Cosmic Convergence

I have a cute diagram for you. But first, as Frankie Howerd would say, The Prologue. Some background is necessary in case you get the wrong take-home message once I unveil the interestin’ picture…

Periodically somebody frightens us with tales of how The Data Deluge Threatens Science. (Yes, guilty.) Cynics will suggest that Moore’s law runs even faster, so computers will always be good enough – whats the problem? Actually, I think the interesting things are those that are not improving exponentially – last mile bandwidth, disk I/O speed, and human resource. The first two are a bit of a bummer for individuals, but fixable if you are a pro data centre – tune your TCP buffers, open multiple channels, hang thirty discs off your motherboard, etc. So this drives us to a service architecture. But so does the third thing : people effort. Developing interfaces to the data, and curating it as it comes in, takes work. A lot of this scales per archive rather than per bit. The real problem, and why we need the VO, is the number of archives not the number of bits. Its a Tower of Babel thing.

Enough of the VO lecture. The size of each major astronomical archive certainly is growing fast. But so is the size of a typical hard drive. As part of some work with Bob Mann and and Mark Holliman, I was collecting some data on these things, when suddenly it occurred to me not just to talk in general terms but to actually plot one on top of the other. Exhibit A therefore shows (i) the evolution of the size of PC disks, from the wikimedia commons page here , and (ii) the total size of the ESO Science Archive, divided by 200 – data kindly provided by Paolo Padovani. The step function in 1999 is real – its when the VLT switched on. Otherwise, they track each beautifully. Over two decades, while volumes have increased by factors of tens of thousands, the number of PC drives needed to hold the ESO data has stayed the same within a factor of two.

I guess both of these things, like a number of others, are loosely driven by a combination of integrated circuit technology and economics. But the fact that they are so close seems surprising. Maybe there is some kind of weird technology central limit theorem thing going on.

New Year Mutterings

Another year is racing past the finishing post. Queenie’s Birthday Honours List  is out.  Not bad for science overall, with  Knighthoods for selllotape and pencil heroes Geim and Novoselov.Weaker than usual for astronomy and particle physics. I could only find an MBE for Derek Raine – well deserved, but awarded for services to education, not science. (Embarassing note : in the original version of this post I had some others but thats because somehow I had downloaded last year’s list as well.. Doh.)

Of course I have the usual confused mixture of approval and discomfort. Its good that public service is recognised; the MBE seems particularly important, as it rewards those all the way up and down the social tree, rather than just giving an extra bauble to those already at the top of the tree. But on the other hand it seems a throwback to a fusty and repressive past. Knighthoods, Orders, Empires ? The nobility only exists because a thousand years ago some people were better at bullying, greed, and violence than others. But hey ho thats the way of the world. At least now we have community workers, and they can be valued and rewarded. With a medal. Not a banker-style bonus of course.

I guess these thoughts are sharper than usual as the world is in a strange state. Europe and America about to plunge into recession again. Ordinary people in the Arab world and in Russia openly challenging their rulers. Tea Party nutters showing no sign of backing off.

I find myself more confused about politics than ever before. Communism failed and real people didn’t want it. But now Capitalism is failing too. Is there a genuine Third Way ? Maybe what we want is actual genuine Free Enterprise Capitalism, as opposed to the fake Capitalism of the last thirty years. Can we in fact allow people to trade freely, without the need for “trade agreements” stacked in favour of rich countries, invasions to control resources, and the IMF dictating to elected governments ? Well ok, a chap is allowed to dream at Hogmanay.

Maybe I should be careful what I wish for. State investment in science and technology makes rational sense in an imperialist economy. Its not clear what would happen in a genuine free market system.

Oh. On a cheerier note, I just passed the fifth birthday of the blog !

