A very interesting paper was recently accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal and turned up on the preprint server astro-ph last week. A group of astronomers working on a program called the Supernova Cosmology Project report the discovery of an optical transient from images with the Hubble Space Telescope‘s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Now, it’s a pretty dangerous thing to announce that you may have found a new kind of astronomical object, but the authors seem to have worked hard to explain their observations, yet found no explanation for what the images showed.
Shame on You, Sarah Palin
September 12, 2008 By
I wasn’t going to get too carried away with this – after all it’s not my country, which has plenty of troubles of its own – but what the heck, it’s Friday, I’ll have a rant. I’ve been reading, talking (arguing), thinking more about Sarah Palin as every tidbit of news is thrust in our face by the (still) overexcited media. And really, where does the woman get off?
First of all I think she’s a formidable woman. She clearly has a lot of ambition, spark, and is not intimidated by anyone – and good for her. But that’s where my compliments will stop. The woman, or anyone sharing her views and beliefs, shouldn’t be in the White House (and preferably nowhere near it either).
LHC: Going Round in Circles
September 10, 2008 By
Going round in circles has never been so exciting as today at CERN, where a beam of protons has made it round the entire accelerator (27 km) for the first time. Yay!
The particles were travelling at a snail’s pace of around 30 kph, which is barely even a fraction of the final energy of 14 TeV they will hopefully achieve in around a year’s time.
The media interest is really great, particularly as particle physics has never been the easiest subject to get people excited about. Many of the media streams are pretty overloaded so it’s been hard to follow what’s happened.
There is a Twitter feed for the First Beam event.
The Guardian are blogging the event here.
The BBC’s updates are appearing here.
The Volkskrant has blog from Geneva in Dutch, by Prof. Bentvelsen from the University of Amsterdam and Nikhef.
LHC First Beam tomorrow!
September 9, 2008 By
On Wednesday 10 September the Large Hadron Collider, the long-awaited new particle accelerator at CERN on the French-Swiss border, will see its First Beam. This means that protons will be sent round the 27 km-long ring for the very first time, after more than 20 years of development work since its inception in the 1980s. Scientists around the world, including me, are really excited about this happening, as the LHC will be able to confirm or disprove our current understanding of particle physics, which totally underpins the way we see nature, from the very small to the very large.
The switch-on event will be webcast live here on 10 September @ 9 am CEST
If you want to know how it works, particle physicist-rockstar-all-around-lovely bloke Brian Cox explains it here.
The CERN LHC website lists some very cool facts and figures and all the info about the experiments that will take place around the beam.
The Guardian newspaper have been doing a whole series of pieces on the new accelerator – all collected here.
Celebrate 400 Years of Telescopes
September 9, 2008 By
2008 marks the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. Although Galileo famously carried out his first astronomical observations with a telescope in 1609, the first telescopes actually appeared in 1608, right here in the Netherlands. Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey was the first to apply for a patent after showing his new invention to Prince Maurits of Orange.
A number of events have been planned locally in the Netherlands to commemorate Lipperhey’s invention, which paved the way for generations of astronomers (like me!) to build ever bigger and better telescopes.
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