Thesis proposal + family in town = productive, fun, and BUSY! And yet there’s so much going on, with the election and the economy and all the usual bits of news… no time to think of it all right now. I think everything is on hold until Thursday.
Til then, Carnival of Space #72!
For lack of any original thought over the last few days, I’ll continue to quip about articles that have come across my Google Reader, either on their own or from my favorite blogs (off to the right, see them there?)
Get Inside the Vaccine-and-Autism Scare with a review of Dr. Paul A. Offit’s new book, “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.” This is important medical history for anyone with or planning to have children. As a parent, (I imagine, since I am not one) you have to make very important decisions that affect the health and well-being of your child. Since not all of us can be doctors, we have to do the best we can with a little bit of reading, research, and critical thinking. I’m sure I will spend most of my pregnancy (whenever I do decide to spawn some little buggers) researching children’s health issues, such as the anti-vaccine campaign. The evidence seems to rule against these claims, but many parents still choose not to vaccinate children, putting them and other children at risk of disease. Also, autism is an important disease that deserves careful research into plausible areas of risk prevention, if such a thing is possible, and treatment.
Christopher Hitchens was at it again in a debate against theologian and physicist Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete. Apparently, Hitchens was in top form and was able to trounce his opponent, and I hope that video of this will be available. IMO, he was pretty good, but not thorough, against the blatant and boring misuse of science by Frank Turek at VCU earlier this month, and frankly, they just talked right past each other.
PZ Myers warns us that in medicine, “provider conscience rights” are getting more airplay, and that they are in clear violation of patients’ rights. Scary stuff.
Coming out of the closet? No, not that one, the atheist closet. Then you are wanted for a sociological survey by Dr. Tom Arcaro and Brother Richard. All the cool kids are doing it.
Oh noes! The LHC will now be down until spring 2009! The repairs needed for the problems since the first test will creep into the winter maintenance period, so comissioning won’t resume until the spring. Bummer. Yet a situation all to familiar to one who works in instrumentation.
In the meantime, check out the top LHC videos! You’ve got the ever famous LHC rap, the adorable and smart Brian Cox telling the scientists’ creation story and marvelling at the wonder of exploration, and a great in-depth explanation of how the LHC makes those protons go round and round.
And finally, signs of the seasons…
and signs of the times…
(In all fairness, the latter was taken on the Google “Appiness” Bus while on its tour stop at UVa!)
Categories: science
Tagged: atheist, medicine, picture, religion
Busy working, climbing, dancing, and doing chores the last few days, but taking small breaks to read:
The epic fail of the Vatican trying to do science,
The very sad news from the LHC, which is shut down for two months due to a glitch (ah, such is instrumentation),
How “Religulous” aims to destroy religion (um, ur doin it wrong?),
and, NASA’s global warming rubber duckies!
Girly squeal time! Just a little. I fell in love with Alanis‘s music in 1995 with “Jagged Little Pill” (and really, who didn’t?) My best friend and I used to listen to her CD when we were nerdy little pre-teens in St. Rita’s elementary (“you know how us Catholic Girls can be…”), and it was such a release. It continued to be so for me throughout high school. In fact, when “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” came out in 1998, I didn’t really like it that much. I preferred the angry, gutsy girl music. It wasn’t until a few years later when I was finishing up my first year in college, and so much had changed in my life, and I had really begun to grow, that the newer CD finally made sense to me, and I loved it. I have loved all her music ever since. So it was about time that I saw her in concert.
Alanis came to the Charlottesville Pavilion last night for a benefit concert for the CVille Free Medical Clinic. Rachael (of moondog picture fame), Greg, and I got tickets near the back of the front-center section. I think this is the first time I’ve been to a concert with actual seats, so I was glad that we had no one behind us and could stand and dance and see the whole thing. She and her band ROCKED. I had never heard some of her songs live before, and they were played with such fierceness and passion that was infectious. I had almost forgotten how emotional her music could be, and how clearly it spoke to me, and doubtless to millions of her fans, all of us with the same human emotions. The acoustic set was just as brilliant and fun. There were lots of songs from the new album, “Flavors of Entanglement,” which I promptly bought on iTunes later that night. There was also a lot of songs from “Jagged Little Pill” which got the audience up and rocking. So many great songs were played from her other albums, and I wonder if they are not as appreciated by the audience. I danced and sang along to all of them! From the top of my head, they played “Moratorium,” “So Unsexy,” “Thank You,” “Head Over Feet,” “You Outta Know,” “Everything,” “The Couch,” and so many more. With all her material, they could have gone on for hours. I personally would have loved to have heard “Unprodigal Daughter,” but you can’t have it all!
