Sunday in Brest

Greetings from Brest, France! After the conference, I decided a small vacation was in order as was mentioned a couple posts ago. I spent today walking around the city trying to just see what there was to do and attempting to see some of the standard tourists sights. One of the many sights is the Musée de national de la Marine, a castle housing the French naval maritime museum. The castle is apparently the oldest monument in Brest and dates back possibly to the year AD 260 when the Romans had an outpost there. Anyway, the history isn't important, what is important is that it was free. Not knowing any differently, I was all in favor of touring. Below is a picture of just one segment of the outer wall (taken from within the castle). The tower in the picture is one of several towers you can visit.

Later in the day, I was having a coffee in the hotel and the hotel worker said that all museums were free this weekend! He mentioned that it was a special weekend, but didn't elaborate - he seemed very hesitant to continue, so I didn't push any further. One site he highly recommended is a tunnel called Abri Sadi Carnot. Not knowing what it was exactly, I looked it up online. During WWII French civilians in Brest and a large grouping of German soldiers were hiding in the tunnel (really a bomb shelter). One night, the clerk in charge of the generator made a mistake somehow and a fire ignited - which then lit the reserve fuel which was nearby. Shortly there after the ammunition which was stored in the shelter erupted. In total, ~400 French and ~700 Germans died in what was apparently a massive explosion - probably enhanced by the topology of the shelter. This occurred on September 8 (I believe).

 Anyway, that isn't necessarily what makes this weekend so special. It turns out that tomorrow is anniversary of the liberation of Brest from Nazi control. On September 18, 1944 the American forces finally freed the city. I'm not sure if it's because I'm American that he didn't want to say, or if it's just a very trying time for the people of the city, but either way, this weekend is one of celebration.

EES 2011 - Outlook

Greetings from Roscoff. Unfortunately, I was not able to publish blog posts during the meeting. This was mostly due to internet issues, which were not resolved until mid-week, but there was also the issue of time constraints. The meeting is fairly well scheduled, which means one is quite often supposed to be somewhere at all times. The "free time", however, generally ended up being consumed with conversation or (even) research. Many interesting papers were released to the pre-print archive astro-ph this week (include one on modeling the Kepler object KOI-126). I will hopefully be posting a bit more over the next couple days as the school wraps up and I start my mini-vacation in Brest!

EES 2011

Tomorrow I head off to Roscoff, France for nine days to participate in a summer school on low-mass stars and the transition to brown dwarfs. I will attempt to keep the blog updated with my current status and anything interesting that learn about or see on my trip. This may or may not include pictures, but we all know what the answer to that should be from a previous post. 

What precisely is a summer school and what exactly is it about? The former is fairly simple to answer. A summer school isn't like your typical "summer school" we are all used to hearing about. You know, the one for misguided children and those basically failing in their studies. Quite the opposite. It is for the mega-nerds of the world to go and learn as much as they can on a particular subject. Some schools last a few days, some months. This one is 5 days, so not too much of an information overload. 

The latter is more difficult to answer. I know we will be exposed to pretty much every topic imaginable about low-mass stars and the transition to brown dwarfs. Well, not exactly all of them... but pretty close to it. There is some very interesting physics that goes on in this stellar mass regime, and plenty that hasn't yet been studied in detail. So maybe that answers the question I posed. It'll be more about learning the current state of the field in order to gain exposure to what is known and what still needs to be done, opening new research avenues. The lectures last all week, save a half day on Wednesday where we travel to l'Ile de Batz.

Oh, and yeah, the last remaining days of my trip will be spend touring around Brest. Might as well take a mini-vacation while I'm there! It should be a lot of fun, but also quite a bit of work, so the vacation will be well earned, in my opinion.

Big Bang

Being in the science world, it is hard to be blind to the rather prominent anti-religion sentiment that many prominent scientists take. This is not to say all scientists are atheist, but I think it's fair to say that most of the outspoken scientists are in that position. Often science and religion are branded as incompatible with neither adding to the other and both standing in stark contrast to each other's teachings.

