All posts by Tim Jones

Science communicator who researches, strategises, writes, markets, in an atheistic, artistic, married, enthusiastic way....
Art, conservation, education, events, Museums, Philosophy of Science, sciart, science communication

Science and Art at the Getty

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It’s turning into quite an artsy fortnight.  On Thursday, I went to see Getty CEO Jim Wood interviewed at Caltech, then a visit with dinner at the Getty Center itself on Saturday night, before on Monday taking my chances with the holiday crowds at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).  Between times I’ve been viewing some wonderful examples of Arts & Crafts era houses in Pasadena, and learning about the origins of Californian en plein air outdoor painting.  A few notes on the Caltech event…..

Getty Museum
The Getty Center, Los Angeles (Photo:Tim Jones)

‘Science and Art’ featured J.Paul Getty Trust President and CEO Jim Wood talking with broadcaster Madeleine Brand.

Despite the wide-open title, the conversation focused on the Getty’s expertise in artifact conservation, and an upcoming series of region-wide exhibitions intended to show how post-WWII Californian art was influenced by the science and technology of the period.

Wood began by describing the full extent of the Getty’s capabilities beyond the public face of the Museum, and how its scientists have developed conservation techniques that are deployed on  conservation projects around the world. These range from the restoration of flood-damaged panels in Florence to the recovery of poorly preserved mosaics in Damascus.

The upcoming exhibition series will feature artists from Los Angeles, and cover the 1945-1980 period of rapid industrial development and space exploration.   Californian artists in particular stayed close to technological developments at this time, and incorporated emerging new materials and techniques into their art.  The period is coincident with the Cold War, so it will be interesting to watch for any cultural references in that direction (I’m thinking of the type of arts exhibits from the USA featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Cold War Modern exhibition last year).

The Q&A kicked off refreshingly backwards with Jim Wood suggesting it’s important to understand the differences between art and science.  He takes the view that science deals with progress – it moves towards a goal; but art – while evolving, doesn’t do that; it’s less about facts than ideas.  All in all though, despite Wood’s best efforts, these forays into more philosophical territory didn’t really get picked up on by the interviewer or the audience; something of a missed opportunity I felt.

Getty Center Restaurant
Getty Center Restaurant (Photo:Tim Jones)

There was an interesting question to Wood on the role of art as a tool to explain difficult scientific concepts; had such art been produced, and should it be preserved?  Making a distinction between illustrative and creative art, Wood suggested scientifically illustrative works were likely to be valued; but more for their documentary than artistic qualities.  For me, the role of illustrative art is undeniable – look at the depictions of cosmological concepts in popular physics books.  The role for creative art in science communication is more ambiguous.  It can tell us about prevailing cultural attitudes towards science and technology – back to the Cold War again, consider those swirling atoms and mushroom cloud depictions of atomic power.   But it’s less obvious – to me at least – how an abstract artistic aesthetic might translate into, or inform, science.

Getty Center
Getty Center (Photo:Tim Jones)

Wood was asked how we decide when it is right to return an artifact fully to it’s original state – as the conservator’s toolkit gets ever more impressive?  It seems there are some difficult calls, but it’s more usual to conserve than restore.

That brought to mind a whole area of science-art interaction that the evening hadn’t touched upon: the use of technology for artifact simulation and display, whereby an original piece is presented next to a simulation of how the item would have originally appeared.  I’m thinking here of Roman and Greek statues in their original livery, the brightly painted interiors of Catholic cathedrals, and projection techniques that bring faded tapestries – however temporarily – back to life.  I digress; but for more on the topic, here’s a nice piece on statuary,  ‘Gods in Color’, from the Boston Globe.

Anyway, that was a very brief update on my brush with science and art at Caltech and the Getty.

Incidentally, one important feature of the Getty Center that Wood didn’t mention is its restaurant, commendable as much for its location as the food. Perched high overlooking the Los Angeles  basin towards the ocean, the views are an inspiration to artist and scientist alike.

animals, Book reviews, Books

Book Review: Second Nature – The Inner Lives of Animals by Jonathan Balcolme

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Book review: (Link to Amazon.co.uk) Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Author: Jonathan Balcombe

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Language English
ISBN-10: 0230613624
ISBN-13: 978-0230613621

I remember as a child eating meat products with names like ‘jellied veal’, ‘liver-sausage’, ‘corned beef’, ‘hazlet’, ‘ox-tail soup’ and ‘tongue’.  They were just labels at the time, for things I put in my mouth.  Only much later would I associate them with animals.

Now, reading Jonathan Balcombe’s new book ‘Second Nature – The Inner Lives of Animals’ I’m asking myself why it took so long to make that rather obvious connection.  In fact, it’s got me thinking about a whole host of issues related to how we as a species perceive and treat other animals – nonhuman beings as Balcombe prefers to call them.   For the issues Second Nature addresses have as much to do with human morality and ethics as they do with animal behaviour.

Balcombe wants to open our eyes to the possibility of accepting animals as fellow sentient beings, with feelings and emotions as real to them as ours are to us; beings with lives that are pleasurable and worth living for their own sake; lives worthy of  sensitivity and respect.  As Balcombe puts it: “My chief aim in this book is to close the gap between human beings and animals – by helping us understand the animal experience, and by elevating animals from their lowly status.”

