Mt. Wilson Observatory threatned by fire

The Mount Wilson Observatory is home to the 100-inch (2.5m) Hooker telescope, one of the most historical telescopes in the era of modern astronomy. Following on the heels of the Harvard College Observatory Computers'¹ work on classifying stars, the Henry Norris Russell used the Hooker telescope, and in conjunction with Ejnar Hertzsprung developed the diagram now known as the Hertzsprung-Russell (or HR) diagram, a diagram of as much importance to astronomy as the periodic table is to chemistry. More famously, Edwin Hubble used the Hooker when he discovered the expansion of the universe, disproving the leading steady state hypothesis (even espoused by Albert Einstein). It is probably even more important that Hubble first proved that all those fuzzy "spiral nebulae" were actually entirely separate galaxies, but we take that for granted today, while cosmologists are still working on the details of the universe's expansion.

So with this background about the Mt. Wilson Observatory under your belt, perhaps you will understand some of the fear I feel when I read that as of 5:42 PDT (8:42 EDT) the LA Times was estimating that the current wildfires outside LA would probably raze the observatory within hours. As of this writing (8:57 PDT / 11:57 EDT) the fires have not yet reached the observatory (though they are visible from the observatory webcam, link is to a screenshot of the webcam since the webcam server itself is overloaded). The director of the observatory reports that firefighters will be remaining in place on Mt. Wilson overnight, implying that it is safe enough to do so, and hopefully they will be able to keep fighting and save the historic observatory.

If you the most more up-to-date information that I have been able to find, follow Mike Brown's twitter feed @plutokiller (yes, THAT Mike Brown). If the observatory does burn down overnight, I'd appreciate it if someone txted me.

¹ Also referred to as "Pickering's Harem,"² after the fact that Harvard College Observatory Director, Edward Pickering, famously stated that his male graduate students were so inept that his maid could do a better. Following on the statement, Pickering did hire his maid (Williamina Fleming) and then a string of other women, hence the unflattering name for the group. Despite the name, these human "computers" did amazing work, revolutionizing the field of stellar classification.

² The incidence of referring to both harems and hookers in the same post is purely coincidental.

Current music: "Cold Missouri Waters" by Dar Williams, et al.

Noble Nobels

During WWII, two German Nobel Prize laureates (in physics) escaped to Denmark. When it too was taken over, their medals were chemically dissolved by Danish physicist Neils Bohr and Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy to keep them safe from the Nazis (and to keep the physicists safe as well, as taking gold out of Nazi Germany was a crime). The solution must have just looked like any other bottle of chemicals, because after the war was over, Hevesy precipitated the gold out of the solution, sent it back to the Swedish institution that grants the Nobels, and they generously recast the medals and reawarded them to the two physicists.

Order of Magnitude

This image is truncated on the right, please click on it to see the full version!



With the power of science we can now calculate this! At least a rough number.

Let's say that teach morning you create a small bit of crud 1mm to a side, so 1mm by 1mm by 1mm, so the volume of this one bit of crud is 1e-9m^3 (or if you like to write things fancy, 10^-9m³). Yeah you have two eyes, but this is a rough calculation, so I'm going to ignore that. I'm also going to ignore that you don't wake up with crud every day of your life. We do however need your lifespan, let's say 80 years approximately, 365.25 days per year, so you live 2.922e4 days, or let's round that off and say 3e4 days. Multiply the number of days you wake up, by how much crud you get each day, and voila, 3e-5m^3.

According to my favorite conversion website, a teaspoon has a volume of around 5e-6m^3, with the result that you actually produce around 6 teaspoons of eye crud in your lifetime.

Professional Ethics in Astronomy

Reposted in its entirety from an AAS email.

The AAS has drafted a statement on professional ethics on June 7, 2009 (see below). AAS members are asked to login to the AAS Forum at

http://forums.aas.org/

and provide comments. The comments will appear online after a moderator has approved them.

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AAS Statement on Professional Ethics:
The mission of the American Astronomical Society is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the Universe. We believe the advancement of astronomy requires that we provide ethical guidelines for AAS members and, for that matter, anyone involved in professional astronomical activities.

Every astronomer is a citizen of the community of science. Each shares responsibility for the welfare of this community. We endorse the statement of the American Physical Society that "Science is best advanced when there is mutual trust, based upon honest behavior, throughout the community." All scientists should act ethically in the conduct of their research, in teaching and education, and in relations with both members of the public and other members of the scientific community. We have a special responsibility to students and postdocs to train them in ethical conduct.

The American Astronomical Society believes that the following are the minimal standards of ethical behavior relating to the profession.

CONDUCT TOWARDS OTHERS

All people encountered in one's professional life should be treated with respect. Discourse should be civil. Scientists should work to provide an environment that encourages the free expression and exchange of scientific ideas. They should promote equality of opportunity and treatment for all their colleagues, regardless of gender, race, ethnic origin, religion, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disabilities, or any other reason not related to scientific merit. This principle is clearly stated in our By-Laws.

More senior members of the society, especially research supervisors, have a special responsibility to facilitate the research, educational, and professional development of students and subordinates. This includes providing safe, supportive working environments, fair compensation and appropriate acknowledgment of their contribution to any research results. In addition, supervisors should encourage the timely advance of graduate students and young professionals in their career aspirations.

It is also incumbent on senior members of our society to inform more junior members of these ethical issues and of institutional and government guidelines, policies and precedures related to the oversight and maintenance of ethical standards for research and conduct. It is the responsibility of all members of our society to familiarize themselves with such guidelines, policies and procedures.

RESEARCH

It is an ethical responsiblity that research results be recorded and maintained in a form that allows review, analysis, and reproduction by others. It is incumbent on researchers involved in large, publicly-supported studies to make results available in a timely manner.