So it was a great kick-off to the tour, and that friend of mine is going to see her in New York next weekend. Hooray! Too all the guys and girls who were singing and dancing along to her music all night, you rock. Muchly.
Now go watch her parody of “My Humps”!
Categories: general
Tagged: Alanis, Charlottesville, music
Following the cool YouTube video that was aired on New Mexico public television, we here at the NRAO got another email about the VLA being on TV. This time, segments would show up on ABC’s Primetime. Awesome! So I asked the boy to record it for me, and went about my day. Later at night, I was flipping though my DVR, deciding what to watch. And I catch the title of a show about UFOs. And I wonder, “who recorded this?” Then I realized, it was the Primetime episode I had asked for a recording of. It was about UFOs. Ugh… this cannot be good. Didn’t they do this a few years ago? (In fact, this review of the 2005 show could fit almost exactly the material used in the 2008 show! I’m sure it IS the same material.)
So I decide to watch it anyway. I used to watch “Sightings” and other credulous UFO shows all the time when I was younger, and I believed it all. I read Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” and every once in a while would tune into Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM.” I was fascinated with the notion that extraterrestrials were possibly visiting us. However, the more I researched it, the more unlikely it seemed. Now, a bit older and better equipped as a scientist and skeptic, I gave this show a go. And, I wanted to see how the VLA fit in.
The show started off with clips of forthcoming interviews, most of whom where UFO witnesses, but there were also blurbs from one of my favorite astronomers, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and famous physicist, Michio Kaku. It is slightly worrisome when interviews with science luminaries are used in shows promoting pseudoscience, but, whatever, let’s not criticize before the show has begun. The main theme of the show was stated in the title, “Seeing is Believing.” The host starts off the show at the Very Large Array. The reason given for this is tenuous. The VLA looks at stars and planets, and UFOs may be craft piloted by intelligent beings from other planets. Riiiiight. Okay, so they needed a pretty backdrop and want to give some air of scientific credence. Also, New Mexico is home to the UFO mecca, Roswell.
The show continues with an appearance by none other than Art Bell. (Hasn’t Noory taken over the show?) And he states that when someone sees something in the sky that they cannot explain, a ufologist is born. Here, he and thousands of UFO witnesses are falling into the logical fallacy that if they cannot explain something, that is it unexplainable, or at least has a fantastic explanation. We hear from witnesses of an event in Texas in January of 2008, with the usual sighting of weird lights “that just could not be planes.” Witnesses insert their own narrative into what they think the craft were doing. This show is turning out to be nothing unlike what I used to watch as a kid, only now I see how far the truth can be stretched. In fact, this reminds me of the “Phoenix lights” that have been thoroughly debunked, as the current Skeptic magazine (v14#2) reminds us…. oh wait, that’s the next segment! (I must be psychic.) Around this point, I lost video since our cable has gone wacky, so the rest is based on the audio.
Finally, we meet our first skeptic. James McGaha is a retired Air Force pilot and astronomer who gives the realistic explanation of this 1997 sighting, a formation of aircraft and a set of dropped flares. Of course, his testimony is followed by more credulous statements of believers who swear they saw a huge extraterrestrial ship. Sorry folks, anecdotal evidence is not evidence to the skeptics.
The show’s host goes on to correctly note that seeing is not believing to scientists; evidence is necessary. They go on to talk to NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay about the search for microbial life in the solar system and elsewhere, and Peter Smith of the Phoenix team about water on Mars. Neil Tyson gets to comment on how awesome it would be is Martian life was discovered, and how that would imply that universe is just teeming with life. This is a really fun and informative segment, but it would be better if it wasn’t placed just so in order to lend credibility to the belief that aliens are hanging around right now. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, reminds us that interstellar travel could be feasible to a civilization that is millions of years ahead of us that uses wormholes to travel. He neglects to mention that this is a very, very far-out concept with no actual physical basis, just a cool product of the mathematics. This is taken, by the narrative of the show, to imply that extraterrestrial visitors could be here.
The show goes on to point out that evidence of UFOs is scarce and sketchy. The real evidence comes down to eyewitness accounts. I say that eyewitness accounts are the least credible forms of evidence around! (I’ll never be picked for a jury.) Surely it is never accepted in science, even though this may be one of the most important questions facing mankind! A fellow from MUFON goes on to say that fear of ridicule is a problem, and that more credible witnesses need to come forward to encourage the rest that aren’t reporting. Okay, for one, ridicule is the consequence when after years of outrageous claims, the UFO community has produced no hard evidence. And two, how are reports from the like of pilots and police officers any more credible than the common man or woman? Are they any more skeptical or scientific? And isn’t this all just “argument from authority” to begin with?