He begins by setting out the evidence for animal sentience, emotion and feeling, then discusses the implications this has for human attitudes and actions.

Part I summarises the findings of numerous field and laboratory studies that demonstrate a range of animal capabilities, experiences and sensitivities we usually associate more with people.  Part II is a description of how animals use these qualities to interact and communicate between themselves and with other species, including man.  Part III focuses on the relationship between humans and animals, and includes a discussion on popular perceptions and how they are changing with what Balcombe sees as an emerging new paradigm in attitudes and awareness.

Central to Balcombe’s plea is the assertion that humans and animals differ in degree rather than kind.  Each type of animal, Balcombe says, including man, has evolved to operate in its own world, or ‘umwelt’, equipped with an appropriate package of sensory experience and feelings suited to that world.  We shouldn’t assume life experience in one umwelt is inherently superior to that in another.   Humans can never directly experience another animal’s umwelt (who can say what personal echo-location or magnetic navigation feels like? – to use Balcombe’s examples) but we accept that animals have complex sensory capabilities.  Which begs the question why, when emotions and feelings are at least as real and necessary to us as senses in explaining our lives and behaviours, would we deny them in animals?   Second Nature is certainly thought provoking on these questions.

Many readers will I expect, from watching natural history on TV or casual reading, recognise something of the better known case studies about Washoe the chimp, grieving elephants, and intelligent ravens.  That said, the number and diversity of cited studies is impressive, and most of the content is new to me.

Take Kelly the dolphin for example, who was taught to trade paper litter found in her pool for fish, but discovered the fish flow could be maximised by trading smaller pieces of paper torn from a larger sheet she had stashed away at the bottom of the pool.  And tests for empathy, where increased stress reactions were measured in animals who witnessed the suffering of another animal – not necessarily of the same species.

Consciousness is a key theme in Second Nature, with Balcombe describing how chimpanzees have demonstrated a ‘theory of mind’ by showing they are consciously aware of consciousness in other chimps.

Other studies support the proposition that animals, elephants for example, follow individual lives that are the product of their unique experience.  And that animals, like us, deal with feelings over the short and long term; they remember experiences, their memories shaping what they become.  There are even indications that elephants have a sense of the future and their own mortality.   Further examples illustrate conditions ranging from depression in starlings, to post traumatic stress disorder in elephants, to anxiety in mice – including their remarkable ability to self-medicate.

Exploring the relevance of instinct, intelligence and language, Balcombe rejects simplistic models that associate  instinct with animals and intelligence with humans.  Instinct does not preclude conscious experience, and intelligence is not a good measure for moral standing.  As Balcombe puts it: “Animals are as intelligent as they need to be”.   The evidence shows that many animals, far from following some kind of invariant program, are capable of learned behaviour and can adapt flexibly to new challenges.   And as regards language, as it’s not linked to sensory activity, animals are able to suffer with or without it.

Balcombe closes the animal-human gap from both directions, elevating our opinion of animal capabilities while questioning the superiority of our own.  We are reminded that animal senses and capabilities – physical, and on occasion mental – can be superior to ours.  Balcombe points to our penchant for industrial scale cruelty and destruction, questioning our right to label other species as uncivilized.  Our culture, Balcombe says, particularly through the media, overplays the negative aspects of animals’ lives, pushing the ‘red in tooth in and claw’ image of a natural world where animals permanently struggle at the edge of survival, flailing at the smallest injury.

Part III sees Balcolme getting into his narrative stride, explaining where he thinks our relationship with animals might be heading.  Under the heading ‘A New Humanity’ he describes a shift from a traditional attitude of ‘might makes right’ towards a more informed and caring paradigm – a transition he likens to the changes of mind-set that accompanied the end of slavery and the winning of womens’ rights.  The process has already started, with impacts most tangibly captured in animal related legislation for the protection of species, improvements in the treatment of animals we eat, and tighter controls on laboratory animal experimentation.

Interestingly, with Second Nature appealing mostly to our moral sense, Part III includes some purely practical, well stated, arguments for reduced meat consumption based on health, resource conservation and sustainability.  This leads to a brief politico-economic discussion on the compatibility of the capitalist/growth model with sustainable environments; inflammatory territory which Balcombe handles with a welcome non-emotive sense of balance.

The somewhat uneasy relationship science seems to have with the idea of animal feelings is one I find interesting in it’s own right.  Balcolme, a scientist himself, criticises science’s tendency to favour the simplest of plausible theories.  It’s one reason, he says, why we have the dogmatic starting assumption that animals don’t have thoughts and feelings, rather than the other way around.  Conversely, Second Nature and other works on a connected theme (Masson’s and McCarthy’s ‘When Elephants Weep’ comes to mind) are particularly open to criticism when authors use language outside the scientific lexicon.   There may be concensus on what sentience means, consciousness less so; but what to make of words like goodness, compassion, and selflessness?  Personally, I don’t have a problem with Balcombe’s style because I don’t see the issues being wholly resolvable with today’s science; we’d need a workable scientific model of moral behaviour for that.  A scientific proof isn’t going to pop up and tell us to treat animals better, no matter how many books we read.  However, and I suspect this is where Balcombe is coming from, I do think science is the best tool for revealing true animal states that might then be judged logically incompatible with, or at least challenge, established moral and ethical standards.  Of course, how established those standards ever are is a discussion for another day.

