New astronomy education websites

Both Microsoft and Google have released astronomy exploration projects to allow students and enthusiasts to explore the heavens, according to an article in the New York Times. Google Sky and Microsoft's new entry, WorldWide Telescope, promise to bring astronomy to the myspace generation, and I hope they succeed at that. However, I was more interested in a short line in the article that mentions a professional version of the Microsoft product is being developed in conjunction with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

(I am disappointed that the Google team, with a stated desire to organize all the world's information, isn't the impetus for the professional product.)

When I arrived at graduate school, my first project, in 2003, was to analyze observations the group had taken in 1998 and 1999. No one had gotten around to looking at the images, because with the advent of CCD's, it is incredibly easy to collect data, and much more difficult to find people and time to analyze it. Additionally, there are several all sky surveys that are collecting massive amounts of data for one or a few particular reasons (such as finding planets), and the data could be used for so many more explorations. However, all the data needs to be reduced and refined to a common level of usable information. These projects at Microsoft and Google are hopefully the first step towards bringing large disparate data sets together for consistent usage. Wouldn't it be fantastic to plug in an area of the sky and see at a glance all the digitized data available from the last few years and then analyze that imagery over time using the different data sets? Telescope time wouldn't just be used by the group requesting the time, but anyone who finds a use for the data. New discoveries could be pulled from old datasets all the time, and new telescope time could be more efficiently allocated only on those areas that haven't received any attention.

There are certainly a lot of scientific and technical challenges standing in the way of a project like this. But I think Google has some pretty smart guys. I hope they can take a crack at it.

By the way, apologies for the absence of posts, while I was moving to a new apartment

UK Astronomy Under Threat

My first project as a Ph.D. candidate was to analyze NGC 6940, a galactic cluster, for transit events. The cluster was observed from the Isaac Newton Group (ING) of telescopes at La Palma in the Canary Islands. It is a popular destination for British astronomers, because it was fairly easily accessible and the telescopes are British-funded.

Now, it seems that ING and several other UK astronomy projects are threatened by funding cuts. It is a real shame, but I think American astronomers should follow this closely. However tight US scientists think their budgets are, it can be more difficult elsewhere. Brits don't even have the anti-science sentiment that can be found around the US. Instead, this reduction in resources is simply a budget crunch. The research councils, including the STFC, which funds astronomy, are funded by the UK government, and there simply isn't enough money to go around.

In the US, students have rightly complained that higher education costs have increased 5-8% annually, but when public funds don't keep pace with education and research, tuition costs (and to a much smaller extent, private fundraising) have to fill the gap. The UK education system has only recently allowed tuition fees, and those aren't even allowed in some places, so instead you have the situation where good science is shuttered, and projects are canceled.

What a shame.

A little bit of knowledge...or 21st century luddites

So, there is an article in the New York Times that discusses two men filing a lawsuit to stop CERN from operating the Large Hadron Collider:

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

It actually worries me a little bit that this was such a popular article in the New York Times. Dennis Overbye is an excellent science writer, in my opinion, but I do worry a little bit that people who read the article won't understand the infinitesimal possibilities of what Wagner and Sancho are suggesting. Journalists in general tend to give equal weight to opposing viewpoints (and in general I suppose that is sound journalistic principle), but in science journalism, it is often disingenuous to give equal weight to say, the flat earth society against 100% of geologists who can show that the earth is spherical.

As one reads the article, however, it is very clear that Wagner and Sancho are woefully unable to make a cogent argument against the collider. Wagner "studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law," while Sancho "describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory." I am not suggesting that I understand all the physics or possibilities of what could happen while operating the LHC, but I am comfortable suggesting that Wagner and Sancho certainly don't. They seem a bit like 21st century luddites, scared of the future.

My favorite line of the article is the concluding paragraph, which makes very clear what the reporter Mr. Overbye thinks of the lawsuit,

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”