• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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Following a spate of embarrassing news stories detailing what appeared to me to be some very serious censorship of science that the Bush administration don’t like NASA have released their new media policy. You can see the details here: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/communication_policy.html

This was all triggered by individuals in the NASA press office toning
down reports on Global Warning and the Big Bang and even going so far
as to attempt to prevent one climate scientist who is a leader in the
Climate Change field from talking to the media after he made a speech
saying that his evidence showed that the measures being taken by Bush
were not near enough to prevent disaster. There was also a reported
issue where reports on research into the Big Bang were being toned
down. Both of those things really disgusted and annoyed me and I have
to say I blame the Bush Administration for trying to silence a great
scientific institution in order to maintain their lies that climate
change is not a reality and to protect their fundamentalist religious
beliefs from the cold realities of the universe. NASA is not supposed
to be a mouth-piece for the government, it is supposed to be a
scientific institution of the highest caliber where all that matters is
getting at the truth, regardless of whether the President finds is
comfortable reading or not!

Anyhow, Micheal Griffin’s letter impressed me. In his letter he sums up the key principles outlined in the new policy and top of his list is this:

"A commitment to a culture of scientific and technical openness which values the free exchange of ideas, data and information. Scientific and technical information concerning agency programs and projects will be accurate and unfiltered."

This is very positive IMO as it makes clear that the press-office cannot go round re-writing the science to reflect the spin Washington wants to see. The next key point IMO is that it sets in stone the right of NASA employees to talk to the press. The policy goes even further into what I would consider to be best practice and "requires that [scientists] draw a distinction between professional conclusions and personal views that may go beyond the scope of their specific technical work, or beyond the purview of the agency". I think this is a very healthy thing and will make it much harder for the press to spin scientific conclusions and personal opinions and will also help to distinguish between what science is saying and what scientists extrapolate from that based on their own views and instincts.

Basically, I am yet again impressed by Micheal Griffin, he would appear to be the best NASA Administrator we’ve seen in a while.

It’s with great sadness that I report that my sources tell me that Europe’s rather coolly named "OverWhelmingly Large Telescope" or OWL is not to be. Apparently the project got scrapped today. The idea was to built the absolute largest optical telescope on the planet (100M) and since they called their previous best the Very Large Telescope (VLT) despite it ‘only’ being 16m (and the largest in the world) they thought it would be funny to pull the piss out of themselves and call this proposed telescope OverWhelmingly large!

All in all a sad day for funny TLAs and of course European Astronomy.

Astro2 had a talk today on the subject "Science, on a collision course with reality". The talk had two halves. The first half was directly related to the title and was given by Catherine Ansbro of Space Exploration Ltd., the second half was technically a "surprise" and was given by Dr. Massimo Teodorani, a scientist from Italy who gave a very interesting talk on his work in SETI (in particular OSETI and SETV). There was a loose link between the two halves of the talk in that during the first half some of the difficulties faced by scientists working at the edges of the accepted boundaries of science were discussed and Dr. Teodorani could be considered to be one of the scientists working at that ‘bleeding edge’. I will discuss the second half of the talk at the end of my article but I want to concentrate mainly on the issues raised in the first half of the talk because that is what really got me thinking about what science really is, what the issues are facing science and why science is special.

Firstly I should point out that the main speaker should consider herself to have been successful in one of the stated aims of her talk, to make people stop and think. The very existence of this article is evidence that at least one person stopped and thought after going to the talk!

The central point of Ms Ansbro’s talk was that science needs to be taken down off it’s pedestal. I strongly disagree with this despite the fact that I agree with her about all the problems she pointed out in our implementation of science today. I agree that our attempt at carrying out science is not perfect but that is no reason to lessen the ideal of science. We should leave science on it’s pedestal, not because it is perfect but because all scientists should be constantly stretching up to try achieve the perfection that is the concept of science.

What is the scientific ideal?