On a critical note, and it’s probably the scientist in me kicking up, there were times when I wanted more detail from the case studies, more counter-argument, and deeper discussion of skeptical views.  That the early chapters are crammed with properly referenced case studies is a good thing but, in a work of this length, that means trade-offs in content.  The shear volume of examples also gives the early chapters something of a ‘listy’ feel, although that corrects in the later, more analytical material.   Also, I thought the singling out of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett for criticism was unnecessary and unhelpful, particularly so when Dawkins has discussed the positive implications for animal rights that discovery (or creation) of a hypothetical man-ape hybrid would have.  Examples of the darker side of nature, like the apparently cruel egg-laying behaviour of parasitic wasps, are perhaps over-quoted by the atheist camp, but only as arguments against the existence of a benevolent god, not a celebration.  Moreover, Balcombe might want to keep the secularists on his team.

Despite these minor niggles, I have to confess Second Nature has caused me to think more deeply than I otherwise would about a topic I’d mentally parked.  Commendably, it brings all the relevant issues up to date in one concise volume, and has plenty of references for those who want to dig deeper.

Will Second Nature change readers’ attitudes towards animals?  I think in some cases it will.  What it won’t do is resolve any consequential moral dilemma we might have around that next burger purchase.  That’s something each of us must think about quietly on our own.

Related posts on Zoonomian that may be of interest

Interview with Alan Mootnick, Director of Gibbon Conservation Center, Santa Clarita, CA

The Open Ground. Conference podcast.  Conservation, biodiversity)

Also of interest on other blogs

Carl Zimmer on ‘What it’s like to be a bat’ (Discovery Blog Sept 2010)


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Defiant Lime

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Some trees don’t know when to lie down and die.

lime tree without branches
Lime tree; sans branches

Like this lime tree I snapped today.    More of a trunk than a tree really.   How may species do you know where you can chop off its arms and legs, take out its insides, and it still hangs in there?    O.k., so no actual limes…yet.

Did you hear the story of the old empty lime tree?
There was nothin' in it....
Archaeology, Chemistry, History, Nostalgia

Of Blitz and Bomb Shelters

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Watching the last episode of Tony Robinson’s ‘Blitz Street’ on Channel 4 this week has prompted a few thoughts and surprising memories.

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Children made homeless in the London Blitz (Wikimedia Commons)

The four-part series revisited the intensive ‘Blitz’ bombing of Britain during the Second World War by recreating a wartime street and subjecting it to progressively larger explosions, simulating the range of bombs and missiles delivered by the Nazis.  The real Blitz bombing was focused on London, but also other cities including: Liverpool, Hull, Coventry, and the city where I was later raised – Leicester.

The show was framed as a serious science experiment that would, as well as being entertaining, generate new data for historians.  To that end, the houses were wired with pressure sensors to measure the intensity of the blasts, and the associated destruction was captured with high speed photography.

For example, readings taken inside a recreated domestic Anderson Shelter, constructed from corrugated steel and earth, revealed how under certain bombing conditions the pressure wave would be sufficient to kill the occupants, consistent with contemporary reports of whole families being found externally unscathed but dead from internal injuries.   Under other conditions, the test explosions suggested that simply hiding under the stairs had offered adequate protection.

Amazingly, a bottle of milk parked outside one of the houses survived the entire simulated campaign, ranging from the explosion of a 50kg High Explosive (HE) bomb, right through to a simulated V2 rocket impact.

Well, what can you say?  Great television.  And that surviving bottle of milk was a gift to the producers.  For sure, some will criticise various points of historic content and scientific accuracy.  Viewers have commented on the under-representation of Hull as the second most bombed city after London; and I was bemused at the placement of the V2 simulated charge behind an earth bank that seemed to guarantee it wouldn’t totally obliterate the set.  Others might find the whole thing an unnecessary waste of building materials and explosives.

However the popular verdict washes out, I thought the show’s mix of social history with science and technology successfully outweighed any failings.  Here we saw one of the more negative applications of science and technology in context: Science Communication, right?  But more so, a graphic raising of awareness that war isn’t just something that happens to others on CNN.

Beyond the politically incorrect schoolboy/girl appeal of blowing things up, Blitz Street got me digging deeper into the science behind the show, looking out my old university notes on flow simulation, super-sonic pressure wave propagation and nozzle design (re the V2).

On a completely different tack, the show reminded me of the many happy (formative?) hours I’d spent as a teenager inside an air-raid shelter.

How come?  I may be old enough to have benefited from real chemistry sets and the relaxed authority that accommodated them, but I certainly wasn’t around in the Second World War. I did however grow up assuming everyone had a WWII surface air-raid shelter in their back garden, like this one at my parents home in Leicester.

air-raid shelter
Second World War surface air-raid shelter

I’ve always known this cube, with its 14 inch thick brick walls and reinforced concrete ceiling as simply ‘The Shelter’.

air-raid shelter
Walls are about 14" thick

When the family moved here in the seventies, the interior was still in immediate post-war condition, including wooden bunk supports for two, maybe four max, persons.  To protect from lime, the concrete ceiling had been lined with fascinating newspapers of the period, discovered when I converted The Shelter to a photographic darkroom, re-papering it with pages from Amateur Photographer Magazine.

