talmor
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "talmor" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:49 pm
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Two good articles, and a plug
There's a good post here on what real space battles (and military spaceships) might actually be like, without exotic and probably impossible technology (FTL drives, etc). I've seen a lot of what he covers described elsewhere, but it's a good summary. In particular, he points out that anywhere near a star or planet, fights wouldn't be anything like manouvers in empty space, it would all be about control of key regions (minimum energy transfer orbits between planets, etc)
And here's a blog all about impact craters - the most recent post goes into lots of detail about the various stages in the formation of a crater when something hits a planet (or comet, in this case) at speed. The whole process is a lot slower than I expected - you could watch it happen over tens of minutes, if you could avoid being vapourised.
Both would be good reading if you're contemplating writing a space battle sequence and don't want to be the 21st century E.E. 'Doc' Smith when it comes to scientific accuracy in SF...
And speaking of Dr Smith, our Swancon is going to be the 50th National SF convention in Australia. To commemorate that, we're producing a commemorative book with stories, photos, and other information about the history of SF in Australia, and natcons in particular. If you have any photos or stories, please tag photos as 'natcon50' in flickr, or post something to the project site, or the facebook page.
It might seem like this is still early days, but we aim to have the book on sale at Worldcon in Melbourne in September next year, for overseas guests to take home as a souvenir of Australian fandom. Counting back through all the various production deadlines means we need to get material real soon now...
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11:01 pm
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Astrofest
I'm going to be at Astrofest all day tomorrow (Saturday Nov 28th) - it runs from 2pm-10pm, and has activities, astrophotography and art competitions, scientific talks, activities for kids, stalls, and a public lecture. In the evening there's model rocket launches, a public lecture on the demotion of Pluto from planethood, and dozens and dozens of telescopes to look through. It's on the grounds of Curtin Uni, in Curtin Stadium (North entrance off Kent Street).
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12:58 pm
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spare room?
If anyone has a spare room to rent, or needs a housesitter, from around the first week in November (for a few weeks, maybe longer), let me know. I know someone moving out here from Canberra to work on the MWA radio telescope, and he needs a place to stay while househunting.
He's clean, friendly, housebroken, and spent many years working on Mauna Kea - his specialty is designing and building digital cameras big enough that you need a forklift to move them around.
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04:36 pm
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Swancon
Anybody who happens to be at Swancon on Sunday morning, please turn up to the WASFF meeting and vote for our bid to run Swancon 36 in 2011. We're the 'Thirty Six' team, with the blue flyers/posters/coasters...
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12:36 pm
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Summer lecture
The annual summer lecture on the lawn at Perth Observatory is on tomorrow night. The talk starts at 8:30, but you can come early with snacks or dinner and eat on the grass. If you're interested in coming, ring and let them know (you can pay at the gate).
---------------------- PERTH OBSERVATORY 'UNDER THE STARS' SUMMER LECTURE IYA2009
TITLE: What do we know about the Universe?
PRESENTER: Prof Matthew Colless, Director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory
SUMMARY: In this talk I will outline what astronomers now know about the universe - its age, size, constituents, history, and its ultimate fate. I will describe how we know these things - what the evidence is, and the telescopes, satellites, and other technological advances that make this possible. I will also summarise all the things we still don't know about the universe - what is the dark matter? what is the even more mysterious dark energy? what was the origin of the Big Bang? I will conclude with a discussion of the future prospects for answering these questions, and what we ultimately can know about the universe.
BIOGRAPHY: Matthew Colless is an astronomer who works on observational cosmology, studying the large-scale structure of the universe in order to understand its formation and evolution. He is Director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney. After completing undergraduate studies at Sydney, he obtained a PhD at the University of Cambridge and held research positions at the US National Optical Astronomy Observatories, the Universities of Durham and Cambridge and the Australian National University, before taking up his current role. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Chair of the National Committee for Astronomy. He is involved in organising the International Year of Astronomy in Australia.
DATE: Friday 6th March, 2009
TIME: 8:30pm
LOCATION: Observatory back lawn (alternate venue if raining) 337 Walnut Rd, Bickley
COST: $7/person (Admission fees are used to assist us with production costs)
BOOKING ESSENTIAL: ticket numbers are limited.
