The "Unit" and Galactic fossil hunting

Does anyone know what the origin of calling people you are associated with a "Unit"? I'm seeing it everywhere these days. Mother Unit. Spousal Unit. Daughter Unit. It's really interesting how fast a new fad like this catches on and worrying that Internet communication seems to make us all clones.

I attended a really interesting presentation today by Mario Juric from Princeton. Mario talked about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This is a survey that has mapped a quarter of the sky (around 8000 degrees)  and has catalogued ~100 million objects. The presentation that Mario gave centred on his work relating to stellar density in the milky way galaxy as a function of distance from the centre. They have also done some analysis work on spectral data to ascertain metallaticitys of stars within the surveys range.

A really interesting outcome of this research is that he has possibly found artifacts of the Milky Ways past encounters with other galaxies or objects. This was deduced mainly by density anomalies in the data. What you should see is density of stars decreasing as you work outward from the centre. This holds true for most of the data but in at least two areas (and these "areas are huge), the density of objects sharply increases. The current explanation is that potentially, these are remnants of a past encounter. There are no current conclusions as the whether these areas also have velocity and/or metallicity differences but that is something they are working on.

I guess you could pose other possibilites for the these anomolies. Perhaps Dark matter is "clumpy" - but then we would have to explain why it clumped in these regions. How about an massive compact object such as a black hole that has now evaporated. As the massive velocity changes that this would bring are not seen currently, that seems unlikely. Others have suggested it is related to the warp of the galactic disk. If this is so, what caused the warp? Perhaps that brings us back to an encounter.

So it isn't just fossils from the Earth that describe our history. Cosmic fossils go back way before the Earth was even a galactic twinkle in Mother Natures eye.

Changing for the better

Before my very eyes, studying science is changing me. The course syllabus says "You will start to look at the world in a different way". You certainly do. Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil for my morning cup of tea, I watched the water filled bowl sitting in my sink. The remnants of my dinner from the previous night. The tap was dripping into it. Obviously I didn't turn it off properly from my kettle filling chore. After a few minutes I realised that I was deep in thought about how the molecules of the water entering the bowl where dispersing. What did their motion look like? How fast were they travelling? How big were they? How long did it take the area of the water drop to be diluted into the background of the pre-existent molecules? How could I test all this. A coloured drop of water? Would the colouring in the droplet affect the outcome of the experiment? How would the temperature of the water affect it?

Without even realising it fully, my mind is developing into a machine that questions things in a far more detailed way then I ever did before. I notice things I didn't previously. I think about the hidden aspects of something. This is exactly how Einstein discovered Brownian Motion if you believe the stories. He watched the irregular motion of particles on the surface of a fluid - Perhaps Pollen on a pond? He wondered exactly what was making the particles move.

Big Bang Day - The highlights

Some of them slightly off-topic . Some made me chuckle (No, skinny people can "chuckle" too), and some made me sad.

Worst Quote - Simon Singh on BBC News 24. "I gave up particle physics because everyone was smarter then me"

Funniest Moment - 3....2.....1.....ohhh! Lyn Evans counting down to the first event.

Most annoying moment - No CERN webcast feed. They invented the web and damn, they don't know how to use it!

Never work with Children and animals moment - School child when interviewed - "What good do Electrons do me anyway?".

Saddest news of the day - A 16 year old girl from India committed suicide because she believed the story's about the world ending were true.

Most exciting moment - The release of the first ATLAS beam event images.

So, "Big Bang Day" comes to a close and the engineers can hand off the equipment to the scientists and their work can now begin. Everyone I am studying with is really looking forward to finding out more about the experiments and results over the coming years.

Incidentally, spare a thought for those of use who are NOT school age and have decided to formally study physics later in life. A lot of the news today was about inspiring young people into Science. This is extremely important to be sure, but there are also plenty of us mature students out here who believe we still can make a difference.

Public engagement in Physics

So tomorrow is the big "Switch on" of the Large Hadron Collider. I can't help thinking that it will be a little like Y2K. In the minds of everyone it's going to be this massive event. Scientists poised over "the" big red button. At 08:30 BST, the Chief will countdown from 10....9....8.... All eyes will be on dials and widgets that say "optimum performance".....7....6....5...4.... The excitement around the world will be palpable....3...2..... The dissenters will be holding hands waiting for the end off the world...1......BIG RED BUTTON PRESSED. Immediately, hundreds of screens around the sophisticated control room will burst into life and scientists will scream with delight as evidence of the Higgs Boson is delivered. The standard model of particle physics will be complete. Everyone can go home happy.