 

Alien Seas and the Nature of Science

Went to John Lewis yesterday. A subterranean memory emerged. When I was nineteen I used to get a strange pleasure wandering through the John Lewis Department Store. It was an eery world, detached from my own. I would get a buzz drifting past thousands upon thousands of things I had no desire  for whatsoever. Vast acres of the uninteresting. It was like sailing on an alien sea, gazing upon lifeforms and liquid shapes I would never understand.

Well, thats the smugness of youth I guess. Now of course I wander into John Lewis and within four yards I am picking something up thinking “mmm, that would be useful”. How things have changed. Over the same thirty eight year period, I have noticed that my waistline has slowly but systematically increased. This correlation must mean something. It clearly proves that the desire for household items has a calorific effect.

Spotting correlations is what science is all about ! Did you know that in the twentieth century there was a clear correlation between the average size of feet in China, and the price of fish in Billingsgate market ? There is as yet no good theory for that one. On the other hand, I had a friend who trained spiders to obey his voice commands. Then he would pull their legs off, and found that they no longer obeyed the commands. As he explained to me, this proves that spiders have their ears in their legs.

In a similar vein, a paper about high redshift galaxies I read the other day showed very clearly that … oh, hang on, is that the time ? Must dash. I am sure you can complete the example and several more of your own.

Cosmic Treat

Thanks to the nice folks at Snag Films, I learn that yesterday was the fifteenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. You can watch the first episode of the famous COSMOS series here. It starts with an advert, but thats why its free folks.

Carl Sagan ain’t as pretty as Brian Cox, and I would say Brian is actually better at making abstract things simple and concrete; but no-one can beat Sagan at the cosmic poetry.

Astronomical Isolation

So what will the euro-zone veto fuss do to astronomy ? Anything ?

I have just been checking for new service data on a ESO-VLT project I have. My student is doing stuff with ESA Herschel data. Lots of us are glowing happily and emailing our Italian and French friends because Euclid got selected. I just submitted another Euro-VO FP7 proposal with a variety of European chums. At project meetings, being “Europe” as opposed to “the UK” is often crucial. The Americans take us much more seriously. Hey, we are all European astronomers now. Aren’t we ?

Joining ESO was a difficult debate in the UK. Many UK astronomers have always felt more comfortable with our US and Australian friends. They speak our language (more or less), and have a kind of rugged and ambitious approach that we like. On the other hand, our French and Italian friends sometimes seem more, you know, sophisticated. In other words we are typical Brits. We can’t decide if we are cultured Europeans or part of some grand Brittanic gung ho civilisation. Even as I write, my instincts are mostly with ESO and ESA, but I am also part of a lobby thats just dying to be part of LSST.

Right now, European politicians and newspapers seem to be saying “thank goodness ! We never liked them anyway !” Are our European astronomy chums secretly irritated with us all this time ? I should point out that neither ESO nor ESA are anything to do with the EU. They are independent treaty organisations. Nothing structural or automatic ensues from the Eurozone situation. But it does make you wonder what they think of us..

Rock and Roll will never die (just f-f-fade away)

I just got interviewed in A&G. You can see it online here .

Old Leicester chum Watto says he is getting a T-shirt made referring to the big-photons episode. Another old Leicester chum, Grimmers, aka @compactdwarf, referred to the interview as a “centrefold” which left me feeling a tad uncomfortable, but there we go. It also sparked off a debate with my grad student @wordled_muds, aka Jack The Lad. I thought I would expose the argument here and see what you think.

My children tell me that online social networking is the great cultural contribution of their generation, like rock and roll was the great contribution of ours. I don’t really like Facebook (although I do join in) but I love Twitter and blogs. I jumped on Google+ as soon as it came out, and yes indeedy it was dead cool – but also a tad disappointing. Somehow I was expecting something radically new and surprising, whereas it turned out to be pretty much like Facebook but done better. So it seems the revolutionary era is over, and we are into variations on a theme.

In a similar fashion, because rock music seemed to turn the world upside down between 1955 and 1968, I assumed that there would be some kind of revolution in music once a decade. But in fact, I would contend, nothing revolutionary has happened since. The different flavours of music since are really just variations on the same kind of stuff. I am not saying that the old stuff is the best. I think I might vote for Pretty Balanced  as best band ever. But its the same type of music I knew and loved in the seventies.