I kind of filtered out most of the rest, since it’s nothing new to a seasoned viewer of such programs. The governments of UK and France have released their UFO investigations; the history of the flying saucer craze in the US during the Cold War; Roswell; alien autopsy film (although they did correctly state that it was a hoax); etc.
There was, however, another science segment that caught my attention. This one focused on SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It may not strictly be considered science, but it is a scientific approach to the problem of searching for intelligent life. And, after all, isn’t it worth a little bit of telescope time if it could change human history? The segment is littered with scenes from the lovely movie, “Contact” with that unmistakable sound of the signal. SETI scientist Seth Shostak is interviewed, as is Jill Tarter, who both advocate the searches. The Allen Telescope Array is mentioned. Also, they talk to Frank Drake, who started searching for extraterrestrial signals in Green Bank, WV. I am fortunate enough to work there often, and have been there a bazillion times with camera flashing away. The famous “Drake equation,” or the attempt to quantify our ignorance about the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that we can communicate with, was penned there.
Of course, ufologists wonder why such time is devoted to SETI when the aliens are already here. All three scientists mentioned above go on to emphatically state that if they thought there was any reason to believe that aliens had visited here, they would much rather be working on that project and seeking that evidence. But none are convinced. It has not been proven, does not have the data to back it up, and it’s not verifiable. A si
gnal coming in from space, however, would be all those things.
The heartbreaking abduction stories soon follow. I am reminded of Sagan’s “Demon-Haunted World” where he makes the case that “alien abductions” are a problem no matter which way you look at it. Either an extraterrestrial species is taking people from their homes and experimenting on them, which is atrocious, or a large number of people are suffering from delusions or false memories, which is also quite terrible. Just as I begin to wonder how these people can be better helped, a psychologist, Susan Clancy, is brought on the show. She talks about her research at Harvard with abductees. Her hypothesis is that hypnosis, often used to retrieve “repressed” alien abduction “memories,” is implanting false memories and that these people are actually suffering from sleep disorders. So it seems as though someone is skeptically helping these people.
Near the end, Kaku is brought back in, and he weighs in that some fraction of UFO cases are truly unexplained and require further scientific investigation. We must not rule out extraterrestrial visitors. Although I agree with the spirit of his statement, I think that when a sighting is reviewed scientifically, the believers are not swayed in any case. Also, his credentials as a physicist are being used to again give credulity to the 80 million people that believe that aliens are among us.
All in all, I was disappointed to see my favorite telescope being used in this advertisement for belief in extraterrestrial visitation, and a show that combined all the usual tricks of credulity. To its credit, however, the skeptics weren’t completely lambasted, and a bit of discussion was reserved for the science of astrobiology and the excitement of SETI. Apparantly, a completely science-based show won’t be aired, or won’t get good ratings, according to ABC. I think that the science coming from the VLA, radio astronomy, and heck, all the sciences, deserve more attention than they get.
For now, I’ll stick with the Discovery Channel.
Get to know the coolest telescope around, the Very Large Array!
Dave Finley gives a nice overview of the work done at one of the most productive astronomical facilities in the world, the VLA in New Mexico. You know you’ve seen it before in the movie, “Contact,” or the cover of the Bon Jovi album, Bounce. Now, learn about the cool science coming out of the 27-antenna interferometer*, and plans that are underway to improve the sensitivity by 10-fold!
*One of these days I’ll write up a beginner’s guide to interferometers, mostly because I was disappointed by my own introductions years ago. And it’s a really great method of building radio telescopes.
Artist Jonathan Keats is debuting the Atheon, a religious-like tribute to science. So I have to wonder, what do science and religion really have in common? Both can inspire a sense of awe and wonder. However, science inspires awe in the natural order of things, whereas religion adds in awe in a mysterious higher power. Science can tell us about our origins and our makeup. Science alone cannot tell us how to be moral, but knowing more about ourselves can help to to explain why we find some things moral and others immoral. Religion, however, teaches morality, sometimes even claiming to already have all the answers.
Okay, back to the Atheon, which will be on display in Berkeley as a temple of science. Mr. Keats says
Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo did so much to make Christianity palatable to the masses. … The essence of religion is stained glass and song.