At the age of twelve or so, The Shelter became my first chemistry laboratory.  Minimal ventilation via perforated bricks at the top of each thick wall meant that reactions that were exothermic or likely to generate noxious gases were relegated to the annexed greenhouse.  For example, anything where chlorine or oxides of nitrogen were produced, or compounds were combined with acids or oxidants; and anything involving organic compounds.  All these were better suited to the fume-cupboard environment of the greenhouse.

air-raid shelter
Concrete lintel above entrance

An interesting design feature in the wall at right-angles to the main entrance, is a sort of escape hatch comprising a two foot square of bricks where the cement has been replaced with plain sand.   The idea, I presume, was that if the house got bombed and fell onto the shelter, the occupants, safe inside, could kick out the bricks on the adjacent wall.  It’s been mortared up since, but you can still see the outline in the photo.  Originally, an iron bar extended out from the hatch that an external rescuer could pull on to release the brickwork.

Air-raid shelter emergency exit
Air-raid shelter emergency exit (under concrete lintel)

Now of course I’m keen to know how my Shelter would have fared against Tony Robinson’s bombs – something to be investigated when I find an appropriate (=free) fluid dynamics package.

And from a social history perspective, I’m intrigued as to why the house had it’s own surface air-raid shelter in the first place.  A scan of GoogleEarth suggests none of the neighbours have anything similar; and it’s not the sort of structure that could be easily or inexpensively removed.  So more research needed there.

The house wasn’t situated next to a munitions factory or similar target; it’s just one house in a row of similar suburban dwellings.  Maybe the owner was just nervous enough, and had the cash, to go one better than the standard Anderson shelter.  I’ve heard of similar domestic shelters associated with homes where military personnel were billeted.  A US Airborne division was stationed in the city, so maybe that’s the reason.  Either way, it was more than paranoia.  According to The Leicester Chronicler, two hundred and fifty homes in Leicester were completely destroyed by bombing.  A map of all bombs dropped on Leicester during WWII is here at Wartimeleicestershire.com.

Anyhow, looks like Channel 4 at least succeeded in inspiring a nostalgic ramble;  make of it what you will.

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Nature Bounces Back

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I’ve just received this photo from my wife Erin, out for a hike this afternoon in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains north of Los Angeles.

San Gabriel foothills in May 2010, post fire (Photo: Erin Conel Jones)
San Gabriel foothills in May 2010 (Photo:Erin Conel Jones)

Quite a breathtaking dash of color; but doubly impressive when you consider what the same area looked like back in October last year.   I blogged at the time about the largest forest fire the region had seen for decades (HERE).  And when I was last over in March, saw no sign of any recovery in the flora department.  Here’s a reminder of what the same (or close to) patch looked like after the fire.

Scorched Earth in the San Gabriel Mountains; October 2009 (Photo:Erin Conel Jones)

Note that in the recent picture you can still see the remains of burnt out branches amongst the new growth.

Animal life too is returning, evidenced by our – as yet unidentified – friend here.  He’s hard to see because he’s doing his job well.

Lizard (Photo: Erin Conel Jones)

Now, just need to keep an eye out for the return of the mountain lions……

Also of interest:

Sparks fly over study suggesting wild fires cut CO2 (The Guardian)

Mystery object

Mystery Object No.1

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SPOILER ALERT ! – ANSWER IS NOW UP, THIRD PHOTO DOWN

Here is the first, and very possibly last, mystery object on Zoonomian.

It is science-related, and I just found it lying around the house – which looking at the other weird stuff around here isn’t even a clue.  Ideas on a postcard, twitter, or you could even leave a comment with your happy memories of this object below.

Update 27/3/10: OK – Joerg Heber, via Twitter, reckons it’s a Dalek.  Wrong.   Here is the whole thing then.  Easy now, right?

Update 28/3/10: Responses via Twitter and e-mail: It’s not a Galilean telescope, musical instrument, gas relief valve, or navigational tool.

(If comment box doesn’t appear below, click ‘comments’ under the title)

THE ANSWER

All very confusing isn’t it.  But not, in the words of  S.R.Hadden, “if you think like a Vegan”…..a Vegan laboratory technician that is.

Because the mystery object, in its full unraveled glory, is a set of mid-twentieth century laboratory cork borers.

