Queen Mary 2 astronomy lectures

I am all aboard Queen Mary 2 October 19 - October 25 2010 as Royal Astronomical Society guest lecturer on astronomy for Cunard's enrichment programme

Stephen Hawking, God, philosophy,science and religion

My Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking is front page news with his comment that the originof the universe does not require a supernatural creator. This is all part of a marketing push by the publisher of his latest book,and follows a trend set by Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, and Pierre-Simon Laplace (Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.' "I had no need of that hypothesis.")

But has Stephen said anything new? I have not read the book, but the news coverage fails to mention that the anthropic principle, for example, was first put forward by one of Hawking's Cambridge colleagues about 30 years ago. There's nothing remotely new in the observation that the grand total energy content of the universe can be zero. In the late 1920s the Cambridge astrophysicist Eddington had a model in which a primeval atom is static and unchanging for eons until suddenly bursting into life explosively. So the application of quantum ideas to cosmology has along and respectable history.

I'm curious about Stephen's attack on philosophers. Perhaps modern philosophers have become too introverted for his taste. Cosmology was started 2500 years ago by philosopher-geometers who broke away from the magical philosophy of Egypt and Mesopotamia

You can read my take on the recent history of cosmology at Cambridge in my biography of Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who rjected the Big Bang. http://bit.ly/6rvVr

There's a .ppt slide show on Hoyle on this site: http://bit.ly.TOTast

Panspermia in the International Journal of Astrobiology

Folks we have a hot paper! Panspermia, comets, Chandra Wickramasinghe (Cardiff)

It is in the news

panspermia is big news

Bizarre paper submitted to International Journal Astrobiology

Having spent most of my career as an editor of books and journals on astronomy, I get my fair share of nutty proposals. Six weeks ago I had a book proposal explaining the expansion of the universe as being due to misinterpreting redshifts as Doppler shifts rather than "tired light". But today I received the ultimate nutty paper for the International Journal of Astrobiology. It was all about a meteorite that contained fossilised blood vessels. I am not making this up: fossil blood vessels in a meteorite. A mere glance at the photographs confirmed that the object in question was slag. So another paper for my growing rejection pile!

Galileo and the language of science

Galileo's observing notes for 1610 begin in Italian. Clearly he is writing little memos for his own interest. He discovered the moons of Jupiter on 7 January 1610 he switched to Latin after 12 January. Latin of course was the language used by all savants, natural philosophers, and mathematicians until the end of the 18th century. Copernicus, Mewton, and Descartes wrote in Latin in order to reach an international audience. Galileo wrote books in Italian and Latin. For example, the famous Dialogue of the Two World systems, published in 1632, and which directly led to his trial in 1633, was Italian because he wished to reach a wide lay audience in his home country. The Starry Message (Sidereus Nuncius) published in 1610 is in Latin because it contained revolutionary ideas, and he wanted to reach an international readership of natural philosophers. In terms of the history of science communication, Galileo is remarkable because he writes popular stuff in Italian and serious stuff in Latin

For a modern take on communicating the new astronomy to a variety of audiences see http://bit.ly/TOTast

Interested in Sidereus Nuncius? Buy it here

Galileo has observed Jupiter's moons for two weeks

400 years ago tonight marks the first two weeks of Galileo's observations of Jupiter's four moons. By now he has seen the moons play hide and seek many times -- going into and emerging from eclipse by the giant planet Jupiter. He is absolutely convinced that the moons are part of Jupiter's system. However, in his observing notes he is not yet speculating about what his observations indicate. He's demonstrating great restraint. His notes show excellent observation of the application of the scientific method: observe, acquire data of the highest quality, write it all down

My website for Total Astronomy media services

Galileo sees all four again

15 January 1610. Galileo can't wait for evening twilight. He was clouded out last night, but tonight, three hours after sunset, he points his spyglass at Jupiter once again and sees all four of the companions, all to the west of Jupiter. Four hours later ('the seventh hour', after midnight) the visible companions are three in number. He stays up another hour and spies two of the companions in conjunction

I keep having toremind myself that the diagrawms in Sidereus Nuncius are the telescope view, which is inverted -- east is right and west is left in Galileo's thumbnails

bit.ly.TOTast