He Tells Me To Burn Things

Will someone PLEASE tell me why England burned down last week ? And, equally importantly, why didn't Scotland or Wales or even Northern Ireland ? While the media may be keen to repeatedly divulge that these were the worst riots since the 1980's, they're less keen to report that these riots are so perplexing they'll soon become a regular clue in the Daily Mail's Cryptic Crossword.

It's not quite that no explanations are being offered. It's just that all of the so-called causes stink to high heaven of people promoting their own personal pet hates. Come on, people. The moral breakdown of society has been blamed for everything from the fall of Rome to the sinking of the Titanic (probably). Good grief, if the moral breakdown of society had been continuing for as long as it's been claimed, by now we'd be little better than those awful zombie creatures in I Am Legend.

"Help ! I've caught the dreaded CGI virus !"

Even that normally quintessentially analytical paper, The Independent, is offering few explanations. Oh, it did try, once, but it used so many long words in such flowing and flowery language that I was sorely put upon to constrain the electrochemical process dwelling within my cerebral cortex toward the notional concept that the rioters might actually think that way. Heck, if an article attempting to explain why people burn things requires annotations, then I'm just not convinced.

"You've done grand. Now you now what you have to do... BURN 'EM ALL !"

Reactions to how to deal with the rioters seem as irrational as not bothering to examine the root causes. For starters, Our Glorious Headteacher (David Cameron) seems convinced that the entire thing was put about by naughty children and is desperately trying to deal with them as only a Tory would - i.e. with water cannon and plastic bullets. That's perfectly understandable. After all, he's a Tory, and therefore mad.

Maybe there was a large youth contingent involved, I don't know. But reading the newspaper reports it seems to me the rioters are dominated by Club 18-30. And given that one of the first convictions handed out was to a 31 year old teacher, I can't help but feel the political bandwagons have been set loose like fire-and-forget missiles, only someone forgot what the target was before even launching.

The phrase "knee-jerk" falls short of describing many of the reactions to the crisis. One man was jailed for stealing water worth the princely sum of £3.50. A 22 year old model ("of previous good character") was jailed for 6 months for stealing 10 packs of chewing gum. Eh ? Did I just wake up one morning and find myself transported back in time to 1851 ? Perhaps she should also be flogged and deported to Australia, just to be on the safe side ? God help us all if she decides to do it again. IS NO-ONE SAFE FROM THIS TERRIBLE GUM THIEF ?!?!

Mmm, minty fresh riot breath !

One can't help but imagine the future of that 22 year old. Years from now, she'll tell her grandchildren of the riots. She'll tell them of how whole shopping centres were burned to the ground, how people stole from the injured and attacked the police and even firefighters. And then she'll finish by telling them she was so out of control that she broke into Argos and stole some gum, and that no-one would ever again employ her because her "good character" was damaged irreparably.

One marginally more serious case concerns a looter who stole £50 from a charity box. OK, that's pretty bad, and certainly deserves a sharp slap on the wrist and a hefty fine. But is it really, "an act of breathtaking wickedness.... contemptible and despicable" as the judge called it ? Contemptible and despicable maybe, but "breathtaking wickedness" is the sort of term I feel should be reserved for Nazi Germany, Vlad the Impaler, and - on a bad day - Peppa Pig.

So what have we learned from this whole escapade ? Not a damned thing, apparently. Unfortunately, a magical pyromaniacal leprechaun remains the best explanation for the whole sorry business. He appears to be using his magical powers to lay low and avoid interviews, so we're not likely to find out any more details for quite some time.

Croeso Y Arecibo

Hwyl fawr, myfywyr ! Before the REU students left I felt it my duty to give them a crash course in Welsh, should they ever find themselves stranded in Northern Patagonia or even the Welsh homeland itself. Consequently they are now engendered with such choice phrases as :

"Welcome to the Arecibo Observatory and Welsh Language Emporium"

"Goodbye summer students"

"The summer was awesome"

"I like Arecibo"

"Is this a camel ?"

"Where is Wales ?"

"Yes ! This is a camel !"

"Awesome sea turtle"

"My name is Carlos"

"They should have sent a poet !"

I suppose one could argue that a crash course in Spanish by a fluent Spanish speaker at the start of the summer would have been marginally more useful than, say, a crash course in Welsh by someone who hasn't spoken it since age 13 and actively dislikes the language at the end of the summer. Bah. I care not for such inconsequential details. In fact, maybe next year I'll schedule it as an official REU talk... it's only a mercy there are no other Welsh speakers able to lambast my sbwriel pronunciations.

All of which doesn't help solve my current conundrum one little bit, namely, why isn't Middle Earth overrun with elves ? Wait ! No, that was last night's problem, and probably a filler post for the next time I'm really bored. Which brings me nicely to my real problem, to wit, what to do with this blog. Pretty much all of my pictures are on Google+, so reproducing them here, while extremely easy, is also really boring.

