astronomical data was not widely available to Europeans at the time. I must admit I share Ari’s view to some extent; I’m always somewhat in awe of a theoretician who describes all possible solutions to a problem (in this case the universe), as opposed to one solution that seems to chime with experiments of the day.

Title slide of Ari’s talk on Friedmann

The conference also included a trip to the Lowell observatory, including a view of the spectrograph used by Slipher for his groundbreaking measurements and a peep through the famous 24-inch Clark telescope which remains in operation to this day. We were also treated to a few scenes from Dava Sobel’s upcoming play based on her book on Copernicus, read by Dava herself and the eminent Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich.

The famous spectograph, perfectly preserved

Slipher’s telescope remains in use today

Dava Sobel and Professor Owen Gingerich reading from her new play at the Lowell observatory

All in all, a superb conference, definitely worth the long trip (Dublin-Chicago-Phoenix-Flagstaff). Earlier in the week, I gave a longer version of my talk at the BEYOND centre at Arizona State University in Phoenix; I was afraid some of the theoreticians in Larry Krauss’s  group might find it a bit equation-free, but they seemed to enjoy it. Larry and Paul Davies have a fantastic operation going on at the BEYOND centre, but I have to say the ambience and surroundings  at Flagstaff are probably more suitable for a European – much nicer weather!

Many thanks to Ari Belenkiy for the photographs. You can find more descriptions of the conference on John Farrell’s Forbes blog, and on Peter Coles’s  In The Dark blog.

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July 21, 2012 · 6:28 pm

O’Raifeartaigh Conference in Munich

I’m in Munich this weekend, at a physics conference in honour of my late father. The 2012 O’Raifeartaigh Conference is taking place in Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians Universität (LMU) and there are speakers here from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the University of Tokyo, the Niels Bohr Institute (DK), the Eugene Wigner Institute (HN) and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

It sounds rather grand, but such memorial conferences are a good way for researchers who work in related fields to meet and present their latest work to each other. Many of the speakers worked with Dad at one stage or another and I think he would be very pleased to be remembered in this way. There are also some really sharp young scholars here and he would have liked that too. It’s the third memorial conference in Lochlainn’s memory, see here for the programme and other details.

Munich itself is fantastic – the university is right in the middle of the city and the neighbourhood is full of bookshops, coffee-houses, museums and beer gardens. The teaching term is not yet finished in Germany so there are students everywhere (don’t tell Minister Quinn!). In fact, I have never seen so many bicycles and bookshops in one place. The conference talks are in the University’s Arnold –Sommerfeld Centre for Theoretical Physics and the building has a Museum for Modern Art on one side and a music conservatoire or Musik Hochshule down the block. I could get used to this.

LMU University Munich (Main Entrance)

Lochlainn’s work concerned the use of mathematical symmetry methods to describe the physics of the elementary particles. Throughout his career at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, he was considered a leading expert in the field. He is probably best known for his contributions to a radical theory known as ‘supersymmetry’, a theory that is currently being tested at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. You can read more on his career by clicking on the tab Lochlainn on the top of the page.

There are some great talks here although some are are far beyond the comprehension of yours truly (an experimentalist). As always, I’m impressed by the style of presentation in theoretical physics; there are no polite powerpoint lectures here, but chalk-and-blackboard sessions with searching questions from the audience every few minutes. ‘‘Does that function even have a ground state?’, a speaker was asked within the first two minutes of his talk. ‘‘Well, it doesn’t in anti-deSitter space, but I hope to convince you that it does in deSitter space”, was the response. Answers to the frequent questions are tackled at the board until everyone in the room is satisfied. No-one gets away with anything here, from the youngest postdoc to the most eminent physicist. I think it’s a style of presentation that helps both lecturer and audience and I wish the humanities would adopt it – my pet hate is listening politely to a philosopher or historian for an hour before one gets to question a statement made in the first three minutes.

I gave a short talk myself on Friday. This was a ‘life-in-science’ presentation where I used pictures of people and places that influenced Lochlainn during his career: from his early work on general relativity with JL Synge  at the Dublin Institute for Advances Studies to his work on quantum field theory with Walter Heitler at the University of Zurich, from his use of group theory to prove his famous no-go theorem at Syracuse University in New York State to his work on the history of gauge theory at L’Institut des Hautes Etudes in Paris. I was worried I might have got some things wrong (e.g. “No, that work was completely incidental!’’), but thankfully it didn’t happen. In fact, I think the audience enjoyed the presentation as many of them had known the people and places mentioned at firsthand. You can find the photos and slides I used here.

Update

The conference is over today so Mum and I took an open bus tour of Munich. I find this a great way to get to know any city and it didn’t disappoint. Munich may not be as large as Berlin or Hamburg, but it is the capital of Bavaria and is an extremely impressive city. I’m amazed by the huge number of parks, wide boulevards and splendid buildings – clearly, it was did not suffer as much as so many other German cities from bombing in the war. This is one of the great privileges of being an academic – you get to see the most interesting places, all in the line of work.

