State of the Student address

Hot ("lukewarm" to be fair) on the heels of Salvador's post follows another State of the Student address.

The second year of my Master's here at the astronomical institute began with intensive PhD application preparations, into the nitty-gritty of which I'd rather not go prior to finding out their effect. Suffice to say, I'm excitedly looking forward to what the future has in store.

At present, I'm working on numerical modeling of the structure of protoplanetary disks, supervised by professor Carsten Dominik and Dr Michiel Min. These disks, which consist mainly of gaseous hydrogen and of roughly one percent "dust" (complex molecules sticking together to form little grains) are found around many young stars. At left, we display an example of such a star[1], obscured by the dust in its disk, which we happen to see edge-on. Our Solar System would fit comfortably into the central region of this disk.

Over a surprisingly short time of a few to ten million years, protoplanetary disks give birth to planets - other solar systems! - and the remaining matter dissipates. Generally speaking, studying the formation and characteristics of planetary systems around all stars improves our understanding of our own origins, placing the Solar System and especially the Earth in their proper context, and furthermore is vital to contemplations of and searches for other life in the Universe.

(New readers might be interested in an earlier post concerning the state of our understanding of planet formation, and another one describing an exciting discovery of an Earth-like-but-not-quite planet around an other star.)

To round this off, a general and important lesson I've picked up during the past semester: the role of good programming and computational limitations in modulating the advancement of our understanding of the Universe is huge. Not only does one have to know one's Universe (i.e. observations) and one's physics, one also has to know one's programming languages, and to be really good and make the most of one's abilities, one has to understand the limitations of computing that technology places on one (and one's peers). It's all ones and zeros.

References:
[1] Hubble Space Telescope image of a protoplanetary disk in the Orion nebula, (c) NASA/ESA/STScI

With apologies to our readers

Yes, it's been quite a very long while since Mihkel or I posted here in our Amsterdam blog, and I'm sure I speak for us both when I take this opportunity to apologize to our readers (all three of them). Instead of explaining what's been keeping me so busy since May and just making this a "sorry for not posting, but so it goes" post, I thought I might as well actually give some information to my reader(s) about what I'm doing at the moment.

As far as work goes (and yes, I get to call it work instead of school: I'm receiving a monthly scholarship for this, which means some people, though possibly crazy people, think it's worth paying me to do what I do; so there you have it), these have been particularly exciting months. At the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) I've been working with Prof. Jeroen Groenendijk on a rather revolutionary approach to the meaning of natural language questions. 'Revolutionary', of course, doesn't entail 'correct', but that's beside the point. Right now, he and I (and everyone we've talked to about it) are very excited, and think it's a truly promising line of research. As soon as things start being published, I'll stop being so vague and actually post something in concrete about it. Besides questions, I've been reading on and thinking about alternative semantics, the quite heterogeneous set of semantic theories that argue that natural language disjunction (the operator or in a sentence like "John or Mary have the tickets" and, more interesting, "Julia may be in Paris or in London") cannot be analyzed as the Boolean join operator, as classical semantics would have it and has indeed had it. Again, I may post something more on that subject in the near future, naturally in very light doses, so as to not cause indigestion. The tricky thing in talking about one's research is presenting it in simple enough terms that it becomes understandable, but not in such a trivial way that it comes out as something utterly uninteresting. Some other day, in any event.

Other than that (and overlooking, for today, my academic excursions to the realms of natural language syntax and, believe it or not, phonology), I'm working on my PhD applications. 'Tis a sinuous path, I know, but one very many fine people have taken before me, and are taking at the same time as I am, and will take in the years to come.

Since there's no such thing as a GRE Subject Exam for linguistics, PhD applications in this field consist essentially of a writing sample, which is what I'm working on. In actuality, I'm working on a number of writing samples, in different fields of linguistics, and then I suppose I'll choose one or two to send in. Maybe I'll just send them all, I don't know yet. As for which universities I'm applying to, it's probably wiser for me to only disclose that information after this academic year's PhD applications saison is over. I can however say that I'll be applying to some six linguistics programs in the US and to Amsterdam.