On the other hand, Google+ doesn't have my cool pirate Einstein to keep an eye on things, or my highly witty banner picture of Johnny Depp calmly surveying the sea for rogue astronomers. So, without further ado, the US Virgin Islands* ! I went to St John last weekend and wish I'd stayed. You know a trip's going to be good when you charter a light aircraft and your pilot turns out to be a former theoretical cosmologist from MIT by the name of Carlos. And then when your villa has a pool with a sea view, things can't go far wrong.

* These statements are not unconnected. The VI's are much more touristy, proper Caribbean places than Puerto Rico, so pirate regalia can be found everywhere.

Yes, those photos are all of the same view. That's because it's an extremely good view. It's all the better for being slightly cooler and MUCH less humid than the relative hell-hole that is Puerto Rico. Once again a visit to a civilised part of the world has kindled a deep desire to return home, particularly as I saw the little-known US-UK border (it's in between the US and UK Virgin Islands). They also drive on the left in the USVI, since it used to be Danish. I can only assume the Danes abandoned it due to the lack of icebergs and polar bears. Such is my extensive knowledge of Denmark...

At this point I require an underwater camera, on account of the VI's best feature : sea turtles. Why, in some beaches you can hardly move for turtles. You can reach out and touch them, and they don't react. Well, probably they do if you jab them in the eye or tap them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, but fortunately they're surprisingly fast so those things are quite difficult to do.

Since I don't have an underwater camera, this is the best I can do

I could wax lyrical about the wonders of the USVI, but instead I'll just recommend that the entire world visit it at once, be nice to the turtles (or I will destroy you) and don't try to fit 8 people in a Jeep designed to hold 5, it's not much fun. And definitely don't try to do so in front of the owner.

I Miss Civilization

Unfortunately, I'm not referring to the excellent game series by Sid Meiers, although that was very good. No, I'm referring to the little niceties that citizens of the First World are apt to take for granted, like reliable electricity, water, a sensible climate and a whole plethora of alcoholic beverages. Such is the downside of trips to the States, even if the place is weird in its own way.

I don't particularly care to detail most of my exploits in Green Bank to the world at large, save that they involved some very un-me like behaviour, a replica of Karl Jansky's radio telescope and a locked pool. Ahem. Anyway. Here's a picture of the Ewen and Purcell feed horn, the first instrument to ever detect HI emission. I certainly have absolutely no idea that at least 6 people can comfortably drink inside it.

The above is the actual feed horn. The Jansky is only a replica, but it comes fully equipped with the ability to rotate if a few astronomers get off and push, but I definitely don't know anything about that at all. The less said about this one the better for all concerned. At least in public. Snigger, snigger...

This particular observatory is, ironically, situated even further away from reality than most others. Normally, it's a 4 hour drive to Washington, and when the place is bombarded by 50+ students and staff astronomers the place is further still from anything approaching normality, especially given the presence of a seemingly bottomless drinks cabinet.

Not that this impeded scientific progress in any way whatsoever. No sir ! When there weren't lectures or drinking there were tours of the telescope. And though I shall be able to say "ours is bigger !" without fear of reprisal for the next 5 years at least, it's still impressive. After all, it's 100m wide and one of the largest steerable dishes in the world. It is also a good viewing platform.

Credit where credit is due - these guys have a way more impressive control room than us. They also don't feel the need to cool it to a sub-arctic climate, which is nice. On the other hand, no-one has ever made a movie in which Green Bank scientists try to take over the world or discover aliens, so we must be doing something right.

As a responsible post-doc, my main reason to attend was to supervise hands-on projects, a phrase I can no longer use with a straight face, so I won't. Ahem. I seem to be developing a nasty cough. Anywho, when I wasn't fetching my students beer, I was doing my patriotic duty and educating the world that Wales, contrary to popular belief, in fact owns both Green Bank and Arecibo. It's remarkable that this is so often overlooked by the media.

And finally, I genuinely have no idea what this thing is. No-one does. It appears to be a segment of a radio telescope, but how it got there is a mystery. Not a single staff scientist knew the answer. If it is signposted at all, it most certainly doesn't simply say, "DANGER DO NOT CLIMB", and I for one haven't got a clue what type of clothing enables the fastest sliding down this mysterious artefact.

What the Tourists Don't See (III) : The Platform

At long last I found an excuse to get up to the platform, which means I can bring these little behind-the-scenes excursions to an end. Well, nearly anyway. There may or may not be a trip to the lidar lab in the near future, but I don't know if that will involve pretty pictures or not, and that's what we've all come to see, right ?

