Cosmic fugues: the myriad connections between music and astronomy

Although there has been a surfeit of the damp dishrag that typifies British weather hanging over our night time skies recently, there have also been a few clear, crisp evenings allowing some fine views of Jupiter, even from my light-polluted suburban London garden. Having recently upgraded my stargazing equipment from a pair of ancient yet serviceable binoculars to a modest reflecting telescope (courtesy of an unexpected tax rebate), I thought this might be a good opportunity to sketch a few observations (pun intended) regarding the connections between astronomy and music. I was partly inspired by the BBC's Stargazing Live programmes earlier this month, whose co-host was the increasingly ubiquitous physicist and ex-keyboard player Brian Cox. Admittedly, Professor Cox is more space-orientated in his broadcasting than his professional work, but it does seem to be the case that astronomers have provided plenty of musically-attuned scientists, with the opposite direction also supplying musicians with astronomical interests.

Much has been written about the semi-mystical search to understand cosmic harmonies that motivated the research of both Kepler and Newton, so the phenomenon, if I can call it that, is hardly new. It has been a while since connections were formally recognised between music and mathematics, from harmonic progression to the idea that both subjects rely on similar cognitive processes. And of course, many aspects of astronomy rely to a large extent on mathematical underpinnings.

The correlation is not a recent one: in the Eighteenth Century composer William Herschel was inspired to switch to a career in astronomy after developing an interest in the mathematic aspects of musical composition. Today his symphonies are largely forgotten in favour of his key role in astronomy, including his discovery, with his sister Caroline, of the planet Uranus. There is at least anecdotal evidence, such as that provided by the musical Bachs and mathematical Bernoullis, for some degree of direct genetic inheritability in both disciplines. So perhaps utilisation of the same area of the brain may play a key role in the association between the two seemingly disparate fields. I feel much more research could be undertaken in this area.

Although increasing urbanisation (and therefore light pollution) may lead most people to consider stargazing as about as dynamic and interesting as fly fishing, the wonder of the night sky can offer a poetic experience free to all. This suggests an obvious aesthetic motivation or sensibility that links the discipline directly to music. But if this seems pretty facile, at a slighter more involved level I would like to consider the geometry, timing and mathematical relationships that are found in astronomy and which have their own aesthetic charm. There are projects currently in progress that cover many aspects of this, working from both sides. On the music-led approach, music professors at Yale, Princeton and Florida State University are attempting to reduce musical structure to geometries that seemingly echo the Pythagorean tradition. From the astronomy angle, Stargazing Live featured a scientist converting astrophysical phenomena into audible signals, even though the results couldn’t be classed as music in any traditional aesthetic sense.

It has to be said that there are little in the way of prominent musical works that utilise astronomical methodology or facts in the way that Diane Ackerman's wonderful volume of poetry The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral succeeds. Contemporary astronomy-inclined musicians including Queen guitarist Brian May, who admittedly originally trained as an astronomer and finally completed his PhD on the Zodiacal Light in 2008, and sometime Blur bassist Alex James, he of Beagle 2 call sign fame. Yet neither has produced an astronomical-based piece that can complete with that most obvious example of space-related music, Holst's The Planets, which was inspired by purely astrological rather than astronomical themes. My own favourite of the genre is Vangelis' 1976 album Albedo 0.39, which culminates in the title track detailing a geophysical description of Earth. Whether the Open University astronomy degree taken by Myleene Klass will inspire her to an astronomy-orientated meisterwork is...err...possibly somewhat doubtful...

Food for thought: the rise and rise of gastro science on television

As something of an amateur foodie (and with a professional chef for a brother), I've been interested to note the expansion of a new documentary genre in the last few years: programmes dedicated to the science and technology aspects of food. Indeed, the BBC seems to broadcast a new series on the subject every month or so, but why now and more importantly, are they any good?

As an answer to the first question, there must presumably be some knock-on effect from the small army of celebrity chefs: Jamie, Gordon, Nigella and their ilk, not forgetting Heston, ready to metamorphose into The Muppet Show's Dr Bunsen Honeydew at any moment. But is that enough to have generated a new genre out of nothing in so short a time? Health worries in general and the enormous growth (slight pun intended) in obesity in the UK are no doubt also responsible. With one in eleven British children apparently receiving treatment for asthma and alarming obesity statistics constantly in the headlines, it's little wonder our diet is being scrutinised in ever-increasing detail.

Another possible influence on the production of these programmes is the scientific-leaning campaigns by the prepared foodstuffs industry, cajoling us to stay healthy via the consumption of 'isotonic' drinks and food containing 'friendly bacteria'. Yet even a casual examination of the evidence suggests these products are as much a result of marketing as medicine, with benefits yet to proven in any serious sense. Indeed, in the case of pro-biotic foods there may even be potential side-effects. But back to the programmes themselves: do they provide any useful information to combat the hype and worry or are they just more cheap airtime to replace the cookery shows broadcast ad nauseum?