Please call the Observatory on 9293 8255 with your credit card handy, or send a check or postal note with covering letter to: Summer Lecture, Perth Observatory, 337 Walnut Rd, Bickley 6076 by Wednesday 4th March, 2009.
Here are some more details to assist you enjoy the summer lecture.
· Please note the lecture is conducted in the open air, gates open 2 hours prior to start
· Bring a chair and insect repellent,
· Feel free to bring a picnic dinner, no drinks or food will be provided,
· Please use the rubbish bins provided,
· No refunds will be given,
· Parents must exert strict control over the children under their supervision for the obvious safety reasons and in order not to distract the speaker and/or spoil the occasion for other attendees,
· Parking at the Observatory is limited so try to minimise the number of cars in your party,
· For your own safety and convenience please follow the directions of the Observatory staff, parking marshals and security officers, and
· In the interests of safety and because of the limited number of staff NO tour of the Observatory facilities will be possible before, during or after the lecture.
ALTERNATE VENUE (in case of rain or high wind): tentatively - Lesmurdie Senior High School - call Perth Observatory to confirm
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08:37 pm
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The good bits
There are definitely upsides to working out in the middle of nowhere - here are some of them. Click on the images for 1024x768. No idea how to get them to display any other resolution. Wierd interface - up to now I've been setting the resolution on the upload dialog to 640x480, but that just leaves you with a 320x240 image in the post, blurred out to 640x480. Clicking on that gets you a real 640x480 image, then clicking on THAT gets you the actual uploaded image resolution.
One of the 'breakaways' around the proposed SKA site, where ASKAP and MWA are being built. The breakaways are flat on top, and are the last remaining fragments of the old (~60 million years) topsoil. It's being eroded away into dust and blown off. What's left is a few centimetres of red dust over extremely hard gray granite, laid down as soil 2.6 to 3 billion years ago. They are full of caves, and in the caves live really big lizards. Apparently harmless, unless they get scared and try to climb the nearest tree, and mistake you for a tree...
Blue sky and the setting sun behind me, storm clouds on their way in front of me. The building just left of centre is where I was staying on this trip.
Arriving back at the homestead after a long last day. The twin cab ute in the foreground is what I drove 1800km in over 5 days (700km out there on Monday, 50km each way from homestead to site tuesday-thursday, 700km back on Friday)
Sunset from the homestead on the last day...
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02:48 pm
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My new life as a radio astronomer
Living in the lap of luxury here, with an international team of scientists and engineers. We're staying in buildings built for seasonal workers on the station. Here's what life in the outback is like:
The frogs live in the cistern above the toilet in vast quantities, and hide under the seat and under the toilet rim. After you flush, a few more hidden ones (plus ones in the cistern) flush down into the bowl. Some get washed out into the septic tank, and need to swim back up again. If you don't see any frogs, it's probably becuase a snake has come in and eaten them (possibly up through the drain into the toilet bowl, which can happen while you're sitting on it).
Pretty decent room, nice clean sheets, doors and windows actually close. No aircon though.
The nice modern bathroom is out of action because of a broken water heater, so we're using this one (using a 44 gallon drum over a fire as a water heater). Note the original (1950s?) concrete and tiles, the rusty pipes. The drain is a hole in the floor (no grill) leading to a concrete trough running a few metres into the grass (instant grey water recycling). Something is blocking it, because you're standing ankle deep in water after a couple of minutes, and there are loud bubbling sounds as water escapes. My hope is that whatever is blocking the water from getting out is also blocking snakes from getting in.
On my way home again tomorrow, and not a moment too soon...
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10:55 pm
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Marking
Out in Geraldton, just finished a week long meeting. Back to Perth tomorrow, then out to the radio telescope site on Monday. In the evenings, I've been marking. :-(
The first assignment I set was an essay, where students had to argue for or against (depending on student number) human space travel, as opposed to robotic space craft. I then put all the essays up on the course web site, and for the second assignment, each student had to mark (complete with comments) everyone's essays for assignment 1. One student said in the email that the marking was "an assignment that almost became more difficult than giving birth!"...
