Hubble's 15th anniversary

NASA has released two new images to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope - they are images of the Eagle Nebula and the Whirlpool Galaxy and are simply stunning - try having a look at the largest version that will fit on your screen. The resolution is so good that they can be enlarged to 3-foot by 6-foot and 4-foot by 6-foot respectively.

And according to this New Scientist story, once the Space Shuttle successfully returns to flight (scheduled for 22 May), the new chief of NASA is going to reconsider his predecessor's decision to cancel plans to do any more repairs to the telescope - so just maybe we will continue to be wowed by images of the universe beyond the expected failure date of 2007 or 2008.

Physics, here I come ...

So, today I posted my final maths test which leaves me with just an exam to sit and I’ll be finished the maths. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to nominate for the exam till I’ve got the marked test back and then it must be for a date in the following month, so it looks like I won’t get to sit the exam till June – in the meantime, I need to do some revision notes to make the process of studying for an exam easier – not one of my favourite jobs (either the notes or the exam).

But, in the same envelope as the maths test went my enrolment for physics, so some time in the next week or so I should get a nice big parcel of physics notes for my perusal – I’ve just got my fingers crossed that they have fewer typos than the maths notes as this time there is no textbook for any of the course – although I do have a couple of physics textbooks that I can use if I get confused. I’m also hoping the tutor is someone different – I really didn’t find the maths tutor very helpful and I kept getting the feeling that I knew more than he did – maybe there is some residual effect from having done two years of university maths many years ago, after all.

I’ve also started working through old versions of the year 11 and 12 Maths C books – the other half of maths which Queensland high school students do – so far, it’s been fun, and I hope I can keep going with it alongside the physics once it arrives. If I understand correctly, Maths C is aimed more at students who are likely to continue with maths at university level – it introduces groups, matrices and vectors, complex numbers and extends the calculus I’ve (re-) learnt in Maths B.

Also today, I finally took a trip across to the University of Queensland – over an hour’s drive from home even on a fairly quiet traffic day like today was. They had a book sale on which was part of the attraction, plus I’ve been promising myself I’d go have a look around for ages. So, I picked up a few books at the sale – Spivak’s Calculus for three dollars being the highlight but I also picked up Goldstein’s Classical Mechanics (I know, I’m a long way off being able to use that, but it is a classic), Abell’s Exploration of the Universe, an old 1979 Schaum’s Outline of College Physics and the 3rd edition of Zumdahl’s Chemistry complete with solutions guide – not to mention a few popular science books.

I didn’t bother getting any of the early university level physics and maths books since I’m still hoping to be able to enrol in a university course one day – probably by distance education again unless my health improves dramatically – and then I’ll need to buy up-to-date textbooks. There is one university in Australia (Murdoch Uni in Perth) that offers a minor in Physics by distance education with no attendance requirements which I could combine with a major in Philosophy so that’s one possibility. Other than that, I’ll have to see how I go with self-studying Maths C, then try and buy university textbooks and work through them by myself – still, that’s all in the future – for now, high school physics beckons at last.

While I was over at UQ, I had a bit of a wander around – checked out the bookshop, the physical sciences library and walked around the Great Court which is magnificent – it has that really old-fashioned “halls of learning” type feel that I imagine Cambridge or Oxford in England would have. The thing that struck me most is how huge the campus is – I’ve only really spent time at Adelaide Uni before which I used to find large and confusing (I remember having a friend walk me around from building to building in the order of my week’s lectures and tutorials when I first went there) – and later at Canberra Uni which was fairly small. I can only imagine what UQ would be like during the week with a full complement of students in attendance - and dream of maybe one day being one of those students.

Transcending

I read the following poem in Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, and for some reason I can’t quite explain, I really like it. I’ve always enjoyed Escher’s art and my current interest in things astronomical means I appreciate the references to galaxies and stars, but somehow it also conveys (to me, anyway) a sense of hope and purpose.


Transcending

Escher got it right.
Men step down and yet rise up,
the hand is drawn by the hand it draws,
and a woman is poised
on her very own shoulders.

Without you and me this universe is simple,
run with the regularity of a prison.
Galaxies spin along stipulated arcs,
stars collapse at the specified hour,
crows u-turn south and monkeys rut on schedule.

But we, whom the cosmos shaped for a billion years
to fit this place, we know it failed.
For we can reshape,
reach an arm through the bars
and, Escher-like, pull ourselves out.

And while whales feeding on mackerel
are confined forever in the sea,
we climb the waves,
look down from the clouds.

From Look Down from Clouds (Marvin Levine, 1997)

How the universe got its spots …

… is the name of a book I’m reading, written by Janna Levin and subtitled “Diary of a finite time in a finite space”. The book is written as a series of (unsent) letters addressed to her mother which, as the jacket cover says, relate “her own personal and intellectual journey through space and time”, while covering such topics as relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes and the big bang.

Until I reached the sections which start talking about topology, I was doing quite well and mostly understanding things. I did understand the difference between geometry and topology, “geometry is about curves and smooth changes in curvature … topology is any aspect of the shape that does not change when curvature is varied” – hence a donut and a coffee cup are topologically equivalent (in simplistic terms, they both have one “hole”) whilst a sphere and a donut aren’t. And eventually I managed to “get” that the spherical surface of the earth is two dimensional – you only need two co-ordinates (eg latitude and longitude) to locate a point on the surface. But when she started talking about tiling – particularly in 3 dimensions – I must confess I got a bit lost.

However, I’m going to take comfort in the fact that this is the first time (other than simply hearing the word) that I have come across topological concepts, in contrast to the stuff I was understanding which I have mostly encountered many times before. In the past, this lack of immediate comprehension would have bothered me greatly, but when I found the following in a blog entry written by a PhD student last year, I realised that it’s OK to have to revisit concepts before understanding finally dawns:

“From past experience, I've found that if you just immerse yourself in a subject for long enough, the terms and ideas gradually seep into your system.” (Thanks to Gooseania, a blog which I read regularly and sometimes understand)

As far as my maths studies go, I’ve finished the year 12 textbook (Maths B) and just have a tutorial, a competency test and an exam to go. So I’m almost ready to send in my enrolment for Physics which I’m really looking forward to getting started on. I’ve also bought old editions of the Queensland Maths C year 11 and 12 textbooks which I plan on going through by myself over the next year or so – it will be interesting to see whether I have the motivation to self-study them without the imposed discipline of having assignments to hand in regularly.