The programmes have covered a wide range of topics, but mostly steer clear of matter-of-fact detailing in favour of light-heartened musings, vox populi taste tests and experiments of the 'disgusting science' variety. A primary purveyor of the latter is the BBC's Jimmy's Food Factory, in which farmer Jimmy Doherty attempts to make processed food (and chewing gum) using supposedly household equipment and ingredients. It has to be said, watching chips being made via a gas gun and tennis racket is fun, but hasn't this more in common with Jackass than the Open University? Whereas Delia, Hugh, and the Hairy Bikers/Bakers et al make at least some effort to provide useful information, there's not much about Jimmy's explosive experiments that can aid us to make wiser choices as food buyers.

Other series that might attempt a more serious approach suffer from experiments using subject groups and/or timescales that are obviously too small for meaningful correlations to appear. Another BBC show, E Numbers: an Edible Adventure, is a prime example of this. Presenter Stefan Gates attempted to overdose of E numbers courtesy of a single day's junk food binge, only to find he'd mostly stayed within the recommended daily allowance for E numbers but had eaten over 400% of his fat RDA, 500% of his salt, and over 200% of his sugar intake. Now is that surprising? No wonder one reviewer found it 'maddeningly superficial'; it seems to have more in common with The Supersizers brand of infotainment than anything else. In fact, I seem to remember a single discussion on food additives whilst at school twenty-five years ago that was more informative than these three episodes.

It's not all doom and gloom: the BBC's The Truth About Food has gone some way to balancing the above, with a good book and website to match, but this is far and away the high point of the genre. It seems to me producers are missing a trick by not examining the current (and near-future) developments in food processing, from increased use of nanomaterials to cloned farm animals and in vitro slabs of lab-grown meat. This latter may sound a touch Frankenstein-ish, but beef flesh grown in a tank would presumably save on a lot of methane production. Then there's aquaponics, where the nitrogen cycle from farmed fish can help feed edible plants which in turn reduce the build-up of dangerous chemicals in the tank, something I learned about the hard way whilst breeding three generations of tadpole shrimps earlier this year.

So, in conclusion, the potential of television to educate whilst entertaining seems to have been once again been well and truly scuppered. One up for the Rupert Murdochs methinks, and a minus several million for the Lord Reiths. Doh!

Technorati Tags: bbc, pro-biotic, isotonic

Hot doughnuts and cold fusion: a never-ending story?

When there is much at stake we have a tendency towards self-delusion, ignoring unpleasant facts and concentrating instead on elements that will hasten our goal. If there is any such thing as a holy grail in contemporary science it surely has to be power generation via nuclear fusion, seemingly "just decades away" for rather more than that length of time. So are fusion researchers allowing dreams to obfuscate the facts?

The first fusion research was conducted in the 1950s by the Soviet Union, using doughnut-shaped magnetic field generators called tokamaks. Since then, various methods have been attempted with varying degrees of success, although none have achieved the ability to offer a greater output of energy than the amount input. A prominent contemporary non-tokamak project is the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's National Ignition Facility in California. The project's integrated ignition experiments started this month after 13 years' development, using 192 lasers to create an energy pulse thirty times greater than ever achieved previously. At a cost of £1.2 billion, the NIF is seen by many as the best hope yet, but is now at least 25% over budget as well as behind schedule.

Meanwhile, tokamak research is continuing at various facilities, the best known being Iter (Latin for 'the way' but initially ITER - the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor - at least until 'thermonuclear' was deemed an unpopular word). Now being constructed in France, Iter is a collaborative effort between the EU, the US, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea and India. It is due for completion around 2019, but at a cost of £13 billion, it is also way over original estimates. The list of collaborators alone shows the importance of this immense project: after all, the dream of limitless energy for our descendents is worth the comparatively small effort in our time (although interestingly the Canadian Government was unable to remain in the project due to lack of funds). Britain itself contributes only about £20 million to the project each year, but in addition hosts the world's most powerful tokamak, namely the Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire.

Whilst fusion researchers publicise the advantages over current fission power stations, successful nuclear fusion at Iter would still produce thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste, albeit dangerous for only about a century as opposed to the millennia for the half life of fissile waste materials. In addition, critics claim the immense costs would be better spread across a range of fusion projects utilising different techniques, whilst environmental groups point out the money could build immense numbers of renewable 'green' power generators, from wind farms to solar collectors.