What is it we should all be striving for? The discovery of the objective truths about our universe. To achieve that we must be free from prejudices, pre-conceptions and pride. This is where the practice of science today fails. We do not always want to know the real truth! True science is noble and altruistic and each and every scientist should be striving to help bring us closer to the truth about our universe, regardless of what that truth is.

So why are we falling short of the ideal?

This is exceptionally simple to answer, we are human! Whether we know it or not we all have our biases on how we think the universe should work and when science starts to look like it’s heading in the opposite direction we inevitably fight against that. Adults are generally not naturally objective. I believe that children may well start out being objective but I think that by the time we reach adulthood that objectivity is gone because we all pick up baggage on our journey to adulthood. An example from my personal experience is that as a young teenager I felt that everything in nature should form a cycle so I adopted the pulsating universe model (big bang – big crush, big bang – big crush ……….) and clung to it. As the evidence began to mount against that model I just refused to believe it and ignored the evidence. Eventually I realised that you cannot be a scientist if you stick your head in the sand every time the Universe gives you information you don’t like. That is a prejudice I know I have and that I have put aside, thing is, I probably have many more I’m not aware of and so does every scientist!

Another human shortcoming that really detracts from science is greed. Greed often manifests itself in special interest groups who have an agenda to push for the personal gain of their members. These interest groups turn to science, not to find out the truth but to seek legitimacy for what they want to be the truth. This is exceptionally dangerous and results in really bad science and real harm to society as a whole. A wonderful example of the threat posed by special interest groups is the Tobacco lobby who suppressed the truth about the dangers of Tobacco for decades and in so doing killed millions of people for their own gain. Currently I believe the oil companies are doing similar with regard to the vitally important question of climate change.

Science is slow to react and reluctant to change

I’m in two minds as to whether or not this is a strength or a weakness. On the one hand this reluctance to accept change ensures that science remains on a very solid footing because it means new ideas need to be really well thought out with lots and lots of evidence before they become accepted, on the other hand, this reluctance to change also has many negative effects as it can stifle the work of free thinkers and many good ideas get stone-walled out of existence. It could be argued that truly great ideas, no matter how bizarre, do make it into science because good ideas just never die. That may be so but the life of a scientist ‘on the edge’ is not a pleasant one! Again, I think balance is needed and I don’t think we getting that balance at the momnt. There are just too many people with vested interests in the status quo, too many egos and big business is directing research too much to the point that it has become very difficult to do "blue skies" work at all.

Strangulation by Purse Strings

Pure science, i.e. science for the sake of knowing, is not really acceptable in the modern academic environment. If you can’t promise any concrete deliverables no one wants to know you when you come looking for support or funding. If you don’t believe me try to get funding for research that has no marketable deliverable. The people with the purse strings are increasingly being controlled by big business and other vested interest groups because that’s where the money for research is coming from more and more. I am not saying for one moment that there should not be targeted research. The vast sums of money being pumped into the explicit target of curing cancer are most certainly not a bad thing! However, great leaps forward don’t tend to come from work directly targeted at tangible deliverables. Truly great leaps tend to come from pure science, from people seeing something that we don’t understand and trying to understand it. Funding ONLY this kind of science would be insane but NOT funding this kind of research is equally insane and exceptionally short sighted. Thankfully the value of pure science is beginning to dawn on people and companies like Google are starting to really value so called "blue skies" projects. Hopefully more companies and governments will start to see the intrinsic value of science for the sake of understanding as well as science for the sake of the bank balance and science for the sake of solving specific problems.

What Makes Science Special?

The point at which myself and Ms Ansbro really parted ways was when Ms Ansbro claimed that scientific knowledge is no different to other kinds of knowledge like intuition, spiritual knowledge and knowledge from a perceived ‘sixth sense’. Although these other kinds of knowledge can feed into science in very important ways they are fundamentally different to scientific knowledge. All these other forms of knowledge are SUBJECTIVE, science is OBJECTIVE. One’s spirituality is deeply personal and although it can be vital in helping us understand our personal view of the universe it does not tell us about the objective universe that we all share with each other.