As a matter of fact, Mihkel is of course also applying to a number of schools this year, though on terms somewhat different from mine. But that's for him to write about (and I certainly hope he will).


Hopefully, this text will prove to be an efficacious icebreaker. If so, and counting on the pages of inspirational writing Mihkel still has to offer, I can already predict that, in a few weeks, Masters in Amsterdam will take its rightful place amongst the most influential blogs in the world.

Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting

Many bloggers report on peer-reviewed scientific research. Now, a contest has been opened for an icon to identify these types of posts on your blog. Click down to Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting (BPR3) to find out more and participate in the discussion.

Midsummer Report

We apologize for the lack of posts this summer. Salvador has retreated to his native land of Portugal, where he is busy making port wine and sailing on expeditions to find as yet uncharted trade routes to India, which is apparently what all Portugese do. Under the gray clouds above Estonia, I am hunting seals and ploughing fields near the local fort - when I'm not singing, that is, which is apparently what all Estonians do.

Free Will

PZ Myers of the Pharyngula blog pointed out this story of a 19-year old preacher-to-be microwaving his 2-month old daughter. The mother of the child claims Satan compelled her husband to microwave the child. Looks like this case is too extreme for anyone to take her claim seriously (unless taken as pleading insanity), but still illustrates the issue of avoiding responsibility by appealing to religious concepts.

The claim of being under the influence of Satan or God when committing certain acts is puzzling to me and perhaps readers can help clear this up a bit: as I've come to understand, most Christians believe God gave them free will so they could choose to live out their lives whichever way they saw best. If this were to really work "objectively" from God's point of view, neither God or Satan could interfere by definition with the decisions of men. If Satan had such unrestrained power to make people cause harm to other people, where would that leave free will? Does it have an "on/off" button?

The concept of free will itself is also certainly open for discussion. I don't think we understand the Universe, especially the part between our ears, sufficiently yet to say what's going on with free will, but it seems very likely it will at some point be explained as part of the way the brain represents its actions to itself - at least that's the way it seems to an astrophysics student trying to keep up to date with neuroscience news. Incidentally, Science Magazine recently reviewed "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter - a new book exploring the nature of consciousness, a phenomenon fundamentally related to free will. It seems a promising read.

The Silicon Soldiers

The Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, Estonia is a Soviet memorial for those who perished in the Second World War. For most Russians, it is a symbol of victory over Nazi Germany. Soviet-era history associated this victory with the "liberation" of many areas that were, in fact, occupied - Estonian officials facing an attack by a Red Army force 100000 strong in 1940 had no choice but to accept a Soviet ultimatum. After a sneak-attack on the Soviet Union, Germany took Estonia in 1941 and it was re-occupied by the Soviets in 1944. This last event was taught in the USSR as "liberation", but carries a negative meaning for Estonians who perceive it as going from the jaws of one wolf to another.

In 1941 and 1949 tens of thousands of Estonians were deported overnight to Siberia, where many of them perished, and 75000 were repressed in the Red Terror campaign from 1945 to 1959. During the same period, nearly two hundred thousand mostly Russian-speaking immigrants changed the demographics of a 800000-member nation that in 1945 had still consisted of 97% Estonians. The Soviet occupation, with widespread censorship and propaganda, lasted until 1991 when Estonia regained independence. However, a dichotomy remained between the Estonian and Russian communities in the country. Many Russians apparently still believe Estonia voluntarily joined the Soviet Union and thus do not understand why war veterans waving Soviet flags in the center of our capital could be taken as a disrespectful and offensive sign.