The ‘heroes’ monument on Leopoldstrasse

And finally

On the way back to the hotel, I was intrigued to see a huge banner draped over the main university entrance; the legend’ STRINGS 2012′ is leaving the whole city in no doubt that a major conference on string theory is about to take place here! Such a civilised country..

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February 21, 2012 · 7:37 pm

Sun, snow and clear skies in Hinterglemm

This week I’m spending half-term in Saalbach in the Hinterglemm valley in Austria. I have a ton of work to do but given the current snow conditions in Europe, I couldn’t resist a cheap last-minute package deal. I’ve never been to Saalbach before and it’s lovely, one of those tiny Austrian towns where the village centre consists of a single cobblestone street lined with traditional buildings (pedestrianized of course), with ski lifts to the peaks branching off at the top and bottom ends of the street.

Saalbach in the Hinterglemm valley

It doesn’t hurt that the British half-term is over; the main language in the resort is German and it seems to be mainly German and Austrian skiers on the slopes, always a good sign. The snow is as good as I expected but visibility was terrible until today. It takes a lot of the fun out of skiing if the light is poor – it makes the skier stiffen up and tire easily (not to mention taking the wrong turn at every intersection). However, the sun was out today and we had a dream combination of clear skies, sun and powder. The weather is expected to remain like this for the rest of the week, yippee.

It really does look like this on a clear day

I usually go skiing with clubs like the Ski Club of Great Britain or the Frankfurt Ski Club, but this week I’m on my own, skiing during the day and studying in the evenings. It sounds better than it is – I’d forgotten how tiring on-piste skiing becomes after a while, a bit like driving on the autobahn except worse because you have to avoid a lot of out-of-control skiers and boarders. Luckily, there are plenty of ‘ski touring’ routes just off the main pistes, always my favourites, with plenty of powder. That said, I’m joining an Austrian group tomorrow for some real off-piste ouch! I know my legs will be jelly after an hour (‘we’ll just walk up to that ridge over there’), but it’s worth doing if only for the views.

Update

The ski-tour turned out to be a sort of group lesson whilst touring around the mountain and was absolutely great. It’s amazing the bad habits that develop if you don’t have a checkup every now and then, I must do this more often. That said, it was no easy stroll through the woods – one of us clocked our group doing a speed 96.7 km/hr down a Schuss!

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December 24, 2010 · 5:33 pm

Stuck at the airport: that in-between time again

I’m still hoping to get back to Ireland for Christmas Day, but it’s now midday on Christmas Eve and I haven’t made it any further than Boston airport. The problem is, as everybody knows, many European airports like Dublin and Heathrow are experiencing large snowfalls and feezing conditions this week, and simply can’t keep the runways clear; planes can’t get in or out which causing travel chaos.

‘What? Snow in winter?’, you cry sarcastically. Yes, but heavy snow in December is relatively uncommon in countries like Ireland and the UK. Worse, it comes at a time of huge passenger volumes. Many airports simply can’t cope with the double whammy, with knockon effects for all air travel. Delays at Heathrow, in particular, have caused chaos at airports around Europe and elsewhere.

Dublin airport in the snow

As for me, I’m happy enough. I like these in-between times, where one is neither working nor on holiday. A good time to think. Also, Logan airport is very nice, sensibly divided into small terminals (unlike Dublin airport). Of course, travel delays are relatively easy if you don’t have tired kids, financial worries, or have to sleep on the airport floor. Here in Boston, Aer Lingus passengers are being put up in the nearby Hilton while we wait for the next available flight; pretty decent, considering the airline can hardly be held responsible for the weather.

I’m using the time to read through Piers Bizony’s ATOM, the only interesting book I could find in the tiny airport bookstore. The book is based on the excellent BBC TV series of the same name and it’s a very entertaining read, if a little surprising. From the title, I had expected a brief history of particle physics for the layman; from the discovery of the nucleus to the quark etc. Instead, the book concentrates mainly on the story of the evolution of quantum physics. Which is no harm. But it does remind me that there are remarkably few books out there that tell the story of the discovery of the atom and subatomic particles as a simple phenomenological tale . Hmm…

Something to think about. Right now, it’d be nice to get home sometime soon.

Update

We’re finally about to get on a plane to Dublin (arriving 3 am Christmas Day!) and I still haven’t finished Bizony’s book.  I’ve enjoyed my airport sojourn but others are less sanguine. Some passengers are utterly fed up and are less than polite to the airline staff.  It’s amazing how some need someone to blame in situations like this, even when it’s perfectly obvious that it’s weather, not the airline, that is the problem. Human nature I guess…

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December 19, 2010 · 11:47 pm

Escape from Cambridge

I like to get out of Cambridge at the weekends if I can. The place is amazing during the week, with a non-stop round of interesting seminars at Harvard Kennedy School and physics department, not to mention the seminars at the MIT physics and engineering departments one T-stop away – but it’s nice to cross the river to see Boston city proper at the weekends.