What makes science different is that scientific knowledge can be verified and tested by anyone. If you are not convinced of Galileo’s laws regarding pendulums you can hang up a pendulum and re-do his experiments to see for yourself. It is this repeatability and verifiability that makes scientific knowledge special. You don’t have to take anyone’s word for anything, it can all be independently verified, if it can’t then it isn’t science!

However, science without other forms of knowing like intuition or spirituality would not get very far. It would be mechanical and boring and would lack the spark to drive it on. Afterall, what is science without inspiration!? However, that does not mean that scientific knowledge is the same as these other forms of knowledge. Each scientific experiment we do tells us something real and objective about the universe, that makes it special.

SETI and SETV

I will now move on to the second half of the talk presented by Dr. Massimo Teodorani. I found this absolutely fascinating. Dr. Teodorani explained the way mainstream SETI operates and then pointed out a distinct weakness in the way it operates, it is ONLY looking for stationary transmissions and not moving transmissions. Dr. Teodorani believes that it is realistic to assume that alien technology could be very advanced and as such could have mastered inter-stellar travel, hence there could be alien technology in our solar system. He has devised a number of techniques for searching for such visiting technology. This field of research is referred to as SETV (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Visitations) and is a classic example of science on the edge. Many people do not take this kind of research seriously because they are afraid of crackpots, however, what really impressed me about Dr. Teodorani was his insistence that this field needs to be taken on by rigorous scientists who apply real science to the problem before the field gets lost in a sea of pseudo science. He does not expect anyone to believe that there is alien technology here unless there is proper scientific evidence presented.

Hessdalen

For details on the bizarre and un-explained happenings in Hessdalen checkout the Project Hessdalen web site. Basically there are odd lights that occur in the sky in this area and no one has a clue what they are. Dr. Teodorani believes they may be caused by Extra-terrestrial technology entering our atmosphere but they may also be natural phenomena that we simply don’t understand. Either way we should be researching these things to figure out what the hell they are but finding funding for this research is exceptionally difficult. Dr. Teodorani has worked out exactly what equipment he would need to properly study these phenomena but he can’t get the money to do the work. What really puts it all into perspective is that he believes he could solve the mystery with the price of just one cruise missile.

My view on Hessdalen is that I am very sceptical that the mystery lights are evidence of alien visitations but since we have no scientific explanation for the scientifically recorded phenomena that occur in Hessdalen (and other places around the world) we must study them to find out what is going on. I think we will discover a new natural process that we are not aware of at the moment but it would be rather cool of we did discover ET!

I was delighted today to learn that the Vatican had strongly re-stated their very sensible line on Evolution, that it is not against the bible and that the creation myth in Genesis should not be interpreted literally. This is very re-assuring to see and is yet another kick in the teeth for Intelligent Design advocates.

Read more

This time of the year astronomers know to expect the Taurid meteor shower. It is usually a rather bland affair with a peak rate of about 10 shooting stars per-hour but this year is proving to be quite different. In the late 90s Dr. David Asher from Armagh Observatory predicted that in 2005 there would be a fireball storm from the Taurids. Turns out he was right!

I’ve only done a little observing over the past few nights because of bad weather but in a total of about an hours observing time I’ve seen 4 very bright Taurids and one fireball about as bright as the full moon. Basically, keep an eye out over the next few days if you’re outside at night, you could get the show of your life!

OK, so you have a telescope and a collection of eyepieces ranging from 6mm up to 45mm but you have no idea how much the bloody things will magnify! Welcome to my world. I keep on forgetting how to do the calculation and what the focal lengths of the Astro2 telescopes are!

One might ask, ‘why are eyepieces labeled with focal lengths instead of magnifications?’. I mean it would be much easier if they did that, right? Unfortunately they can’t because the magnification is not just a function of the eyepiece but also of the focal length of the telescope it is used in. Hence, the same eyepiece will give a different magnification on different telescopes.

