It was a great talk with an excellent introduction to cosmology and dark energy for the non-cosmologists in the room. Then came the history of the supernova 1a research that led up to their now famous but unexpected discovery. It has all the ingredients for an entertaining and inspirational story: good guys and bad guys, competition at the telescopes, colourful characters, a bit of suspense, and a rather happy ending in Stockholm.

It reminded me of hearing for the first time about the life and work of some of the great scientists of the past – Newton, Galileo, Herschel, Hubble, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger… The science was cool, but it was the stories of personalities, rivalries, friendships, collaborations and conferences that got me hooked.

And Schmidt’s talk got me thinking: in 20 years’ time, what do I want my story to be? That may sound like I’m having a existential moment, but the further I go in my career the more I realise that creating a narrative to your work is incredibly important in science. Often research feels like chipping away at a dozen little problems  - a dataset here, a prototype there – that may or may not be related to the same questions.

To get the big jobs and the funding you have to be able to tie all those avenues together into a coherent plot, with yourself as the inevitable protagonist who saves the world, circa 2025. That takes intelligence and hard work, but also imagination and a bit of ego.

Perhaps the hardest thing about it is that your story is not just your own. As with everything in life, you don’t have perfect control. Funding climates change, people move, projects fail…. And who knows, maybe you’ll end up with a life outside of the office too one day? Even the perfect 10-year plan needs a rewrite every few years. So: intelligence, hard work, imagination, ego, lots of rewrites – and perhaps a live-in housekeeper. Easy right?

In the months after the publication, the University of Bonn hosted a debate on this thorny subject between Kroupa and one of the architects of the ΛCDM framework, Simon White, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. I thought this was an excellent idea, wrote a few blog posts about the matter and posted the live blog and video of the debate.

To those that read or watched the debate, it was clear that the two scientists don’t disagree in a fundamental way - ΛCDM has proved an extremely successful framework for cosmological structure formation, but the dwarf satellite problem is generally acknowledged. Kroupa’s most important point is that the community should not ignore those observables that don’t match the predictions of ΛCDM, and he encourages scientists not to get locked into a “cold dark matter” mindset, but to explore entirely novel theories, of which MOND is one example. This discussion has been expanded and illustrated further in a blog run by Marcel Pawlowski, a member of Kroupa’s group in Bonn, the Dark Matter Crisis, now hosted on SciLogs.com, which is run by Nature and the German edition of Scientific American.

When I wrote about this subject back in 2010, I was really enthused about the Kroupa’s group’s approach: it was an excellent combination of enriching traditional “offline” scientific research with an active online presence.

Recently, an upstart astroblogger sought to close down the blog, arguing that the authors’ questioning of the  ΛCDM paradigm and proposing novel theories was essentially  undermining all of physical cosmology and  public understanding of science. There were a bunch of further twitter discussions, accusations etc – the blog was taken offline but eventually reinstated. It now has full details of this episode with commentary from other scientists outside their own team vouching for their scientific worth; however sad it is that they needed to do that in the first place.

I’m really happy that the DMC blog is back online. I’m not a cosmologist so I don’t want to comment on the ΛCDM vs. MOND debate. I have, however, read the blog and listened to both Kroupa’s and White’s arguments, and it’s clear that this is not about ΛCDM vs. MOND – it’s about not not becoming locked in to a theory before it’s 100% proven, as opposed to just 99%. Go read the latest posts on their blog for more evidence of that.

What this case does highlight is an important problem with open science discussions online. There’s great science, bad science, and craziness. Ideally the distinction is obvious, and only the good stuff floats to the top. But clearly even within the research community opinions differ on what’s good, bad and crazy. Innovative ideas, like disruptive technology, often start off  a bit crazy. Imagine if Copernicus had a blog in the 1540s. Imagine if Einstein had one in the early 1900s. Their posts may well have been met with howls of protest on twitter from then-established scientists. Perhaps Einstein himself, with tens of thousands of followers after his Nobel prize, would have tweeted something negative about quantum mechanics.