One of the students wrote a very gloomy essay, and talked about the extinction of the human race. Here are a couple of the funnier comments from other students on that essay:
"... Chin up buddy. It’s ain’t all bad! Honestly mate I think you need a hug and I have no doubt there’s a nice young lady out there who will make things look a little less nihilistic for you! You’ve obviously got a ferocious mind. Chicks dig that."
and
"Extremely pessimistic introduction – I like it. Good use of figures to back up your argument, even if they are from wikipedia. The section on the fate of the universe, while interesting, is a bit irrelevant to the question, which is more to do with human/robot exploration. Good use of the graph though. Also, saying that everyone is going to die is a bad argument for not exploring space, because if you go by that logic, where do you draw the line? May as well jump in front of a train, you damn emo. Good referencing."
I love the last two sentences of that one, as a combination...
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01:59 pm
[Link] | For those wondering where I am, here's the view in google maps:
Last day here, heading off back to Perth tomorrow morning, assuming the rain holds off and the roads don't turn to mush. I'm used to 'dirt' roads being pea-gravel - these really are dirt, the biggest bits are the size of grains of sand, most is fine red dust. Which I'll be spending this afternoon vacuuming out of every surface before we leave...
Here's a photo of one of the tiles - each is around 4m x 4m steel mesh, with dipoles sticking up about thigh-high. Each dipole has an X polarisation and a Y polarisation (the two bits at right angles), with a low noise amplifier in the white cylinder in the middle, powered off 48VDC on the coax. There are 16 dipoles on each tile, and if a signal comes from straight overhead, it reaches every dipole at the same instant. If it comes in at an angle, the finite speed of light means that it will reach one dipole first, then the next, and so on, just like the arrival time of sounds in your two ears lets you work out the direction.
Out of 16 dipoles come 32 bits of coax (X and Y for each), and these go to a 'beamformer' sitting on the dirt next to the tile. The beamformer has 32 inputs, and two outputs (the sum of all the X inputs, and the sum of all the Y inputs). But, before adding the inputs together, there is a variable delay line on each input. If all the delays are equal, the dipoles are added 'in phase' for signals coming from right overhead reaching the dipoles at the same time, and the 'beam' (the point of highest sensitivity) points straight up. By having longer delays for the dipoles on the left side than on the right, signals add 'in phase' and reinforce each other if they reach the tile from the left side, and the most sensitive part of 'beam' is in the sky off to the left. By tuning the delays, you can 'point' the tile in whatever direction you want.
The cute part is that the delay lines are done with loops of circuit trace on the printed circuit board. There's a little loop about a centimeter long, another 2cm long, another 4cm long, and so on, with analog switches that either route the signal around each loop, or straight through. By specifying a 7 bit binary number, with each bit controlling a switch, you can have anywhere from ~1cm to ~128cm of track, in 1cm steps. Here's a photo of one of the beamformers, showing the loops of track and the switches:
Livejournal seem to be munging photos to 320x240 no matter what resolution I upload or set in the image edit window, so it's a bit blurry.
After the two signals (X and Y) leave the beamformer, they go to a central hut, where they are digitised, processed and turned into an image, in combination with all 31 other tiles (or 511 other tiles for the full version), every 8 seconds...
By the way, Curtin have just advertised a high level engineering job, the 'MWA commissioning engineer', to oversee the whole project. It would involve a fair bit of of time spent out on site, preferably based in Geraldton, although that's not essential. Pass it on to anyone you thin k might be interested...
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10:38 am
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middle of nowhere
I'm out in the middle of nowhere, my first vist to the MWA radio telescope site. I'm further away from civilisation than I've ever been before - it's 250km of dirt road before you get to the nearest bitumin road, at a metropolis called 'Pindar' that's too small to even have a petrol station.
Some photos below show the local scenery (including one of the tiles on the ground), the trenching machine they got out to dig a 100m trench for the mains cable, and a closeup of the tungsten carbide teeth on the rocksaw after some trenching...
And in a slightly surreal touch, we've just had a new demountable building delivered, and they've bought a heap of furniture to go in it, so we have an actual office on site, instead of a hut with less than a square meter of free floorspace. You can guess where this is heading - I'm out here to help build a 20-million dollar radio telescope, and spent most of yesterday afternoon putting together IKEA furniture...