Astro2 have the use of two telescopes so that means that there are two focal lengths I’m going to have to start remembering:

• Meade 10" LX200 – 2,500mm
• Meade ETX90 – 1,250mm

Now that we have the focal lengths of the telescopes, how do we get the magnifications for each of the eyepieces?

M = f_o/f_e

Where f_o is the focal length of the objective (i.e. the telescope) and f_e is the focal length of the eye piece (make sure the two are in the same units, usually mm).

This means that the eyepiece I use most often for Astro2 events (26mm) gives a magnification of 96X on the big LX200 and 48X on the little ETX90. It also means that the maximum we can magnify for Astro2 events is about 415X and the minimum is about 60X with the LX200 and 30X with the ETX90.

Mind you it should be pointed out that there is a limit to how far you can magnify with any scope till the image quality just gets too poor to use and that maximum is approximately the diameter of the primary lens/mirror in mm so for the LX200 that gives us an optimum magnification of 250X (i.e. about a 10mm eye-piece) and for the ETX90 about 90X (i.e. about a 13mm eye piece).

You would assume that Astronomers have manged to make up their minds on what a planet is, especially since we are now discovering them around others stars but you'd be wrong! ATM something is a planet if and only if the IAU (International Astronomical Union) say it is! They are currently working hard on a definition but nothing has been agreed yet. This new interest in an actual definition for a planet is being spurred on by yet more discoveries of large objects out beyond Pluto that the press are immediately dubbing "the 10th planet"(we have had 3 "10th planets" in the past few years!).

So, lets have a look at the facts as I see them. Read more

There is a lot of talk about ‘Creation Science’ and ‘Intelligent Design’ ATM because Kansas is yet again showing it self to be run by nutjobs. This entire debate is ridiculous because science and religion have nothing to do with each other and to try to force science teachers to teach the beliefs of one religion as science is just barmey since Intelligent design is philosophy not science!

Science is about devising a theory, devising an experiment to test that theory and then carrying out that test to see if the theory holds true. Key to this is ‘falsifiability’, if no experiment can be devised to possibly disprove your theory then it is not science!

Let me explain with an simple example first, and then a more complex one. Take Newton’s third law of motion, "for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction", to test this is elementary, you get into a boat with a cannon, fire the cannon and if you go back with as much acceleration as the cannon ball then Newton’s theory gains support, if not Newton was definitely wrong! To further support the theory you need to carry out more tests, each test that passes adds more weight to the theory but all it takes to kill a theory is one failure. This same concept still holds true at the very cutting edge of science, take the ‘Big Bang’ as an example, if there was a big bang there mush still be residual energy left over from it and that energy should be all pervasive but have cooled as the universe stretched, or to be more scientific, if there was a Big Bang there must be Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) with given properties, if scientists find this then that supports the big bang theory, if they look and it isn’t there then the big bang theory is falsified and we need to come up with a new theory.

That is how science works, we are never 100% sure of anything but each experiment that agrees with the theory adds more weight to it and our confidence in it rises but at all times it just takes one failure to falsify it and send the scientists back to the drawing board!

So, how does ‘Creation Science’ or the entirely equivalent ‘Intelligent Design’ theory fare in the cold light of science? Well it falls at the first hurdle because both theories have at their core the assumption that there is a God. That is an un-testable assumption, hence it is not possible to falsify it and hence it is not science. Simple, creationism is not science, it is a belief, hence all this rubbish about forcing it into the science curriculum is utter rubbish. This kind of tripe has been tried before in the times of the inquisitions, the church were wrong to fight science on the shape of the earth based on a literal interpretation of the bible and the religion right in America today are exactly as wrong to fight Evolution based in a literal interpretation of the bible.

Of course to me the ultimate irony is that science and religion don’t have to clash, if you read the bible bearing in mind that it was written by men thousands of years ago and then re-translated by more men over the millennea you can get the true message it contains out of it without getting hung with excessive literalism. Reading the bible while ignoring it’s history and context is a stupid thing to do and will result in you missing the whole bloody point, it’s not about a literal interpretation of the creation myth but a book about how to live!

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