On Saturday nights, I play in a trad session in the Littlest Bar on Broad St in the heart of the financial district. It’s  a great session with good music and friendly players but it’s strange to get off the T from flat Cambridge and be surrounded by tall skyscrapers, gives me vertigo every time. Fun to visit at weekends but I couldn’t live downtown.

The financial district in downtown Boston

Rockin’ session at the Littlest Bar: photo Sara Piazza

On Sunday, I often take a trip to the Beacon Hill area of Boston, exploring the coffee shops along historic Charles St and walking along the beautiful park by the Charles river. Today, I ventured a bit further for a Christmas do with some relatives in the Backbay area of Boston. It’s a beautiful part of the city with lovely old houses, parks and not too far from Boston Common. Although the T makes it easy to reach anywhere within Boston city, I try to make a point of walking around the city and today I decided to see if I could walk home from Backbay. Right around the corner was historic Boston Symphomy Hall and from there it was a short walk along Mass Avenue, across Harvard bridge and back to MIT and finally back to Cambridge centre – all within 40 minutes.

Boston Symphony Hall, home of BSO

It’s extraordinary how small and eclectic this city is.

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November 2, 2010 · 12:15 am

A typical day at Harvard

What’s a typical day at Harvard like? A good few people have asked me this. Truth is, I have no idea; but my own working day here is pretty busy.

I usually start the day online in my apartment; Boston  is five hours behind Ireland (actually four this week because European clocks went back last weekend), so it makes sense to deal with email/college issues at home immediately after breakfast. This little job has an annoying habit of taking up a lot more time than it should (what is it with email nowadays?) and this morning was no exception.

Turns out a book review I recently sent off to Physics World Magazine missed the agreed deadline because of problems with my email server. Marvellous. That took a while to sort out, as did the usual list of college administrative tasks. In particular I’m currently trying to organise a physics class I will give to WIT students from Harvard by videolink – an interesting technological challenge but of course I forgot about the hour change when booking a conference room!

Then it’s a 10 minute walk along beautiful leafy Harvard St to the Kennedy School, for the weekly seminar of our Science and Technology Studies circle. These talks are an important part of the STS activity at Harvard and there is always plenty of serious discussion afterwards. Today, Allison MacFarlane of George Mason University gave a talk on nuclear power; ‘A Free for All? Impacts of Emerging Nuclear Countries’ was a talk on the thorny issue of the acquisition of nuclear energy by countries not currently in the nuclear club. The talk focused on the reasons why such countries desire nuclear power (energy economics, energy security, prestige etc) and the issues perceived by current members of the club (reactor safety, waste disposal, weapons proliferation). One big surprise was the number of countries declaring an interest; the speaker concentrated on the case of Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran and the UAE  but there were many many more….I had no idea.

After the talk,  it was straight into our weekly Science, Power, and Politics reading group for STS fellows. This continued our review of science, citizenship and democracy.  For this discussion we had studied papers such as ‘A Question of Europe‘ by S. Jasanoff (in Designs on Nature:  Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States ) and ‘Science and the Political Imagination in Contemporary Democracies‘ by Y. Ezrahi, (in States of Knowledge, Jasanoff, ed.); the  two-hour discussion focused on science and democracy, in particular science policy and citizenship in the context of the  European Union. If you think physics is difficult, you should try this stuff..

A run across the quad

After this session, I had to run – literally – from the Kennedy School up to the Harvard Physics Department on the main campus for a talk on astrophysics.  How did the first stars and black holes form? was an excellent talk by Avi Loeb on the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies. The lecturer presented a masterly overview of current theoretical work in computer modelling of  galaxy and black hole formation,  the fit between theory and experiment for the case of the spectrum of cosmic hydrogen, and the importance of data from the next generation of large telescopes.  If you want to more on this subject, go and buy his book.

I particularly admired the way the speaker carefully described the assumptions underlining the simulations i.e. the basic assumptions of the Lambda CDM model used ( see here for the basics of this model). Theoreticians often have to make assumptions for their models, which is perfectly ok as as long as one doesn’t lose sight of the assumptions being made!  One oddity: in his opening remarks, Loeb made a few cracks about the speculative nature of string theory; I was quite surprised, given Harvard’s strong reputation in this area. Indeed, noted string theorist Lisa Randall was in the audience, among others, but no-one seemed to take offence – perhaps they are all concerned that too many young theorists are heading in this direction.

It is 6 pm by the time I get back to the office and the day’s work just starting. Tomorrow morning, we have our Science and Technology Studies fellow’s meeting, where STS fellows take turns to present their work to each other for discussion in closed session.  In the afternoon, there is  a talk on dark matter in MIT by Paul Schechter I’m really looking forward to. How does anybody get any work done in this place?

P.S. On second thoughts I’m too tired for serious work. I”ll go and fool around on the web in Lamont – my favourite library whose restaurant is open 24 hours !

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