Anywho, the platform. A 900 tonne construction suspended 120 metres above the dish, this is the business end of the telescope. James Bond decided to access it via the catwalk, but if he was less pushed for time he could have taken the cable car instead. Not much scope for dramatic chase scenes there though, especially as there's only one car.

On this occasion however I did take the catwalk, and while no epic battles ensued there was dancing involved. All with be revealed, but not today. Like the cable car, the floor is a metal mesh consisting mainly of holes, and unlike the cable car the side walls are unnervingly flexible. However, this is surely an improvement from an earlier incarnation of the catwalk, which I'm told was a proper Indiana Jones affair with a wooden floor.

Both car and walkway lead to the very top of the platform which, weirdly, is absolutely rock solid. It has to be, otherwise the thing wouldn't work. Running between two support structures is a large metal cable which when struck makes a sound that's pretty near identical to any science fiction laser blast you've ever heard.

She hasn't gone mad. She's just listening to the cable, as you do.

I don't remember what the platform in Goldeneye looks like but I think most of it was filmed there so it should by rights be pretty similar, unlike the control room. However, I once again spotted no evil villains bent on global destruction, just some astronomers with a real talent for pulling peculiar expressions the instant a camera is trained on them. It's uncanny. Perhaps I just kept interrupting their evil scheming, but if these guy's are the biggest threat to international security then we can all rest easy.

Stairs from the uppermost level lead down into the very centre of the structure. To reach the lower levels you have to climb backwards down some very narrow stairs, which are built around the central axis about which the whole thing rotates. It's exactly like descending into the web of some ferociously over-complicated bio-mechanical spider that's developed a curious interest in radio astronomy.

Telephones can be found just about everywhere, including this one which looks like it's older than time itself. It's about one step up from a carrier pigeon, I reckon. Of course, all the electronics are chosen so they don't generate RFI, but surely this is pushing it.

Next comes a trip along the hugely complicated azimuth arm, which supports the instruments. This has the same centre of curvature as the dish and the instruments can move back and forth along it to change their angle of elevation. It's all extremely primitive-looking, covered in cables and maintenance workers for whom galavanting around a hundred metres in the air is just a day job.

The main difference between the platform today and when they filmed the Bond movie is the addition of the giant Gregorian Dome. This is where all the really cool receivers hang out. The line feed - the thing what Sean Bean fell off - is still there, but nowadays all the neat stuff is inside. Two more mirrors focus the signal from the main dish to a point. One of these is 25 metres across and is just too big to photograph properly, so here's a short video clip. Note the resemblance to the Death Star.

And so we come to the receiver room itself, featuring the one and only ALFA instrument that's kept me in employment for the best part of 5 years, a truly scary thought.

Not many people know that ALFA is controlled by a small fluffy kangaroo without whom the entire telescope would surely collapse into a great heap of rubble. This is because it isn't true, but there is a small fluffy kangaroo securely fastened to the instrument with a cable tie. His name is Hep. Or Hap. Or maybe it was Pap ? Or Pep ? I couldn't tell, on account of the very noisy air conditioning units.

Which I suppose brings me to the end of this final tour, since going down is remarkably similar to going up but in reverse. I'll return next week with a report on the comings and goings of the NRAO Green Bank observatory, which features the world's largest fully steerable dish. Be there or be a rectangular thing !

Happy Loss of the Petty Colonies We Never Really Wanted Day !

It's 4th July, and to my delight, Astronomy Picture of the Day has declared the existence of the Southern Ocean. Huzzah ! Congratulations, America, all is forgiven. I think I'll celebrate with a nice cup of tea and an episode of Sharpe on blu-ray. That's a very American thing to do, right ?

Independence Day must be very confusing for Puerto Ricans. After all, it was captured from Spain by the Americans in 1898. Not until 1947 were Puerto Ricans given the right to elect their own governor. How then, does this tiny island react on such an occasion ? As far as I can tell, by having a damn good clean. That's what my street appears to be doing anyway. The only other difference is a tenfold increase in the number of extremely obnoxious quad bikes.

On an unrelated note, it's well-known that Americans can't spell, preferring as they do to more often than not omit the "u" from most words, thereby making the spelling more logical, intuitive and wholly wrong. For some reason metallurgy offers particularly strange examples. First, they insist on "aluminum" but at least they have the decency to spell it the way they mispronounce it.

Secondly, and much more bizarrely, Americans can't do soldering. Oh, sure, they spell solder, but pronounce it sodder, which is just baffling. I've never heard of a soddering iron before, but it sounds damn dodgy to me. Good thing I'm not an engineer or I could be in real trouble. Being paid for soddering is surely illegal and likely to get you stoned to death in certain less inclusive countries.

I'll never look at this in the same way again...