Cork borers (Photo:Tim Jones)

To better understand the lost art of laboratory cork boring, we can usefully turn to our copy of ‘How to make common things, for boys’ – by John A Bower:

“The borer is a brass tube with sharp cutting edges, as shown in [the figure], which should be carefully kept, so that the cutting part does not get turned up by coming into rough contact with your file, or by falling on a hard floor,, for the edge is soft, and only adapted to cut such soft substances as cork. Cork-borers are sold in sets (see figure). To bore the cork, put a stout wire through the hole at the upper end of the barrel of the borer; hold the cork firmly in the left hand, pressing it down on a board, or hold it flush with the edge of the board. Begin with the smaller end of the cork. Hold the borer at right angles to the top of the cork ; then with a slight pressure turn it into the cork, till you find it through the other end. Draw out the borer, and with the wire posh out the core from inside of the tube and pat it away – the borer may then be smeared over with a little petroleum to keep it bright“

Set of cork borers (From John A Bower's 'How to make common things for boys')

I ‘acquired’ my set from Birmingham University in the mid-eighties, and have used them in anger on cork and rubber no less.   You can still buy similar sets, but they tend to come with handles built in – which kind of gives the game away from a mystery object perspective.

So, sorry if you were expecting a ‘flux capacitor’, or something out of the LHC.  I guess the true answer is relatively boring.

Thanks to all those who had a crack at it though.


Alternative futures, Astrobiology, Book reviews, Books, Uncategorized

Book review: The Eerie Silence – Are we Alone in the Universe

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eerie silence jacket image

Book review: The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?

Author: Paul Davies

Hardcover: 260 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane (4 Mar 2010)
ISBN-10: 1846141427
ISBN-13: 978-1846141423

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, or SETI, is in a rut.  That is Paul Davies’s message in ‘The Eerie Silence – Are we alone in the Universe’ – a thorough taking stock of the programme started by Frank Drake in 1959 to search for alien radio messages from outer space.

Davies wants a rethink from scratch, where we shake off the blinkers of anthropocentric thinking and question exactly what we should be looking for.  Listening out for a direct radio message is fine, but lets extend the search to include more subtle evidence of alien legacy and the very origin of life.

ET has indeed been strangely quiet, and for Davies two rather extreme explanations for that are providing signposts to a ‘New SETI’.

Under the first option, we have to accept that life on Earth was born of a series of events so incredibly flukey they will never be repeated.  Under the second, we face the chilling prospect that intelligent life pops up quite frequently, only to develop a propensity for technology fueled self-destruction.

Holding out hope for a middle way, and putting speculation over self-destructing aliens aside, Davies argues there is a raft of solid science we could be getting on with to better understand the scarcity of life.  Those up for the task (and skilled enough to secure funding) will enter a field of polarised opinions and a paucity of hard evidence.  The prize? – possibly the final word on the question of whether life is ubiquitous in the universe – a ‘cosmic imperative’ –  or that you and I here on Earth are a one-off, somewhat lonesome, rarity.

We should still listen for radio messages, says Davies, enthusing over SETI’s groundbreaking Allen Telescope Array (ATA) of radio telescopes; but the emphasis  should be on searching for new types of evidence of intelligence, both in space and closer to home – on Earth in fact.

If we can show life on Earth started independently more than once – a second genesis if you like –  the fluke theory is destroyed and the prospect of life existing on the billion or so Earth-like planets in our galaxy increases immensely.  Once life has started, there is pretty much universal agreement among scientists that Darwinian style evolution will, environmental factors willing, take over to produce complex life forms and probably intelligence and consciousness.  Second (and third and fourth..) genesis life forms could be living alongside us today, unrecognised as a microbial  ‘shadow biosphere’ – the holy grail for researchers now culturing candidate samples from Mono Lake in California.  Or we might find tell-tale markers of an extinct second genesis in geological records that we have seen but incorrectly interpreted.  With so many work areas highlighted as candidates for inclusion in New SETI, a problem for potential researchers could be deciding where to focus their application.  Presumably Davies is taking calls.

Moving from Petri dish to telescope dish, Davies believes our pre-conceptions of ET in space are causing us to define too narrow a target there also.  Any intelligent biological life, he says, will quickly transition to an intellectually superior machine form having nothing in common with Homo sapiens and little to gain from interstellar chit-chat.

Or the aliens may have launched beacons that ping data packets only once a year.  Or they may have sent probes – monolith fashion – to lurk around our solar system, programmed to spring to life when we learn to think up to their level.  The point is we will only detect this kind of activity if we specifically look for it.

In his most futuristic speculation, Davies envisions life evolving into a quantum computer – an extended network of energy floating through space, amusing itself solving complex mathematical doodles.  The implication of course, if such ‘beings’ exist, is that we are headed in the exact same direction.  How do you fancy being a node in a pan-galactic thought matrix?

Among other thought-provoking revelations, we learn the Earth has for billions of years been happily swapping rocks, possibly with primitive life aboard, with other planets in the solar system – including Mars. That makes the potential discovery of life on that planet important, but not necessarily a game-changer for SETI, as Martian and Earth life could share the same unique origin.

Davies puts SETI into historical context on a quirkier note, recounting how the mathematician Karl Gauss, as early as the turn of the 19th century, planned to signal the Martians using huge shapes cut out of trees in the Siberian forest.

There is an implicit appeal in The Eerie Silence for scientists from different disciplines to work together on SETI and astrobiology – maybe a guiding principle for New SETI?  Astronomers, biologists, geologists, engineers, astro-physicists and cosmologists all have a role in the search – as do non-scientists.