Indeed, it does seem that the member nations are putting all their eggs in one basket, considering the failures and hyperbole of the past few decades. In 1989, claims of cold fusion turned out to be premature when the results could not be replicated, whilst a 2002 claim for bubble fusion (sonofusion) also appeared to be precipitate. However, this hasn't led to scientists and engineers abandoning these techniques in favour of tokamaks or laser fusion. So is the immensity of the potential reward enough to keep researchers flogging a dead hypothesis? Then again, if the NIF and Iter fail to produce satisfactory results after a few years' operations, perhaps another generation of scientists and engineers will reconsider these somewhat discredited techniques.

One interesting development in recent years is the growing community of amateur physicists who are building homemade fusion reactors for as little as £30,000. As bizarre as it sounds, most of the materials are fairly easy to obtain, but unlike amateur astronomers for example, it is easy to wonder how these pint-size projects can compete with the billion-pound schemes mentioned above. The amateurs claim that their attempts may serve to initiate professional interest (and funding) in their non-tokamak methods. In view of the potential dangers of electrocution and x-ray radiation, their dedication is clearly admirable, if a little crazy. Then again, our species has rarely achieved a paradigm shift by playing it safe.

What is obvious to many is that we cannot afford to stop investing in large-scale fusion research: success would mean a relatively safe supply of non-fossil fuel energy for areas of the world where wind, wave and solar power cannot offer an on-demand supply. Nuclear fusion would not be at the mercy of the weather, nor occupy the immense amounts of space required for wind and solar farms, even if the former are offshore.

My own opinion is that fusion power will be an unfortunate necessity, at least until we can reduce energy consumption and the human population to sustainable levels - the latter being possibly rather less likely than building a break-even fusion reactor within a human lifetime. Research over the next decade will continue to consume enormous amounts of money, but only posterity will show if this is a great enough effort to stem the deleterious consequences that fossil fuels are having on the politics and economy of our species, in addition to the irreversible ecological effects rapidly coming over the horizon.

Technorati Tags: iter, tokamak

Cybernetics: the fact and fantasy behind man-machine interfacing

Although it is a subject that has fascinated me for many years, cybernetics is not an area I know very much about. However, as that's never stopped me before I thought now would be a good time to explore a few of issues surrounding cybernetics, the theory and the practice. It's one of those scientific disciplines wherein the public perception owes far more to fiction than reality; although it doesn't appear to have generated the same level of active protest as say GM crops or cloning. This is somewhat surprising, considering that the 1970's television 'classic' The Six Million Dollar Man (and bionic spinoff series) aside, most fictional representations tend towards the negative. Dystopian fears of a loss of humanity and individualism, often linked to the hive mind or centralised control, are frequently portrayed in science fiction tales of cyborgs. As with many aspects of current technological research, the reality is often many decades behind even the most likely fictional scenario. But what exactly is cybernetics?

An aunt of mine recently quipped about being a 'bionic woman' after receiving an artificial kneecap, but the mere addition of man-made components into a biological entity isn't really what cybernetics is about. If anyone can be said to be the originator of the field it is American mathematician Norbert Weiner, who in 1948 wrote Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine. The title explains the core of it: it concerns the control of a system, not the simple amalgamation of organic and inorganic mechanisms. So although artificial limbs and other organs have been around for some time, the lack of controlled interactivity means these are not cybernetic systems. What really counts is mind over matter, such as the University of Reading professor nick-named 'Captain Cyborg' whose 1998 transmitter implant gave him control of various electronic devices. Clearly, this borders on the realm of super powers, a reminder that most fictional cyborgs have superior physical and/or mental abilities compared to non-augmented humans. So is the Nietzschean superman just waiting in the wings?

Coinciding pretty well with the release of Blade Runner in 1982, cyberpunk has spent almost three decades concentrating on the darker side of the man-machine interface via concepts such as dehumanisation, technologically–boosted eugenics, and mutilation. The latter often seems to revolve around updated versions of traditional techniques of physical adornment such as piercing and tattooing, practiced in many cultures around the world but seemingly derided and devalued in the West for some centuries prior to revival under the original punks of the 1970s. This in turn has surely inspired the most violent aspects of cybernetics – the invasive bodily procedures apparent in the Borg and Cybermen - that suggest the field is merely an updated version of Frankenstein's experiments, with mutilation at its core.

Yet aren't people already dabbling in subtle variants of this, whether by cosmetic surgery or the body-building foods and drugs now so prevalent? But back to the ideas of a carbon-based entity controlling objects of silicon, what about the development of smart textiles, allowing the wearer direct interfacing with electronic devices from medical monitors to mobile entertainment systems? Clearly, the future of cybernetics will involve more than one path, some rather less obvious than others.