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10:19 am
[Link] | I'm on a whirlwind visit to Boston at the moment, staying in a hotel right next to MIT, and spending all day every day talking software, engineering and politics (the scientific collaboration kind) with a few people here, plus a couple more at Harvard. It's all because it looks like I've become project leader for the 'Monitor and Control' work package for the Murchison Widefield Array:
http://www.haystack.mit.edu/ast/arrays/mwa/
It's going to have 512 tiles, each a ~4m x 4m section of steel mesh resting on the ground, with 16 dipole antennae sticking up out of it, forming a total of 8192 antennae (times two polarisations). Each tile has a 'beamformer' - a 32 channel tunable analog delay line that 'steers' the receiving beam coarsely by applying different delays to each of the antennae RF output signals. Each group of 8 tiles has a dedicated PC that controls the 8 beamformers via serial ports, and mixes and digitises the RF, and there are 64 of these 'node' machines.
The digitised RF goes via a dedicated fibre network to a hardware correlator for preprocessing (this beast has 16 custom designed FPGA boards, each of which has four gigabit ethernet ports just to get the data in and out). From there, the processed RF goes to a supercomputer, to generate (and archive) images of the sky in real time. The whole lot (supercomputer and all) is going to be on a desolate bit of nowhere, 300km northeast of Geraldton, the same site as the proposed 'Square Kilometre Array', as the MWA is a 'pathfinder' for the SKA. It's being run by a dozen different university research groups, all over the world.
It all sounds good on paper, but now I'm here I'm discovering that:
-Four receiver nodes driving 32 tiles are supposed to be on the ground at site by the beginning of April, and I'm supposed to have software to control them working by then. The only docs on how to control them is a sample XML packet, written by someone who hasn't even seen one of the machines, as a guideline. The firmware to read the XML and control the hardware doesn't exist yet.
-But, there isn't a single fully-assembled receiver node in existence, and the one site that has a (partially assembled) one and is supposed to be writing firmware for it has just said they don't have much free time, and can I write my control code 'a little closer to the hardware'...
-There is a strict power budget for the site (a diesel generator), but the people writing the software for the supercomputer say that there is nothing on the market that meets both the speed and power specs, by a factor of around 10. The supercomputer is supposed to be on the site, installed, and running, by the end of this year. Right now, the site has a shipping container for an office, and pretty much nothing else.
On the bright side, nobody seems to think that the schedule will actually hold, or seems too upset that it won't. And Boston is a wierd place. Walking back from dinner tonight, on a lonely street, I passed a couple of dodgy looking guys talking - and caught a snippet of their conversation: "... but the intrinsic uncertainties are greater than ...". It's been like that everywhere I've gone - the airport shuttle I took when I arrived had three people - one woman from Brisbane visiting a cancer research centre at MIT, another woman from LA visiting Harvard, and me. Apparently Boston has a population of about 3 million, but it has around 300,000 undergrad and postgrad students (and countless academics, postdocs, and industrial/military researchers on top of that). Very bizaare...
Hoping I get a chance to do some sightseeing before I go, but it's not looking too likely.
I'm staying here, and had a hot chocolate in here this morning (sadly they didn't sell anything cold that wasn't coffee. It was my first starbucks experience).
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11:28 pm
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Another satisfied customer...
Here's a transcript (as close as I can manage from memory) of a phone call while I was at work tonight:
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Caller: I rang to tell you about a UFO I saw last night.
Me: Can you tell me exactly what you saw?
C: I TOLD you - a UFO! It flew slowly across the sky, then stopped, near the constellation of the Spoon - it's still there, you can see it right now. I'm about to go set up my telescope.
M: The spoon?
C: You know, the spoon, the saucepan...
M: Oh, Orion...
C: What?
M: That constellation is actually called 'Orion'
C: I don't f***ing care what it's called, there's a UFO right there! Just follow the handle up and off to the right...
M: Greg, one of the other guys here, was just out setting up the telescopes, and I'm sure he'd have noticed a UFO near Orion...
C: I'm telling you it's plain as day - it flew across the sky, then stopped dead, and it's still there!
M: I think you might be confusing a satellite and a star...
C: Well you're f***ing useless, you f***ing idiot...