In the case of religious fundamentalism, this isn't far from the truth. However, in the case of Catholicism, it is entirely NOT the case. Catholicism is very embracing of science and scientific fact. Leading theologians work with science facts in order to evaluate philosophical arguments and to bolster their beliefs in God. Many people are probably scoffing at this very moment, "Ah, and I bet you think Galileo was treated fairly?" Galileo represents any interesting case where it wasn't necessarily the science which led him to be treated as he was by the church. He has also since received a full pardon. More on this in a later post.

So, is there any good evidence for the church adding to science? Yes. Georges-Henri Lemaître. What about him? Well, his name should really read: Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître. For those who are familiar with cosmology and astrophysics, this name should be familiar. For those who are not, Lemaître was the first person to propose the Big Bang theory. While his original hypothesis has since been revised and expanded upon, the notion of the Big Bang still exists and has a large amount of evidence in its favor.

It is interesting, however, to note that hardly any books (textbooks and popular science books) mention that he was a Catholic priest. While it may be rather irrelevant in the scientific context, it would do no harm to write his name as it should be written, Msgr. Lemaître. Also, it wouldn't hurt to dispel the myth that religion is strictly against the advancement of science. I wonder, are authors afraid of mentioning his religious background for fear of condemnation? Or maybe they do not want to give credit to the notion that religion is not opposing science? Maybe people just do not really know that he was a priest. Entirely possible.

I think his life would be interesting to read about. Unfortunately, no extensive biographies exist, at least from what I can tell, aside from the typical Wikipedia biographies. In the end, it is irrelevant to the science that he was a pious man, but I do believe that it can do a lot of good for science-religion relations if it were mentioned.

Making Progress

Have you been to Flagstaff, ME? Probably not, unless you were around pre-1940. It turns out Flagstaff, ME was once a small town located on Flagstaff Lake. However, "progress" wiped out the town. Slaid Cleaves has chronicled the story in his song "Below".



The song is older (2004), but today I learned of Slaid Cleave and really enjoy his music. He masterfully weaves song and story leaving the listener (aka: me) wondering what to be more enthralled with, his tunes or the story?

Miss Evolution

The topic of this post was brought to my attention thanks to Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance. Sean is a well-known cosmologists and a well respected scientist who often weighs in on topics outside the realm of his research, such as the infamous "science v religion" battle. Sean posted a link to a pre-recorded Miss USA Q&A on evolution. In particular, "Should evolution be taught in schools?"

Some of the answers are baffling and entirely incomprehensible, such as those who answer "no". I'm not writing, though, to contribute to the banter that fills the Comments section, the science fanatics who scoff at religion are just as bad as those religious fanatics that scoff at science. Instead, I wanted to draw attention to an answer that has been ignored by the commentators; Ms Minnesota's answer.

Ms Minnesota was raised Catholic and was taught that evolution is entirely compatible with Catholicism; even supported by Blessed JP II. THANK YOU MS MINNESOTA! A voice of reason among the contestants, and the world at large, apparently. If you are unsure how this is true, I urge you to investigate this further. I could, and maybe will later, write up a post which explains this.

Why am I taking the time to bring this up? I have a theory as to why her answer has been ignored - ignorance. Those who argue ferociously from either side are entirely ignorant of Catholic beliefs. Science lumps all of Christianity into the category of the fundamentalists (e.g., Earth was created 6,000 years ago) and religious zealots tend to lump all scientists into the category of those who just plain hate religion (e.g., religion haters).

Maybe my post is vague and rather puzzling. I'm not sure if I really expressed what I had intended to from the start, but the point is that the whole "religion v science" debate is spiraling out of control with BOTH sides plagued by ignorance of the other. If we are to have an intelligent discussion on the topic of science and religion, we should be possess a knowledge of both.

To see all of the contestants answers, head over to the post on Cosmic Variance.

Bruins Win the Stanley Cup!!!

After a grueling 7 game series with the Vancouver Canucks, the Boston Bruins have come out victorious! They closed out the series with a brilliant 4-0 victory in Vancouver accomplishing a feat very few thought possible. The Bruins had difficulty scoring in Vancouver in games 1, 2 and 5, allowing the Canucks to sneak out a 1 goal victory in each of those three games. However, in Boston, the Bruins dominated the 'Nucks, outscoring them 17-3. Finally, though, Boston showed up with the A-game in Vancouver, and the rest is history.

Congratulations Bruins players, staff, and fans!