Jack M thought this wrong, and quoted dance, electronic, and dubstep as the proof. My feeling is that dubstep in particular is indeed pretty original, but not that far from the structure and feel of rock music. More to the point, none of these had the wide cultural and social impact of rock and roll. I could point you at even more radical modern music, but only about four and half of us care. A stronger case might be made for rap music, which is on a line through gospel and soul and Detroit rather than through blues and country and rock; and rap has had considerable social impact.

But I still think that if you take the helicopter view, jazz and rock were the only two musico-cultural revolutions in the twentieth century. I might give you rap music as a major earthquake without being a full scale revolution.

Something Fresh

Almost escaped from teaching. Maybe Ye Olde Blogge can Arise Again. But what, but what, is burning to be said ? Here is a shortlist.

(1) The title is for Professor Smail. First ever Blandings novel. But people have sent me emails saying “we cannot live by Wodehouse alone” so better stop there.

(2) The NOAO consultation has proceeded apace. The latest issue of their newsletter summarises the results  which seem to be that (a) we are relatively cheap really; (b) 4m telescopes will still do some groovy stuff; (c) we need 4m telescopes to train more astronomers. All true, but I can’t see this sort of stuff gripping the likes of Michelle Turner-Overdrive or whatever her name is.

(3) Meanwhile an AURA review into how to run Gemini  recommends it just gets swallered up by NOAO. Luckily the Yookay isn’t involved any more, so there is no need for us to splutter. Leave that to the Canadians.

(4) A new age of optimism dawns ! Wommers jetting around the world making positive noises, kissing people’s hands, and shaking babies. (Shum mishtake ? Ed). THES had an interview  and STFC had its own Hello John  news item. Better than a Dear John letter I suppose. But I drift. No sooner was JW in place than SKA leapt into the future .

(5) Presumably SKA will happen sometime after the lost decade. This economy stuff is a tad depressing what? Watched the Fred Goodwin show on the Beeb last night. Then I noticed that I am in possession of a cheque from ABN Amro, the toxic bank which RBS cleverly bought just before the dam burst. Better cash it quick.

Much of the world of finance seems like vapourware. Credit default swaps ? How did anybody think they were doing anything real ? But the effects are real and scary. Merkel and Sarkozy are proposing, as far as I understand, to make Keynesian economics illegal from now on. Wuh ? Now every day our futures lurch from side to side as “the markets” respond wildly. This is nuts. Like some crazy machine with the feedback loops all wrong. I reckon the economy needs a spot of systems engineering. We need to turn on some damping Cap’n ! Can we get someone from the ATC or RAL to take over ?

All I need now is guest posts expanding the above shortlisted items. Then I can go and do me christmas shoppin.

Proto Bertie

I have decided how I want to die. If it please The Almighty, I would like to be taken by a massive coronary while reading P.G.Wodehouse.

I have written before of the delights of P.G.W. Hope I’m not boring you. Doing a bit of book shuffling, I rediscovered one of my favourites : The Man Upstairs. My copy is a Penguin from 1958, but it was first published in 1914, before Bertie and Jeeves, before Psmith, and before Ukridge. The stories are not about the upper classes. Its nearly all bank clerks and hairdressers falling in love. Except for one : “Ahead of Schedule”. This appears to be a dry run for Bertie and Jeeves, featuring a calm valet and a dim but nice rich chap called Rollo Finch. (“Rollo Finch – in the present unsatisfactory state of the law parents may still christen a child Rollo – was a youth to whom Nature had given a cheery disposition not marred by any superfluity of brain.”). The valet Wilson is not the superhuman Jeeves, but Rollo Finch’s verbal style is 100% Bertie.