<Click>
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My guess is that he saw a bright satellite near Orion, looked away for a second, and the satellite went into the Earth's shadow and faded. When he looked back, he confused a star with the original satellite. For the rest of his life, he's probably going to be pointing out Sirius, or Saiph, or some other bright star, to everyone that stands still long enough, and telling them it's a UFO he saw arriving in the Solar System...
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10:06 pm
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Observatory volunteers
If you're interested in volunteering at the Observatory, there's a recruitment drive on now to try and get some new people for the start of the tour season. Details are on the Observatory web page (and yes, there really is a spelling mistake in the word 'volunteer' in the URL - don't blame me).
Volunteers don't need to know any astronomy, or how to use a telescope, you pick up all that as you go. To start with, you'd be tagging along on tours, helping with crowd control, showing people around, etc, and learning how to use the telescopes and what sort of things you can say about the things we show people. After a few months, you'd be setting up telescopes, pointing them at things, and entertaining about 12 people at a time in your own dome. A night tour gets run with 2 staff, 3 volunteers, and about 50 members of the public, with 4 telescopes set up. The visitors rotate around to each of the telescopes in turn, staying in groups of 12 or so (hence the need for crowd control).
Downsides are you should expect to be helping on about a tour a month, for about 3 hours (from about an hour before sunset to a couple of hours after sunset). Upsides are that once you're checked out the telescopes, you can come and use them yourself or with a few friends, on nights that we don't have tours. We've got a 16" Meade, a 14" Celestron and a 12.5" Newtonian built in 1910, all mounted permanently in their own domes, plus a 30" Dobsonian that needs assembly before each use, but will eventually have its own building too.
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10:16 am
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nephew cuteness
I know I said this LJ would be mostly astronomy, but this is too cute not to share...
My sister Samara was watching our nephew Ari (two in November) in his cot - he was supposed to be going to sleep, but he was actually trying to use one foot and one hand to reach both buttons needed to lower the side of the cot - and Samara was thwarting him.
After a while he gave up, pulled the blankets over himself so he was completely covered, and said "Ari's gone to the park with Ma and Pa - 'Mara can go away now..."
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10:49 am
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Free talk on Pluto's fate
Ron Ekers is an Australian radio astronomer, and past president of the International Astronomy Union. He chaired the last IAU meeting in Europe that resulted in the demotion of Pluto from 'planet' status. He's giving a talk on the science and politics behind Pluto's demotion on August 21st at the planetarium (at Scitech) . It should be really interesting, it's free, and even includes drinks and nibbles, but you need to RSVP (to the organisers, not me).
Details are on the AstronomyWA website.
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11:20 am
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Fungi thrive on gamma rays
Five years ago, a robot sent to explore the damaged reactor at Chernobyl discovered the walls were lined with black fungi. After investigating, it turned out that most fungi aren't just resistant to ionising radiation, they actually thrive on it, using it as an energy source the way plants photosynthesise using visible light.
The protein involved is melanin, which gives fungi their black or brown color (and also gives human skin its black or brown color). The presence of melanin in human skin means that it's possible (though very speculative) that skin cells may be able to use radiation as a (minor) energy source too.
Not only does this open up all sorts of astrobiological possibilities (allowing viable life deep inside a planet or asteroid, where light can't penetrate), it also makes fungi a possible source of food on space flights.
Full story here:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2349
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03:26 pm
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Paying the price for some photos
Spent an hour or two yesterday driving around La Silla and taking pictures, finishing up with the furthest and highest dome, the ESO 3.6m (the twin dome on the right in this photo). The tiny dome next to the main 3.6m one is some auxilliary 1.4m telescope - it drove a spectrograph in the 3.6m dome via a big light pipe that runs over the catwalk joining them (it's been decomissioned for years). And that 'tiny' dome isn't so tiny - here's a picture of my car underneath it, you can see the catwalk leading to the big 3.6m dome.
Unfortunately, I hadn't realised how windy it was going to be up there. I parked my car, walked up to the nearest railing, looked out at the view - and my glasses blew right off my face, and over the edge of the railing. I couldn't see where they had gone, and I was looking down a 45 degree slope of jagged granite rubble and gravel, with nobody else around. I decided I could live without them for the rest of my trip (and I've got another pair at home)...