That also holds true for the post-detection task-group Davies leads, set up to advise an appropriate response in the event ET finally calls.  In a chapter devoted to the implications of ‘first contact’, he asks how various groups: from the media, through politicians, the military, and religious believers might react.   If we receive a targeted message, we should certainly think carefully about the reply.   But that we already send the occasional burst of blindly targeted radio messages into space is a positive in Davies’s book; at least it makes people think about science, humanity, and what in our culture we value.   Religion, and particularly Christianity, Davies believes, will struggle to reconcile dogma with the existence of intelligent aliens.

In his wind-up, Davies keeps all options open as to the chances of a positive outcome for SETI. But on balance, hardcore enthusiasts of radio SETI in particular may well find the The Eerie Silence a bit of a downer.  Likewise, those looking for evidence to support more philosophical ideas around nature favouring life, or the existence of a life principle buried in the physics and chemistry of the universe – themes Davies has arguably been more sympathetic to in previous works – will be disappointed as he rejects each in turn.

To its credit, The Eerie Silence is as much about human motivations and psychology as it is about research and radio antennae.  A chatty narrative with frequent episodes of self-examination strikes chords with thoughts and feelings most of us will have had: like the need for a sense of self, and a yearning for meaning.   The search for ET is very much the search for what we are, what we may become, and what ‘it’ all means.  A cliched theme maybe, but well supported here with relevant facts and reasoned speculation.  Davies’s talent for projecting  rock-solid scientific rationalism while not (entirely) closing the door on other perspectives has produced an absorbing read.

Other posts related to astrobiology and SETI on Zoonmian

How would you break the eerie silence – competition winners

Royal Society’s meeting on astrobiology and the search for extra-terrestrial life (SETI)

Rapping ET-style

Interview with an astrobiologist (Lewis Dartnell) and Life, Talk to me about Life

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How would you break the ‘eerie silence’ – WINNERS!

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In February, I told you in this post about a competition sponsored by publishers Penguin UK together with National Science and Engineering Week, that asked YOU to suggest a message we might beam into space at the aliens.  The idea stemmed from Paul Davies’s new book ‘The Eerie Silence’ .

eerie silence jacket image

Paul Davies
Paul Davies

It turns out that nearly 1000 messages received from all over the world are, as of 2pm 12th March, winging their way across the cosmos in the direction of the Orion nebula, courtesy of BT’s Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall.   This was the first day of National Science and Engineering Week UK, and included The Big Bang event at Manchester Central Conference Centre.  Joining the event, astrophysicist author Davies said:

“From time to time, humans have deliberately beamed powerful messages into space to attract the attention of any cosmic company. On Friday, a big radio dish in Cornwall will do just that, conveying a selection of messages from earthlings to anyone who cares to listen. The messages will be directed towards the Orion nebula, a stellar nursery that would be an attractive location for an advanced alien community with astro-engineering prowess. It will take over 1,200 years for the messages to arrive, travelling at the speed of light, and I for one won’t be around to receive any reply. But the purpose of the exercise is not so much to establish a dialogue with ET. Rather, it is to get young people to reflect on some deep issues, such as whether or not we are alone in the vastness of space, what is mankind’s place in the universe, and why after 50 years of patient listening SETI astronomers are greeted by only an eerie silence?  What is more, it is a bit of fun.”

And now the really interesting bit.  These are the top 50 winning entries.

What have we said……..!

(Actually, scanning through these, I think we’re safe from invasion – malevolent or otherwise ;-))

Andrew Glester, Manchester

If you’ve been watching our television broadcasts, I’d like to apologise for everything before and after Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

Karen Zold, Nailsea

Beautiful blue planet, teeming with life located on the edge of the Milky Way.  Fantastic views of the Andromeda Galaxy and beyond into infinity.  Perhaps the best location in the Universe ?1 Trillion Trillion Trillion Trillion ONO. Must be prepared to look after current resident flora and fauna

Jill Dawson, Isle of Man

My Dad has told me for 43 years I was left behind by an alien spaceship so to all my relatives out there PLEASE CALL ROUND FOR COFFEE I WOULD LOVE TO CATCH UP!!

Linda Irwin, McCall, ID, USA

We are energy of the creationist kind incarnated into carbon based bodies.  We have always been here since energy is only changed, never destroyed.  Who and where are you?

Martijn van vugt, Delft, Netherlands

Hilarious isn’t it? Wait till you see how we run our rock. Definitely worth the visit. Are you on MyOuterSpace, by the way?

Dennis Treleaven, London

Please get in touch and if you could confirm that the universe was not created by god it would answer a lot of arguements down here.

Robin Goos, Stockholm

Requesting interference from other species / civilizations. We could use some excitement.

Laura Pritchard, Kidlington

Probably best you don’t watch our films ET, Independence Day or Mars Attacks before making contact with us….

Natalie Smith, Bristol

Planet earth – thought it was light years ahead but recently collapsed into  banking black hole, seeks super star for sharing Milky Way, Mars and universal travel.

Ernest Long, Ireland

NO MISSIONARIES PLEASE

Chris Bergoch, Los Angeles

Hello.  Your work in our crop fields intrigues me. I would love to know how you do it!  Also, why be so mysterious?  Why not come down and say hello?  We’d love to meet you and become friends!

Mrs Munro, Nottingham

Did you think YOU were alone in the universe?!