Recent projects that are worth mentioning include the University College of London's Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP) project for attaching prosthetic limbs and digits via a titanium rod, the University of Southern California's artificial retina research, and German company Otto Bock Healthcare's thought-controlled prosthetic arms. Whilst these projects are aiming to restore lost physicality, the US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been working on another acronym-laden project, HI-MEMS: Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, involving healthy organisms. The idea is to implant bio-electromechanical interfaces into insects so that they can be used for...I've no idea, and I'm not sure they do either. Perhaps a case of overdosing on cyberpunk guru William Gibson? As with all areas of high technology, the US Department of Defense is enthusiastic on the grounds there might just be a military advantage in there somewhere. And there is evidence of them experimenting on other animals too, such as sharks (anyone remember Doctor Evil's demand for "sharks…with lasers"? Well, they're on their way.)

One area that hasn't traditionally had much involvement with cybernetics is nanotechnology, but the latter is proving to be a growth area (or should that be shrinking area?) Perhaps the future will rely more on countless microscopic implants rather than obvious lumps of metal and plastic grafted onto the body. And that in turn brings its own hint of danger. I've not read any cyberpunk myself, but what if we all end up stuffed to the gills with nanobots, repairing cellular mutations, de-clogging our arteries, adding memory backup to our ageing synapses, etc, all at the beck and call of our silent thoughts? And then along comes the next generation of computer hackers and virtual virus designers, able to reprogramme our nano-sized helpmeets to obey their commands? "Resistance is futile!" Just a thought...

Technorati Tags: cybernetics,, cyberpunk

Carving niches: are there still roles for amateur scientists?

Until the mid-nineteenth century the majority of scientists seem to have been unsalaried, so the barrier between paid practitioners and the rest of us is relatively recent. It has been said that with the contemporary emphasis on expensive equipment and increasing specialisation there is no room for dabblers in the field, but there is plenty of evidence to negate this. A good starting point is this year's BBC Amateur Scientist of the Year competition, which garnered over 1300 applications, some admittedly a bit on the fruitier side. So whilst Britain doesn't have anything to compete with the USA's Society for Amateur Scientists, there's clearly no lack of enthusiasm.

But of course anyone can dream up a bizarre idea without putting in the 99% perspiration afterwards. It is the latter that proves the mettle of the amateur scientist, prepared to doggedly test a hypothesis or utilise scientific techniques as and when time becomes available. It also seems to be true that there are very few amateur theoreticians: by and large, if you engage in science for fun, you're a practical person at heart. Many dedicate years to the cause, from those who tally local wildlife numbers (occasionally identifying new species, of which there are still plenty to be described scientifically) to the likes of Simon Cansick, whose website provides constantly updated weather forecasting data for his Yorkshire village. Mr Cansick may sound like the archetypal British eccentric, but his level of accuracy has apparently caused local farmers to snub the Met Office in favour of http://www.dugglenet.org/ instead.

The two main areas I've always considered easy for an amateur to explore are astronomy and palaeontology, mostly because the necessary equipment is comparatively cheap and readily available. Whilst large telescopes can cost a fortune, some enthusiasts build at least some of the mount themselves (as recommended by Patrick Moore, no less), if not necessarily going to the lengths of the brother and sister team William and Caroline Herschel, who several centuries ago cast telescope mirrors using the likes of horse dung for moulds. As a child I had a small refractor which was reasonably adequate for the limited seeing conditions in the light polluted sky of my small home town. I did however build my own observatory shed, complete with a sliding roof made from old wardrobe doors. Ah, the folly of youth!

Whilst it may seem daft for backyard astronomers to compete with 10 metre reflectors and orbiting telescopes, the world record for visual discoveries of supernovae is held by the Australian amateur Robert Evans, who has mostly utilised a variety of reflectors with primary mirrors under 50cm. Another example of amateurs at the forefront is the Transitsearch.org network, which helps part-time astronomers hunt for extra-solar planets using a combination of backyard telescopes and digital cameras, although to be sure the latter need to be in the several thousand pounds range.

As for palaeontology, I have already covered the delights of fossicking in an earlier post, although sad to say my daughters recently came away empty-handed from a trip to the Isle of Wight. Chips off the old block, they were lulled into thinking they might find dinosaur bone or even pterosaur remains by a University of Portsmouth palaeontologist they spoke to at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition. Instead, the family returned with depressingly lightweight sample bags, the stars of which were a heavily worn tooth (most likely crocodile) and a possible gastrolith. As a brief aside, I must mention that the Royal Society event at London's South Bank Centre was in itself a superb example of encouraging amateur participation in science, with even my four year old donning goggles and latex gloves to conduct some nanoparticle experiments.

All in all, the idea that amateurs cannot conduct useful or even just enjoyable science couldn't be more wrong. And with the likes of cardboard telescope and microscope kits available for under twenty pounds, children can easily get on the bandwagon too, perhaps with a touch of parental persuasion. Now I have to go back the workbench and a 12 volt rotary grinding tool, as I've promised my children I'll find out whether the Isle of Wight tooth could just possibly be from a small iguanadon after all...

Technorati Tags: astronomy, dinosaurs, fossils