The Bronze Soldier, incidentally, was the site of such flag-wavings. It was and is also the site of many a decent show of respect, to be sure. Tensions around the statue, featuring mostly Estonian and Russian radicals, had escalated considerably in the past two years and the vast majority of Estonians were of the opinion that the statue should be removed, which is exactly what the government recently did in response to a mass looting of the city center by hundreds of Russian vandals protesting archaeological digs at the memorial site. Originally, plans called for moving the statue only after the thorough archaeological studies. The Soldier was taken to a military cemetery (see photo at top by Rasmus Puksmann) with honorable reburial of the twelve people found under it expected to follow. Russians who wish to honor the Soviet victory in World War II can still do so with full respect and Soviet Union symbols are seen in the center of our capital no more.

This however, is not the end of the story. Among other things, a six-day blockade of our embassy in Moscow ensued, carried out by pro-Kremlin youth activists who claim Estonians are fascists. A Russian delegation to Estonia recommended our government step down and export of many of our goods to Russia was boycotted. Perhaps the most significant response has been a three-week long cyber war waged against Estonian government, news agency and bank servers. As a result, many of the mentioned online services have been inaccessible from abroad in recent days. The Bronze Soldier is now giving center stage to the Silicon Soldiers, whose on-line attacks have attracted considerable attention from NATO.

Endnote: Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, please be advised the current post is a minimal outline. With help from friends, I've been working on a post on the Bronze Soldier issue that will give a fuller overview of all the relevant details and viewpoints. Comments are welcome.

Addendum: while writing the above, I was not aware that the term Silicon Soldiers had already been used in various contexts, e.g. in an article entitled "Bush and the Silicon Soldiers" at the New America Foundation. Original memes are impossible to coin these days...

References:
The Bronze Soldier of Tallinn - Wikipedia, a rather detailed description of the monument and recent controversy
"Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia", The Guardian, 2007.05.17

Unsung Heroes of Scientific Progress

Science - the uncannily successful process of constructing a working model of the Universe. It takes comparatively little food and money to sustain a working scientist, however these alone will not guarantee success - which brings us to the unsung heroic liquids of scientific progress:

Liquid nitrogen and coffee.

Most scientists never consider the extent to which modern science relies on the above duo. Enter any modern laboratory, no matter what field, and in the far corner you will spot the familiar silvery cylinder, inconspicuously puffing out vapor. Liquid nitrogen cools telescope cameras, freezes cells and samples, keeps your superconductor superconductive and helps in countless other ways. Coffee containers are also easy to spot, being stored on every floor of an institute, often even in hallways for easy access. This is crucial, as a scientist past the 4-hour half-life of consumed caffeine in the body will be utterly incapable of systematic work, even as crucial as handling liquid nitrogen dewars.

As a side note, the illustration[1] at left clearly shows that caffeine-drugged spiders, as opposed to their "clean" friends, are quite horrible at making neatly organized webs. One is left to wonder why it works the other way with scientists...

oh, wait... perhaps it doesn...

But let's not go there. I'm sure depriving the world's scientists of coffee with the excuse of finding out if a completely harmonious new global scientific paradigm will emerge would lead to disaster anyhow: simply delay the pizzas for an institute lunch by ten minutes to see why.


A few fundamentals:

• Storage: dewars for liquid nitrogen; jugs for coffee
• Optimal temperature: 77 kelvin for nitrogen going into equipment; 330 kelvin for coffee going into a scientist (theoreticians often accept 300 kelvin coffee and record-holding theoreticians can even survive coffee at room temperature)
• Swirls of steam emanating from the liquid are a healthy sign for both substances
  
• Prices: starting at €10 per liter of liquid nitrogen or kilogram of decent coffee, cheaper in bulk

Behind every great man, there is a woman. And behind every great scientist, there is a dewar.

References:
[1] Image from Wikipedia entry on caffeine. (c) NASA

Majestic relative of Earth found

The discovery of the most Earth-like planet found to date outside the Solar System was announced today[1]. At least five times the mass and 1.5 times the diameter of our home planet, the discovered exoplanet takes 13 days to complete a year around its mother star - the red dwarf Gliese 581. Most notably, however, the temperature of this planet is predicted to be in the range 0...40 degrees Celsius, opening up the possibility of there being liquid water on it!

