• Cutting Advanced Fellowships in the UK

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    Right now, the UK’s astronomy and nuclear/particle physics research council, STFC, is supposedly undergoing a series of “consultations” with the community to try to figure out exactly which of the many possible big-ticket items (telescopes, satellites, particle detectors, etc.) the community wants to pursue. In the meantime, however, things are proceeding in their usual autocratic…

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  • Big Questions — The Fate of the Universe

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    As part of Imperial College Astrophysics’ ongoing series “The Big Questions”, I’ll be in discussion with Subir Sarkar of Oxford here at Imperial on Tuesday, 21 July 2009. We’ll be debating the fate of the Universe, and, more specifically, the existence or otherwise of Dark Energy, which appears to be causing the Universe to accelerate…

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  • Going Underground

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    In further London-based excitement, I was forced into something that most Londoners never get the chance to do: walking in a Tube tunnel. I was taking the Picadilly Line train down to Kings Cross, and, just after leaving the Caledonian Road station, the lights in the car dimmed and the train stopped — nothing particularly…

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  • Pride and Science

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    Central London featured two important events this past weekend. First was the annual Gay Pride Parade, a riotous and joyful procession of rainbow flags, pink clothing, and (mostly) ill-fitting dresses on very large people. Sadly, the only thing that marred the good-natured, family-friendly event were the stupid protesters. But it was wonderful to see that…

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  • Physics for Fiction

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    I spent a few hours last week with a bunch of science fiction writers, giving them a tutorial on modern cosmology as part of the (first) “Physics for Fiction” workshop organized by my Imperial Astrophysics Colleague Dave Clements. The participants were some very big names in modern Science Fiction, and some hot up-and-coming writers, including…

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  • Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown

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    The summertime British music scene is taken over by a series of festivals up and down the country; the biggest and most famous is Glastonbury, but the same weekend London’s Hyde Park holds the somewhat scaled-down (no sleeping over in tents) “Hard Rock Calling“. I arrived too late for the Pretenders, whom I had last…

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  • Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown

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    The annual Meltdown festival took over London’s South Bank Centre this week. I saw Yo La Tengo‘s rock ’n’ roll Q&A, and unfortunately missed a performance by David Murray, one of my favorite saxaphonists. But the highlight was curator Ornette Coleman himself, in an evening dedicated to his “Shape of Jazz to Come”, the record…

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  • Another launch

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    Not all CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) experiments get launched on a rocket. There’s a long history of telescopes flown from balloons — huge mylar balloons floating over 100,000 feet in the air. MAXIMA and BOOMERaNG, the first experiments to map out the microwave sky on the sub-degree scales containing information about the detailed physical conditions…

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  • Exam nightmares

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    The students in my cosmology course had their exam last week. There’s no doubt that they found the course tough this year — it was my first time teaching it, and I departed pretty significantly from the previous syllabus. Classically, cosmology was the study of the overall “world model” — the few parameters that describe…

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  • In the Sky (at Night)

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    Despite my almost eight years in Britain as an astronomer, I suppose I have to be embarrassed to admit I’ve never actually watched “The Sky At Night“, apparently the longest-running show on television (possibly in the whole world, not just the UK). But I’m watching this evening’s episode, mostly because I’m on it. I was…

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