Well, that’s a rather narrow view of religion, but one that I don’t mind. So, his installation includes a stained glass rendition of the cosmic microwave background, or the light from the universe just 300,000 years after the Big Bang, complete with the seeds of overdensities that would become galaxies that we live in. There is also a musical composition entitled “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” This features Big Bang acoustics, or what the universe might sound like, by one of my UVa profs! Go read the article, it looks like it will be an amazing sight. There is already a web version. (I think you need to really turn your speakers up? Or am I missing the sound?)
Keats makes some other interesting statements.
“[T]hese universes don’t provide any answers. If people are to find spirituality in science, it’s likely to be by immersing themselves in questions.”
That’s a fair point, although understanding can also be an intensely “spiritual” experience, as much as wonder.
“Science will make a fine religion,” he predicts. “What remains to be determined is whether this religion will be good science.”
I don’t think that I actually want science to be a religion. Science is about asking questions, challenging the status quo, and an insatiable curiosity. Religion is more likely to stifle that, with conceptions of the sacred, dogma, or worship. No, in that case, worship of science is NOT good science. But science art is really darn cool.
I would be remiss if I didn’t post this fantabulous awesome picture that just might be the first picture of an extrasolar planet around a star.
The little one is the planet around the K7 star in the middle.
I haven’t taken time to read the paper yet, but there’s more good info at Bad Astronomy and Universe Today. As expected, it was taken in the infrared, where stars are slightly dimmer and planets brighter than in the visible. We knew that this was coming, it’s been a hot topic for a while, but I thought we were a few years off. If confirmed (that part is very important), it would be very far out from its star, 11 times the distance of Neptune, and weigh 8 times the mass of Jupiter. Astronomers determined that it is an extrasolar planet candidate from its spectrum, but time will tell if it is actually gravitationally bound.
Very cool!!!
UPDATE: Rocking great picture by Rachael from McCormick Observatory last night, on her Flickr page, with the awesome 6-inch Clark Refractor in the foreground.
UPDATE Again (9/17): Rachael’s pic gets a kudos from UVa alumn, the Bad Astronomer.
—
I got a great twitter update from Nick in CVille saying that there was a Moon halo visible outside. So we went outside and, lo and behold, about 20 degrees* in radius around the Moon was a nearly complete halo! This means that there were some high altitude ice crystals that were refracting the light at just the right angle, as explained at Hyperphysics. So I go, “gee, maybe we should try and take a picture.” And Greg says, “I have a small camera tripod.” So two very, very amateur photographers played with the aperture settings on my camera (Canon PowerShot A540), and took the following (plus others of lesser quality):
5 second exposure
10 second exposure
1/400th second exposure, zoomed in on the Moon itself
10 second exposure after a plane left a contrail through the area
The bright feature on the left stayed in place over the approximately 20 minutes we were out there. Is that a moon dog?
*How did I know it was approximately 20 degrees? Hold out a clenched fist at arms length. The width of your fist from index to pinky fingers is about 10 degrees. Your index finger alone is about one degree in width. Remember, bigger hands tend to correlate with longer arms, so you get it about right for people of all sizes!
Categories: astronomy
Tagged: Charlottesville, moon, picture, pretty
So I was having fun on Google Reader earlier today, before getting down to business (the thesis proposal writing business, of course), and I need to comment on some cool things I saw on my favorite blogs.
First, the Bad Astronomer has a video (go watch it!) where Brian Cox defends the need for basic science, such as the Large Hadron Collider, against an inquiring reporter, who probably speaks for many people with the same question, and Sir David King, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Basic research leads us to practical advancements that we may not have even dreamed of when the research began. Take, for example, (and I think I’m stealing this example from Sagan) radios. Did Maxwell know that his theoretical explorations into the mysteries of electromagnetism would lead to such a powerful communication tool? Would it have made any sense if a funding agency had first said to him first, “build a communications device that works through the air over hundreds of miles”? Of course not. But his “impractical” research led to further explorations of the likes of Tesla that led to this technology. The LHC, and any basic research, may do something similar. You need both directed research and basic research in order to have a healthy science program.
Next, the ever so Splendid Elles writes about a recent talk by PZ Myers on science education. And she points out:
Education needs to be about freethought. It needs to be about teaching kids skepticism and not telling them “apply this to everything! But not your religion.” We can’t make conclusions for them, but we can give them the freedom and the tools to get to their own conclusions… if they choose to use them.
I can’t agree more. That goes for adults, as well.
I’m a 7th (and final!) year graduate student in astronomy. My thesis has focused on radio astronomy instrumentation. That means, I get to build cool telescopes that will open up new frontiers in the universe. I also love to teach, both in a classroom setting and informally. I'm happy to talk about the universe with anyone who will listen, and I am skeptically curious about all things.