What would that have done for the further development of these then-crazy theories, and their acceptance by the community?

It’s perhaps good to remember this when we judge harshly those who buy into the pseudo-scientific ideas that endanger their health and that of our planet: in the same way that bright new ideas can sound a little nuts,  it’s sometimes entirely possible to create a credible-sounding narrative based on false principles. If we as scientists with a good decade in higher education sometimes misjudge the validity of a result (or discredit one that clashes with our own agenda), how are those without all that knowledge supposed to make that judgement? Sometimes the distinction between good science and bad science is crystal clear; sometimes it isn’t.

I still believe that the web holds huge promise for a vibrant, varied and egalitarian debate on science – I’m an optimist. We can use the web to discuss, inform and reach out to a huge community of fellow scientists and science enthusiasts around the world, as well as look at kittens. Unfortunately it’s also a place where very bad ideas can proliferate, and where a couple of tweets can discredit and discourage the pursuit of innovative ideas.

How do we communicate responsibly? How do we promote good, balanced debate, allow for a bit of good crazy, and get rid of the rubbish? That is the challenge for a responsible scientific debate in this networked era.

The list of past innovations is really fascinating – some I don’t know so much about, others I can’t even imagine life or society without them. I’ve been pondering what I would vote for all week, and I still can’t decide.

I’m naturally drawn to those in the physics/space/astronomy fields, such as

• Jocelyn Bell-Burnell’s discovery of pulsars;
• the prediction of Hawking radiation from black holes;
• Rutherford’s discovery of the neutron;
• the UCL-designed Photon Detector Assembly for the Hubble Space Telescope;
• the prediction of the existence of anti-matter;
• proving the existence of singularities;
• testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity;

but then what about all those other amazing inventions that I couldn’t imagine living without?! There are a few listed that have played prominent roles in my own career in astronomy instrumentation, such as the development of carbon fibre composites. The topic of my PhD was the application of carbon fibre composites to the manufacture of deformable mirrors for aerospace and astronomy. The text lists mainly sporting applications of these materials, and Britain’s (past) dominance in the building of Formula 1 cars is indeed very cool. But CFC materials are now also heavily used in aerospace, including space-based satellites and instruments for astronomy, and we’re nowhere near the limit of what can be achieved with these versatile materials.

During my PhD again I made extensive use of finite element analysis, and I didn’t even know that the development of the finite element method came out of a British university, Swansea. Engineering without FEA is these days unthinkable, and the method is now routinely applied to very complex problems, from mechanical engineering to biomedical modelling.

And then I haven’t even considered all the biomedical discoveries and innovations! The structure of DNA, the discovery of the ATP enzyme, hip replacements, the first randomised controlled trials, and early work in the development of three major medical scanning techniques – ultrasound, computerised tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.

Finally near the bottom of the list is the one that possibly blows everything else out of the water: the World Wide Web. And it’s not even currently listed in the top 5!.Maybe I’m not enough of a car fan, but those who pick the design of the Mini out of this amazing list of discoveries are Missing a Point – just saying. One more day to vote! I really have to make up my mind now.

The microwave sky as seen by Planck. Most of the signal originates in the Milky Way, the faint CMB pattern can be seen in the background.

A big day for science today, as at last we’ll find out some of the first cosmology results from the Planck telescope. Planck was launched together with the Herschel Space Telescope back in 2009, to perform an all-sky survey at microwave wavelengths. The survey will produce – or rather, has now produced – the most detailed and sensitive map of the Cosmic Microwave Background to date.

The CMB is essentially flat and constant all over the sky, but on closer (much closer) inspection, small fluctuations become visible. These tiny fluctuations, at the level of 1 part in 100,000 or so, are thought to be the precursors to the large scale structures we see today in the Universe – from the largest Galaxy clusters to individual stars.