John Tingay, Sheffield

Please send us photos of your celebrities.

Andrew Brown, Canmore, Alberta

For sale or trade: Several billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. All reasonable offers considered! Must pick up, can not ship.

Tomi Vollauschek, London

Please move on. Nothing to see here.

Amaral, Rio de Janeiro

Just observe. Keep away. This is a dangerous zone. Our divine entity is called Money. The people here may even  kill for their

deity. Do not try to understand.

John Moore, Poole

Help Wanted! Cleaners, caretakers and peacemakers required for extremely dirty and severely damaged planet.Honesty and integrity a must.We are a equal opportunitys’ employer, applicants of any shape or form will be considered.Blue Earth Agency or uww//earth.cos

Andrea Smith, Brighton

Can I have my frisbee back please?

Nicola, Birmingham

My name is Nicola and I am 11. Is anybody in space? Is anyone going to reply to me, because I am reallly interested in life in space.

David Risser, Chicago

We Taste Bad !

Deborah Hubbard, Pretoria

Hello, dear aliens. We tend to believe that we’re pretty bright and you’re weird, but I reckon it’s the other way around. Please pop in any time so we can find out. Come for coffee  we do that rather well.

Pete Marshall, Westcliff on sea

4 4 2, whats your favoured formation?

Vicky Haining, Northampton

Hi! If there’s anyone out there, feel free to come and visit, we don’t bite! Do you?!

Helen Cooper, Loughton

You aliens have the best fashion sense, green is ‘so in’ at the moment and those huge eyes are a fabulous look!

Will, Washington DC

01111001011011110111010100100000 01100001011100100110010100100000 01101110011011110111010000100000 0110000101101100011011110110111001100101

( this binary number translates as “you are not alone”..)

Reg Hewitt, Exeter

Hello and welcome to Planet Earth. In order to help you with your invasion you now have two options. If you want to make our world a better place, choose “1″; to follow the precedent of our current leader choose “hash”.”

Gary Hall, Dagenham

Sorry to drop this on you, but we’ve kinda wrecked our planet. Any chance we could come live with you? We’ve got beer…?

Martin Smith, Brighton

Vacancies for Traffic Wardens.  We are an equal opportunities employer.  Any life form may apply.  Reply to Human/inhuman Resources stating age (to nearest 1000 Earth years), carbon footprint and any special dietary or respiratory requirements (methane kits available).

Gordon McGuire, Wotton-Under-Edge

Hi.  Could I have a 9 inch meat feast, a margherita, 2 garlic breads and a bottle of diet coke; thanks.  Bye the way, is it still free delivery within 10 billion miles?

John Waite, Preston

Two thousand years ago, we had a very enlightening visit from the Creator’s Son. Has he been to visit you yet?

Sue Coggin, Hull

What should I pack?

James England, Walton-on-Thames

I’ve checked google maps but can’t find you. Where are you?

Steve Simpson, Arlington, Texas

Hello from earth! Should you seek our planet in order to find a new home because of excessive pollution on yours, go back. If you had to manipulate your craft around the space junk, that should tell you something about how we live!

Ann Barry, Usk, South Wales

What’s occurring up there? If you’re late again, dinner’s going in the dog, and I can’t deny it, that other lot don’t look too friendly from by yer.

Eric Rush, Bromley

PLANET for Sale. Water and some other resources Sun still works comes with moon. Could be used for spare parts.

Gavin Counahan, Eastbourne

OK fess up. What have you done with Elvis?

Andy Cain, Sheffield

Do you still have Neil Armstrongs golfball up there and if so can we have it back ?

Seema Kurup, Elgin

Hello! If you’re planning to visit our planet, please know you will need to remove all metal from your person, take your shoes off and submit to a full body scan, carry all liquids/gels/aerosols in clear plastic bottles no bigger than 3.4 oz,  surrender all cigarette lighters and batteries, pack all jams and jellies (but pies can be carried on) …oh yes, Welcome to the Earth!

Thomas K, Abu Dhabi

MY PURPOSE OF CONTACTING YOU IS TO SEEK YOUR HELP IN TRANSFERRING THE SUM OF FIVE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS (USD 5, 000,000.00) TO A TRUSTED BANK ON YOUR PLANET.

Shawn Roberts, Sydney

MAYDAY MAYDAY ,,Celestial vessel Earth,Taking on water fast! ,require immediate assistance,,over.

Austin Lewis, Normal, IL

Hello.  My name is Austin Lewis, and I’m an artist.  Here, artists depict things as they are, or as they seem to the artist.  Sometimes we depict things that don’t exist.  What is art where you come from?

Solange Thomas, London

My message will include a group of prime numbers, and a binary code that, when stacked properly, shows a picture of a man waving, our planet location in our solar system, and a strand of DNA. I think the wave will indicates we’re friendly.

Doug Barnes, Dublin

Hi guys,Come and say hello! You have already made our mistakes ages ago, come and tip us off and save us a lot more grief!

Mike Bell, Eire

Hello. Contact our eternal father, who sent his only son jesus to our planet and he will explain all.

Alice Rook, Cleveland

Greetings from the 3td planet orbiting the big Ball of Fire. (a^2 + b^2 = c^2)(y = mx + b)(V = 4/3(pi)(r^3)

Mr Kelvin Bierton, Telford

Do you have crop circles on your planet ?