Fabrication of data or selective reporting of data with the intent to mislead or deceive is unethical and unacceptable, as is the appropriation of data or research results from others without permission and attribution.

It should be recognized that honest error is an integral part of the scientific enterprise. It is not unethical to be wrong, provided that errors are promptly acknowledged and corrected when they are detected.

PUBLICATION AND AUTHORSHIP PRACTICES

All persons who have made significant contributions to a work intended for publication should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. This includes all those who have contributed intellectually to the inception, design, execution, or interpretation of the research. Other individuals who have contributed to a study should be appropriately acknowledged. The sources of financial support for any project should be acknowledged/disclosed. All collaborators share responsibility for any paper they coauthor, and every coauthor should have the opportunity to review a manuscript before its submission.

Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be given, and complete referencing is an essential part of any astronomical research publication. Authors have an obligation to their colleagues and the scientific community to include a set of references that communicates the precedents, sources, and context of the reported work. Deliberate omission of a pertinent author or reference is unacceptable. Data provided by others must be cited appropriately, even if obtained from a public database.

All authors are responsible for providing prompt corrections or retractions if errors are found in published works.

Plagiarism is the presentation of others' words, ideas or scientific results as if they were one's own. Citations to others' work must be clear, complete, and correct. Plagiarism is unethical behavior and is never acceptable.

Authors, editors and referees should also be aware of the professional and ethical standards that have been adopted for the AAS journals ( http://aas.org/ethicsPolicy ).

PEER REVIEW

Peer review is an essential component of many aspects of the scientific process such as evaluating research proposals, publishing research results, and evaluating colleagues for career advancement.

Peer review can serve its intended function only if the members of the scientific community are prepared to provide thorough, fair, and objective evaluations based on requisite expertise. Although peer review can be difficult and time-consuming, scientists have an obligation to participate in the process.

Reviewers should disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with those they are reviewing and recuse themselves from cases where such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation. It is unethical to seek to gain an advantage by means of reviewing the work of others.

Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for competitive gain.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Many activities of scientists and educators have the potential for a conflict of interest. Any professional relationship or action that may either be or be perceived as a conflict of interest should be fully disclosed. Most organizations or activities have mechanisms for managing conflicts, for example, through recusal. If a conflict of interest cannot be properly managed, the activity should be avoided or discontinued.

The Ethics of a Mars Mission

One thing that keeps flitting into my head when we talk about a human mission to Mars, is the ethics of it. Right now we don't have the ability for anything but a one-way mission, and still I know there are people who would jump at the chance. I seem to recall reading that women astronauts are required to go on birth control, primarily to eliminate their periods, and this already seems like such an invasion of personal choice. Imagine a trip that takes 3 years each way. In a situation like this NASA really will have to take steps to prevent pregnancies, or to be able to deal with them should they happen.

The one aspect that popped into my head today though upon reading the above linked article by Buzz Aldrin is the issue of consent. The standard for experiments performed upon humans (and you can't call a trip to Mars anything but an experiment) is one of informed consent: the participants must be made aware of the risks (and the risks must be below a certain level), and the participants must give consent. Moreover, the participants have the right to with draw consent at any point in time. Missions on the ISS and such are already seriously pushing the boundaries on this one IMO (does the screening of astronauts beforehand allow NASA to get around the ethics board? or is NASA not subject to an ethics board?). How much more questionable in terms of withdrawing consent is a round trip to Mars? What about a colonization trip?

On the other hand, the worry about consent is another incentive for mandatory birth control and/or sterilization: children are unable to give consent, and it would be unethical to put an infant into the situation of a trip to Mars. I wonder at what point in colonization we will determine it is safe enough to allow children. And will the requirements be different for children transported to the colony vs. children produced in situ?

North Korea's nuclear bomb test

I'm not a big fan of politics, but part of the story about North Korea's second nuclear bomb test caught my eye.

North Korea announced its underground nuclear test a little more than an hour after the U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 4.7 seismic disturbance at the site of North Korea's first nuclear test. --CNN

And sure enough, here's the earthquake data from the USGS.

Strike Two for California

A California high school history teacher has been found guilty of violating the First Amendment by calling a student's comments about creationism "religious, superstitious nonsense". Ouch! It gets worse.

In a December 2007 lawsuit, [Advanced Placement European history student, Chad] Farnan, then a sophomore, accused Corbett of repeatedly promoting hostility toward Christians in class and advocating "irreligion over religion" in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.

The establishment clause prohibits the government from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion" and has been interpreted by U.S. courts to also prohibit government employees from displaying religious hostility. --Scott Martindale, The Orange County Register

So government employees are not allowed to talk about non-religious alternatives.

It gets worse.

Corbett made his "superstitious nonsense" remark during a class discussion about a 1993 court case in which former Capistrano Valley High science teacher John Peloza sued the Capistrano Unified School District, challenging its requirement that Peloza teach evolution. --Scott Martindale, The Orange County Register

So yes, this comment really was in the context of a conversation about evolution and creationism. I will admit that how the teacher said it is quite disrespectful, but to call it the "establishment of (ir)religion?!" Are teachers not allowed to express personal opinion? The court found the school district not liable for the teacher's comments, so clearly this was the teacher's opinion, so if it was just his opinion how does it constitute the government establishing, because that's what the first amendment is about, the government And if it's the government doing the establishing, why is it the teacher is the defendant, and not the government?

And the part that I fear the most: does this mean my telling my science students that creationism is "not a scientific statement" is also violating the freedom of speech and separation of Church and State? Should I wipe my lecture on the origins of life on Earth in the context of astrobiology in the fear that a student will charge me with something?

This is just ridiculous.