No! It will certainly be an exciting event but I think to most people, especially the "end of the world is nigh" folks, it will be a bit of an anti-climax. I doubt it will be exciting television and definitely not exciting radio. But how then, do you get the public to engage with the science when often, the exciting parts come after years of very hard and painstaking work? How can the perception of the scientist as mad, anti-social people working alone in some damp basement be changed? How can physicists especially communicate the work they are doing and show that funding physical science and astronomy is fundamental to the advancement, and, dare I say it, even the survival of the human race.

Scientists like Professor Brian Cox are changing the way the public sees big projects such as the LHC. And it is right that we do this. After all, if public money is being spent on these projects the public should have access to the knowledge and some understanding of what they money is being spent on. It is true that scientists don't engage the public enough. In the UK, we have a shortage of science and maths teachers and I think this is mainly because the subjects are seen as inaccessible to the average person in the street. Controversy seems to make people sit up and listen. For the LHC, its access to the main broadcasters have been via the "end of the world" stories it has brought about. Perhaps the originators of these stories are doing the scientific community a favour and we should turn the media interest it brings to our advantage by telling the public about the science of these projects and its benefits. For those of us that want to learn, we find scientists, on the whole, accessible to us. If you ask a question, often, they are more then willing to answer. This is not true of many other areas. We need to develop a common language which allows everyone to engage in the conversations about scientific progress on a level an individual finds interesting and relevant.

Progress to date on the Beagle 2 challenge

Lots of good work is being done by the team to try and get as much fresh information as we can muster. The Google group has had a few articles posted researched and written by group members. These will accompany the final model if we can get approval to use some of the content which is most likely copyright. It's a shame that the Beagle2.com site seems to have been abandoned and there is very little information there about what happened after the lander was lost and the lessons learned. Also, I posted an item about a possible "Beagle 3" lander that was suggested in a few places and hinted at by Colin at an event I attended. Not much follow-up information about that anywhere beyond a couple of press releases. As the proposal was to include launch in 2009. I think this is quite unlikely now as we have heard nothing since.

I, along with a colleague, visited the Walton Hall Library at Milton Keynes to see if we could un-earth some schematic diagrams from which was can scale the model inworld. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything that would fit that bill, but I was very grateful to receive a copy of Colin Pillingers book "The Guide to Beagle 2" from the Science Faculty at Walton Hall, which has some fantastic information contained within it. I also borrowed "Beagle - From Darwin's Epic voyage to the British Mission to Mars", This also has some great material, and 3 VHS tapes containing the BBC series that followed Beagle 2's early progress. I didn't realise that a major part of the lander was built in my home town by EADS Astrium. I'm hoping perhaps they can help us with some finer details about the lander itself.

Beagle 3?

The research phase of the project is starting to bear fruit. We have a few of the research tasks completed and posted into the groups. The main source of information seems to be the beagle 2 website. However, this looks slightly abandoned and although it's a good source of general information, it doesn't seem to have the level of detail required for the actual build. We really need schematics and dimensions to be able to get on with these tasks and so far, we don't seem to be getting responses from the OU itself. It does lead into a very pertinent questions. What happens to a science and engineering team that was destined to be receiving and analysing data when a mission fails? After the obvious post analysis and investigations that would inevitably follow, mainly to appease any investors, what happens to all the data that was collected during the build, launch and journey phases of a mission. is any of this information re-used on another mission? Does the team go on and try again for funding? I was at the OU's inaugural Broadband lecture given by Steve Squyres a year or two ago and Colin Pillinger attended and indicated that a "Beagle 3" was a possibility (he didn't call it Beagle 3 though). This seems an entirely sensible way to use the information and techniques gained on one mission to fuel another. I'm assuming that lessons where learned from the original mission and the cost of a "Beagle 3" would not be as steep as the original. I wonder if another mission is planned that a Beagle 3 could piggy back upon and keep the costs even lower.

You can see a video lecture given by Colin Pillinger at the Berrill Lecture theatre, Walton Hall in 2003 here.

Good and bad choices

As a starting point for group communication, I chose to use Google Groups. It is used by several other groups that I take part in to great success but now we are using it for real, there already seem some limitations. For example. We will have a document (currently under Google Docs), which will hold information about the various aspects of the project, who has taken on that role and what their progress is. Of course this has to be editable by everyone in the group but locking needs to be applied to make sure the document isn't edited by more then once person at a time. I'm sure Google Docs handles this very well but there is no elegant way of integrating this document into the Google Group. It seems Google write great web based utilities but integrating them is not so great.