Chris, Brisbane, Australia

Dear Starlings, my inconsiderate neighbours’ all night partying and littering is intolerable. Please come and take them away. I’m confident that they would prove worthy experimental subjects and would help you understand just how easily we Earthlings are able to poop on our own doorstep.

Phil Darling, Stowmarket

Hello friends. This is a warning. My race is made of many types of characters, most are fun and good. It’s the ones that arent that make it dangerous for you. Give us a miss until we learn.

Georgios Mastrogiannis, Athens

What part does love have in your life?

Suzanne Rosen, Chigwell, Essex

Greetings from the pupils of GGSK College, Chigwell, Essex.  Why don’t you visit us one day – there is ample landing space for one spacecraft on the roof.  Please come on Friday, when we have Channa and Puri  for scool dinners.  It is especially tasty.

The 50 were selected by a panel of Penguin judges together with Graham Southorn, Editor of BBC’s Sky at Night Magazine. Each will receive a copy of Paul Davies book.

Also of Interest

David Brin here discusses SETI and particularly issues around transmitting TO the aliens

education, Film, Fun, Uncategorized

The Perfect Mathematician

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Think I’ve stumbled upon what is fundamentally wrong with UK STEM policy, at least for the Maths bit.  We’re not raising mathematicians correctly.

In ‘The First Men in the Moon‘, H.G. Wells shares with us how the Selenite moon people got it right – over a century ago:

“If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. They check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill.  His brain grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and display of his faculty, his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in his own line. His brain grows continually larger, at least so far as the portions engaging in mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs shrivel, his heart and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is hidden under its bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere stridulation for the stating of formula; he seems deaf to all but properly enunciated problems. The faculty of laughter, save for the sudden discovery of some paradox, is lost to him; his deepest emotion is the evolution of a novel computation.  And so he attains his end.”

Chemistry, History, Museums, Nostalgia

The Amazing Disintegrating Screwdriver

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Gee, I spoil you guys: a blog about a broken screwdriver.

Disintegrating nitrocellulose screwdriver (Photo: Tim Jones)

Not just any old screwdriver though, because the handle of this one is made from nitrocellulose, and they don’t do that anymore – not since the 1940s.  I found the remains in a garage I’ve been clearing out over the past couple of days.

Nitrocellulose is an interesting material on many levels; its tendency for spontaneous disintegration is only one of the reasons you’ll no longer find it in tool handles, movie film, guitar pick guards, billiard balls, and dice.  Its flammability made early nitrocellulose film stock a safety liability; even today the UK Health & Safety Executive publish guidance on its handling (downloadable pdf file).

My first encounter with nitrocellulose came as a 12 year old schoolboy, when in the school library I learnt from a popular science book, ‘The Oddities of Heat’, how to apply nitrocellulose as gun-cotton to the blowing up of bridges.  There was even a diagram showing how to position the charge.  Ah, the innocent diversions of less troubled times.

More recently, on a visit to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles (don’t ask, I’m going to write that visit up in due course), I saw an exhibition featuring magician Ricky Jay’s collection of disintegrating nitrocellulose dice (you’re already gauging the character of this museum – right?).

A pair of magician Ricky Jay's disintegrating nitrocellulose dice (photo: Tim Jones; taken at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles)

So what’s the science behind this fun stuff. And why the spontaneous disintegration?

Nitrocellulose

Nitrocellulose is made by treating cellulose, a natural organic compound found in the cell walls of plants such as cotton, with chemicals containing nitrogen – normally nitric acid.  Some hydrogen atoms in the cellulose polymer [C6H7O(OH)3]n are replaced with nitrogen in the form of the nitryl group NO2.  The exact properties of the resulting nitrocellulose depend on how much of the hydrogen is replaced with nitrogen.

The fully nitrated and highly explosive gun-cotton version of nitrocellulose thus has the formula [C6H7O(ONO2)3]n.  Nitrocellulose with less nitrogen in the chemical structure, known as pyroxylin or (with camphor added to reduce brittleness) celluloid.  This is the variety used in old film stock, and is probably what my screwdriver handle is made of.  It certainly burns well; I tested it.

Spontaneous Disintegration

Googling this topic yielded a few examples akin to my screwdriver scenario: knife handles, film restoration sites and such like.   But a convincing explanation of the spontaneous failure mechanism was more elusive.  There are several academic papers in the literature dealing with the reaction chemistry and kinetics (speed) of nitrocellulose breakdown in the laboratory, with more practical discussions focusing on movie film conservation.

In all cases, the disintegration appears to happen in two stages: an initial phase where NO2 groups in gaseous form come free from the nitrocellulose structure, to combine with any water present to form nitric acid.  The acid then auto-catalyses the same reaction but at a much higher rate.

It seems fair to hypothesize from this that the release of gases in the surface layers of the screwdriver handle create micro-cracks that transmit the decomposition reaction into the body of the material, the increasing pressure driving the reaction harder.  It certainly looks like that’s what has happened.

Yet I still don’t really understand what triggers the timing of the initial decomposition.

Ideas?