Most of the more than 200 planets found so far around stars other than the Sun have had more in common with the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus) than the rocky, or Earth-like planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) of the Solar System. However, the hunt for other Earths is on and today's announcement certainly marks the most significant discovery so far on that quest, showing for a fact that planets quite similar to ours exist around other normal stars.

Red dwarfs, with masses and temperatures around and below half that of the Sun, are the most abundant type of stars in the Universe and most of the 150 billion or so stars in our Galaxy fall into this category. They radiate less energy than the Sun, which is why the newly discovered planet potentially has conditions similar to Earth even though it's eleven times closer to its mother star than the Earth-Sun distance. Most importantly, however - Gliese 581, at a distance of 20.5 light-years, is one of the closest neighbors of the Sun (the closest is Alpha Centauri at 4.4 light-years and the diameter of the Galaxy is ~100000 light-years). This goes to show how difficult it is to discover exoplanets around even the nearest stars, but also implies that red dwarfs further away from us are likely to harbor planets as well. And there are many, many red dwarfs out there.

As for this particular planet, it is not known yet whether it's tidally locked (always keeping the same side to its parent star, exactly like the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth and always keeps the same side visible to us), which is quite possible for a planet so close to its star and would have unknown consequences for its climate and habitability. Nothing certain is known about the atmosphere, if any, of this planet, nor the composition - but observational astronomers and engineers will be working hard to get at that information in the coming years - years, which will undoubtedly reveal a plethora of new planets to study and send our imaginations running wild.

PS. Wow! :)

References:
[1] "Astronomers Find First Earth-Like Planet in Habitable Zone", ESO Press Release, 2007.04.25

Did someone mention creationism?

Sweeping Statements, Simple Science

Update: paragraph 3 was clarified on 2007.04.27

Quite often scientists forget or ignore the fact that, being raised and fed by the rest of society, they can expect the public to remain supportive and understanding of their pursuits only if the scientists themselves make an effort to introduce their results and, on a more general level, explain how science works. This can not be done with fancy words and sweeping statements - an explanation proper has to be very carefully thought through and worded. I trust this line of thought is not new to our readers.

Scott Tremaine, the Princeton specialist on stellar and planetary dynamics, recently held a neat general-audience lecture in Leiden, in which he expressed his frustration at being quoted on a young-Earth creationist website in favor of the rubbish[1] presented on the site. Specifically, as an authority on planetary systems, he was quoted there as saying "most every prediction by theorists about planetary formation has been wrong"[2].

As Dr. Tremaine stated in Leiden, his quote sounds overly pessimistic of planet formation theory if taken out of context. One does not need a Masters degree in astrophysics to point out that while

• "planet formation is so complex that although a large number of participating subprocesses are understood very well, a fully self-consistent model of the entire process is currently out of reach" (this was kindly suggested by Dr Carsten Dominik as a more precise way of expressing the point, in the original post I put my foot in my mouth with "planet formation is messy and not easily analytically describable")
• the planetary systems so far found around other stars have turned many prior ideas of the birth and nature of these objects upside down,
  

there were and are general correct ideas about the planet-building process, e.g. that planets are born in disks of gas and dust around young stars. Also, the basic physics that governs collisions of dust grains - the building blocks of planets - has not changed, although the models that use it have. The main point: that such self-evident truths about planet formation did not fall under Dr. Tremaine's statement would have been obvious to a specialist. However, it was not presented to a closed circle of specialists at a meeting, but in Science Magazine for everyone to read.

This is a difficult situation. Should well-known scientists really watch their every word when engaging in communication with the public? Coming from someone as inexperienced as yours truly, this might sound naive, but I do believe they should do just that - enforce strict self-discipline in their choice of words, especially when simplifying situations or using analogies. Of course, everyone else - including students - should try their best to do the same.