I had thought that the precursors to the the Bertie and Jeeves stories were the Reggie Pepper stories, as explained in this wikipedia article . The earliest of these was published in The Strand magazine in March 1911. “Ahead of Schedule” however was published in “The Grand” in November 1910.

I expect this is all obvious to proper Wodehouse fans but it took me by surprise. Anyway its dead funny, so do give it a read.

Admissions : Scottish Paranoia episode 2,317

News from UCAS this morning about the idea of post-result applications triggered a Scottish grump. I am not Scottish, but as soon as you have lived here for a bit you develop the small-partner paranoia thing. You are watching TV and some Holywood starlet plonks down  on the chat show couch and the host says “Welcome to English TV” and the starlet says “I love England !”. You start waving at the TV and shouting HELLO we are here too !

Anyhoo. So anyway. UCAS are flying a kite, wondering if things could be a bit simpler if “UK university applications” were made after A-level results were known. The problem of course is that the timing is a bit tight. Maybe A-levels will have to be three weeks earlier. Listening to this on Beeb Radio 4, I was assuming that any moment somebody would mention the fact that Scottish students applying to Scottish Universities can apply on the basis of their Highers results while they are still doing their Advanced Highers year, and a large fraction get offers on the basis of their Highers. Sometimes you put a condition on the Advanced Higher , but a large fraction at least are sorted in advance. So it seems like we already solved this problem.

Not a dicky bird. The guardian has an interestingly different spin on it, but still no Scottish perspective.

US astronomy crumbling ?

Many of us were rather perturbed to receive the latest edition of the NOAO newsletter, NOAO Currents, warning the community that KPNO or even CTIO as well might be forced into closure by the dire state of the NSF budget. They have started a community discussion. UK readers should bear in mind that unlike our situation, the operation and the funding is from two separate bodies (AURA and NSF) so the psycho-dynamics of lobbying is a little different.

NSF is indeed in a tight spot, as described in the talk by Jim Ulvestad at a recent meeting of the NSF A&A advisory committee. The Decadal Survey (aka NWNH) assumed 3% growth but actually NSF astro is taking a 4% cut this year. NSF as a whole is roughly flat cash The OMB is asking all agencies for 5-10% cuts next year. The current top priority is making a success of ALMA; the top priority new start, LSST, probably won’t have the funding faucet turned on until 2015; and whichever is chosen out of TMT and GMT won’t get NSF money until at least 2020. Jim doesn’t say “we will have to trash Kitt Peak” but NOAO ain’t stupid and are getting their groundswell started early.

I heard a rumour of a rumour that NSF are punishing astronomy because their budget cut was caused by the Senate putting JWST back in to the budget. But I don’t think this is correct. The NSF asked for $7.8bn; the House bill gave them NSF $6.9bn; the Senate bill gave them $6.7bn. So they are both suggesting fierce cuts regardless of the JWST thing. Maybe some US reader can explain how the reconciliation happens, but presumably they will end up with 6.8bn or thereabouts.

To fill in the picture, the House bill gave JWST zilch, and the Senate bill gave them $593M this year, with a capped total of $8.7bn. In that Senate bill, total NASA science is 5.1bn – thats Earth Sci 1.76; Planetary 1.50; Astrophysics 0.68; JWST 0.53; Heliophysics 0.62. The astro 680M includes HST at 98.3M, SOFIA at 84M, and NUSTAR at 11.9M. Interestingly, it looks like JWST hasn’t particularly damaged the rest of NASA astrophysics that much. The hit has come in other NASA programs. NASA as a whole is given $17.9bn, half a billion down from last year. So non-science programs are being hit hard.

Meanwhile, other gossip mongerers of my acquaintance are fretting over some of the words in the Senate bill. For example, it exhorts NSF to take a decision this year between TMT and GMT, but includes the words “… to develop that telescope on domestic soil …”. So. telescopes to be sited in Chile, as opposed to Hawaii, need not apply ? Hmm. ”Develop” ain’t the same as “built on”…

Enough of the paranoia I say ! Of course just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.