Chris Lintott’s Universe

I went to a preview screening of the new sci-fi film, Sunshine, last night. It’s a pretty good example of the standard ‘crew far from home must do something important to save humanity’ genre, and an enjoyable couple of hours. I should say right now that the science is mostly complete rubbish built on speculation, but then this is a film whose premise is essentially a reboot of the Sun (by launching a completely unexplained payload into the centre of it) which has begun to die (for reasons that also aren’t explained). The crew are cut off from contact with Earth due to solar flares interfeering with communications in ‘the dead zone’; the only problem is that this zone extends further out than the orbit of Mercury, from where even Mariner 10 using 1960s technology happily sent back data. Still, the film did an excellent job of making the Sun look absolutely stunning (the transit of Mercury seen from close up was particularly good) and if it means that more people find their way to images like those from TRACE, that’s fine by me.

Coincidently, we’re showing this amazing movie from the Japanese/American/British satellite Hinode on the program this month and it’s well worth a look. The Earth is about an eight of the width of the image.

UPDATE: Movie link corrected.

Off filming again for the 50th anniversary programme today. In the meantime, here’s a very interesting photograph for you - more to follow.

I spent some of yesterday evening listening to an excellent talk by UCL professor Arthur Miller about his latest book, Empire of the stars. It focuses on the often tortured relationship between Eddington, the Grand Old Man of British Astrophysics, and Chandrasekhar. They first clashed while Chandra was a graduate student, over his claim that there was a maximum mass which a white dwarf could obtain. Prof Miller argued that Chandra was predicting the existence of black holes and that the sheer strangeness of the idea that a star could collapse essentially to nothing helped Eddington defend his position. In books published in the 1970s, one could still read about black holes as theoretically allowed by relativity, although it was far from clear whether they would actually exist. The first real evidence came with the measurement of the mass of Cygnus X-1 in 1971 (the term black hole was coined in 1969), and they now appear in popular language more than almost any other concept, whether it’s black holes in the budget or as standard sci-fi staples.

I read the book in hardback a year or so ago, and it is excellent. So good, that I feel absolved from the need to summarize it here - you should all go and read it.

Prof. Miller also reminded me that one of the possibilities for the the Large Hadron Collider when it switches on later this year is the prediction of many, many small black holes, each the size of a proton. These black holes should evaporate extremely quickly, and would thus be detectable - providing a stringent test of certain versions of string theory…fingers crossed.

One of my regrets about this month’s program was that we didn’t get more time to feature HiRISE, the amazing camera on board MRO. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet (or those who weren’t paying attention!) this is the camera which takes higher resolution pictures of Mars than any we’re allowed access to on Earth. Now, they would like your help.

…but almost everything else you’ve read about Pythagoras (he of the theorem) is wrong. This excellent essay in the London Review of Books is well worth a read.

I’ve had a couple of requests for the text Brian used as part of his speech on Saturday. It’s taken from the first in the series of Sky at Night books, and was written not by Patrick but by the first producer, Paul Johnstone. He writes
It has always seemed to me that television is above all a means of communication to a mass audience. That does not mean it should debase subjects or avoid difficult or so-called minority ones. But it is not like a book, where you can re-read a difficult sentence. Nor can it ever replace books as permanent sources of wisdom or knowledge. On the other hand, the combination of immediacy, personality and illustration can impart information more vividly to a wide audience than any book or magazine, provided always that this essential clarity and simplicity is kept.

and I don’t think much has changed since then. Mind you, he also said

One must also mention the dancing girls. We claim happily to be the only serious scientific programme on television which regularly employs dancing girls.

so maybe some things do change!

Apologies for being a day or two late with this, but I now feel the run-up to the 50th anniversary has begun; the royal mail stamp issue is out. Have a look here - I think they’re rather good, even if they did miss the chance to have the Queen’s head wearing a monocle!

Meanwhile, Brian let slip at Astrofest that he was going to be our Mars correspondent for the 50th anniversary show, and I can reveal that we’ll be filming in a studio (YES! A proper studio!) at the weekend. More details soon, and hopefully a behind the scenes shot or two.

My friend and -more importantly - amateur astronomer -Harriet has stupidly decided that running the London marathon is a good idea. If you could sponsor her in support of Macmillian cancer relief, at least we’ll know she didn’t die in vain.

Thanks for all of those who came to see Brian, Patrick and I at Astrofest yesterday…it was great to see so many people cluching copies of Bang! and I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to more of you properly along the way.

Walking into Astrofest always makes me feel like I’m back at school. It used to be the annual astronomy club outing, with 20 or so of us crammed into the school minibus for the drive up to London. All the stalls are in the same places as they were back then; the only difference is that I miss the 5 hour Uno marathon on the way in.

The best moment was at the end of the presentation, when the entire hall jumped up in a standing ovation for Patrick (he insists it was for all three of us, but somehow I don’t think so…). It felt like the 50th anniversary of the Sky at Night had begun.

Don’t forget tonight’s extended, hour long, Mars Sky at Night on BBC4, but in the meantime one of my favourite sites, Londonist, have chosen today to feature the official time signal. 

The whole thing reminds me of my stint on the newspaper for the 2000 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; the main resolutions (which oddly attracted nowhere near the amount of attention last year’s planet decision did) consisted of an attempt to establish a universal time frame, and consisted of page after page of general relativistic equations. I typed them up, and didn’t understand a word. Everyone duly voted on them, but I don’t think anyone beyond the authors understood what they meant….