Creationists and others who go about nibbling on the facade of science by way of ad hominem attacks and picking out carelessly worded thoughts from popular science texts, without entering the building to see what the facade attaches to, are all too happy to jump at phrases like "nobody knows what this is" - incidentally, the latter basic thought was caught in two public astronomy lectures by prominent scientists recently[3], in both cases a good alternative comment would have been "nobody knows what this is yet, but people are working on it and the pieces are falling into place, I'll give you the references if you're interested".

Certainly an explanation geared towards a general audience should be simple, and naturally time is always in short supply for a public lecturer. "Simple", however, does still not mean "as few words as possible".

Footnotes:
[1] Dr. Tremaine was not so explicit in voicing his judgment. Discussion on this classification of young-Earth creationist claims is welcome.
[2] See original quote in Science Magazine, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/295/5555/604b.pdf
[3] The talks: Oort Lecture in Leiden, 2007.04.18, by Dr. Scott Tremaine; Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture, 2007.02.28, by Dr. Bruce Margon. The latter is available on iTunes as a podcast.

More than just poor style

“Weekly” is an English language paper with news of cultural and social activities in Amsterdam. This week’s “Weekly” has the following two-liner under the section “Festivals”, on page 22:

Poolse filmlente. A week-long festival of recent films from Poland, one of the more controversial new entries to the EU.

Granted, this is a free newsletter, possibly not written by professional journalists, but the political reference is more than just poor style, or even bad journalism, it’s downright offensive. The “controversy” around Poland’s joining the EU, even if it’s a fact, has nothing to do with announcing a film festival, and therefore I have to infer that either (1) whoever wrote this has a position regarding the controversy, and felt like surreptitiously stating it, or (2) the writer doesn’t really have a position, but thought the sentence looked too short and thus added a random parenthesis. Either way, it’s an irresponsible act. For, whether the writer likes it, doesn’t, or doesn’t have an opinion on it, Poland is indeed part of the EU, and by taking a position or even merely acknowledging an issue, out of a proper context that explains it, the writer is being disrespectful of the Polish people and, just as grave, of the ideology that’s behind the EU.

Naturally, I don’t mean to imply that disagreeing with particular EU entries and with countries’ internal policies or social and political situation is off-limits; in fact, I will very likely discuss here, sometime in the future, the problems and threats I see in the general political direction that some European countries seem to be taking. The point I’m making is that the absolute lack of context, discussion and motivation for this kind of statement turns what would potentially give rise to intelligent discussion into an offensive, random comment.

A final remark: someone told me I was overreacting, the statement wasn’t meant to offend, and “Weekly” is hardly a newspaper people would read to find intelligent information about current issues. This line of argumentation is, I think, very naïve. The kind of xenophobic rhetoric that a few years ago would have aroused the indignation of the whole society is now slowly beginning to be tolerated, and, though I’m willing to grant that there was no intended malice in the sentence quoted, I do think it’s everyone’s obligation to make sure they’re not feeding the monster. “Weekly” may well be just a cultural newsletter, but that doesn’t excuse it from the obligation to be responsible.

Masters in Amsterdam

This entry unleashes “Masters in Amsterdam”, by Mihkel Kama and Salvador Mascarenhas. In this age of random information, we’ll do our best to channel here and comment on bits that earn our attention and test our competences. We will address topics related to our respective research areas, as well as issues in science, society, politics and culture.

At the moment, we are Master’s students at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands — Salvador at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, and Mihkel at the Anton Pannekoek Institute of Astrophysics. We are citizens of the glorious republics of Portugal and Estonia, respectively, facts that may every now and then play a role in the topics we address.

We encourage everyone to share their thoughts in the comments section, kindly requesting that comments to a given post conform to its spirit and style. Relevant additions and corrections to our posts are of course more than appreciated.

It may well happen that our thoughts turn out to be so dull as to disappoint our readers and embarrass our friends, but at least rest assured we will never post pictures of our cats or publish essays on the meaninglessness of life.

Mihkel and Salvador