They are currently more or less where the arrow is pointing in this picture...
The red and white demountable building underneath the 3.6m in the last photo is 'The Ritz' - the control room where all three of the big ESO telescopes (the 3.6m, the NTT 3.5m, and the 2.2m) are controlled from. Each telescope has one corner of a big room, with a bank of computers and monitors. If you fly there from Europe to use one of those telescopes, a Chilean support astronomer sits next to you and actually moves the telescope and controls the instrument, you just tell them what to do and play with the data as it rolls in. Bizaare, not sure why people actually need to travel there at all. The Danish telescope setup is a lot more primitive, and a lot more work, unfortunately.
(my card reader appears to be working again, hence the photos).
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11:36 am
[Link] | Halfway through my observing run at La Silla now, and it's pretty hard work, I'm really missing my nice automated telescope, even if it is 1/4 the diameter.
I was surprised to find that the telescope I'm using is a Grubb and Parsons. The astrograph at Perth Observatory is a G+P, only made in 1896 (when the company had only just swapped over to telescopes from steam engines). This one was made in 1975 (it was in a dome in Denmark, and brought out here a decade or two later). I had no idea G+P were still making telescopes then. It's in a tiny dome, no bigger than our 24" dome, and there are very tight constraints on pointing. I haven't seen any of the other telescopes here, just the control rooms. The big telescopes here are the only other telescopes still being used - the ESO 3.6m, the 3.5m NTT, the ESO 2.2m, and another 1.2m telescope owned by the Swiss - and they are all operated remotely. There's a 'graveyard' of dead telescopes - 8 or 9 domes with 0.5 to 1.5m telescopes that have been left to rot.
Not much wildlife around here - it's pretty desolate. There are occasional wild donkeys wandering around (right up around the domes and buildings), a family of foxes, and some very large furry spiders (although I haven't seen the spiders myself, yet).
I did get a chance to get a lift to Las Campenas Observatory today - it's about an hours drive away, on a neighbouring peak - you can see it from La Silla. It's run by a few US universities (Columbia, MIT, Harvard), and has the Magellan Telescope pair - twin 6.5 meter telescopes, each with a single solid 6.5m mirror. They were very friendly, showed us around the whole place, opening up all the domes. Apparently they have an eyepiece specially made for the 6.5 meter telescopes, and once a year, they bring the board of trustees down to actually look through one. Wow...
I can't transfer any more photos - the card reader in my laptop has died. My guess is that static electricity has killed it. It's really dry here, 10-20% humidity most of the time, and you can't walk one meter without a fat blue spark whenever you touch anything. I've given my laptop literally dozens of zaps, touching the trackpad, the case, the charger plug as I've connected it, the ethernet cable, etc. I even got a shock from water - walked into the bathroom, turned on the tap with the (plastic) handle, stuck my hands under the water - zap. My memory card is spending the rest of the trip safely inside my camera - I don't want zap that and lose all my photos...
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01:13 pm
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Surreal experience
I was sitting down to dinner last night, in the cafeteria here on the mountain (4 meals a day, including 'midnight snack', seats about 60 people). All of a sudden, the lights went out, and we were all in pitch darkness. Almost in unison, EVERY person in the room reached into their pockets, pulled out identical blue 'maglight' flashlights, and continued eating and chatting, flashlight in one hand, fork in the other. Even the kitchen staff all had flashlights, and continued serving food...
The room keys here for all the visiting astronomers come attached to blue maglights, because as you might expect, there aren't any outside lights (and not many inside ones in any area with windows).
Worked another 13 hour night last night, with about 3 hours sleep. Looking forward to clouds...
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12:32 am
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Realistic rockets
Anyone interested in the realities of interplanetary or interstellar travel should have a look at:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html It's an excellent collection of very well written articles on every imaginable aspect of space travel, including all the equations you need to make your space flight physically realistic, references and quotes on hundreds of ideas already used in SF and discussions of their plausibility (including favourable mentions of of Sean Williams and Greg Egan's concepts), etc. It covers the content of the 'faster than light' and 'time travel' panels in copious detail, including writing tips for those who want to allow (probably) impossible concepts like FTL drives but still want consistent stories.
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