Looking for and studying signals this faint is very involved and challenging work – a lot of foreground signal originating in our own Galaxy or those in the vast Universe around us have to be accounted for and removed. These “noise” was released to the community some time ago, so the rest of us could play around with the data for our menial star formation or galaxy clustering research. The Planck consortium have chosen not to release the real goodies, the cosmological results, until they felt confident about the results – which is apparently today. The level of “lockdown” and secrecy surrounding these results is quite unprecedented in astronomy as far as I know, and I’ve talked with many people who don’t agree with their chosen policy. “Open science” it definitely isn’t – but if anything, it’s a good way to ensure that your results will make a big splash on their release. However you feel about  the road the mission leaders chose, these scientists deserve their moment in the spotlight. I look forward to seeing the exciting new results!

ESA is hosting a media briefing at 10 am this morning, and an open session will take place from 14:00 to 15:45 (CET) this afternoon. You can watch it live on ESA’s webpage, here.

Comet PanSTARRS over Heidelberg and Mannheim, as seen from the roof of MPIA (Carolin Liefke/Haus der Astronomie)

Some of my first astronomy-related memories are the spectacle of comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake gracing the night sky in the mid-90s. With their bright cores and long fanned tails, comets make for excellent viewing. At the moment, we have a new comet cruising the skies, called PanSTARRS, after the Hawaiian telescope whose images led to the comet’s discovery in 2011. PanSTARRS is currently near its perihelion, visible with the naked eye from our climes.

More dedicated astronomers than myself, or rather those who did not spend 24 hours at Heathrow airport in the last few days, took to the roof of our institute and got this lovely picture of the crescent Moon and the comet, faint but clearly visible, over the neighbouring cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. Even without PanSTARRS this picture would be worth sharing! It wasn’t quite visible with the naked eye but easily captured with some decent equipment.

You can find more pictures via Phil Plait’s article on Slate, or this visibility guide at Sky & Telescope.

Nothing to see yet! The proposed site for the E-LT, Cerro Armazones. (image: ESO/S. Brunier)

A nice boost for UK astronomy today as the government has placed some serious money behind the country’s involvement in the European Extremely Large Telescope. Supporting the project to the tune of £88 million over 10 years, on top of the annual subscription to ESO, the government hopes to secure a prominent role for UK science and industry in this mega-project. £88 million may seem like a modest amount of money when spread over 10 years, especially when quantified in bankers’ bonuses, but for astronomy it’s a large sum of money that will really drive research and development in both science and technology for the new observatory. Great news.

There’s been a steady trickle of press releases in the news in the last year or two, from ESO or from member countries giving their yes votes to the project. It’s good to see so much support. But the cash isn’t all there yet, as ESO still await the final word on Brazil’s accession.

I’ve spent several years working on technology relevant for the E-ELT and on a design study for one of its instruments, so this telescope lies fairly close to my heart. I’ve stepped away from it somewhat in my time in Heidelberg to focus on other projects, such as the GRAVITY instrument for the VLT Interferometer, but if I continue in my current line of work I will in all likelihood return to E-ELT instrumentation in the next few years. With a planned completion date of mid- to late-2020s, it may well dominate my working life for the next decade and a half. It’s quite amazing to be thinking and planning so far ahead – such is the nature of Big Science!

And who knows, maybe we’ll finally have those jetpacks by then.

Well, the other day I was stunned to find myself arguing in favour of meetings. I’m concerned that this means I have crossed an invisible line into some sort of Manager-dom. And yet, uncomfortable as the realisation is, I really do feel that some meetings are worthwhile having.

In an ideal world, between 9 am and 6 pm or so, we humans are like robots programmed for our jobs: we tap away at our keyboards, follow instructions and dutifully complete tasks. Our time is perfectly optimised and not a minute is wasted on twitter or the world’s news. In this utopia, projects progress along neatly planned tracks, contractors deliver what they got hired to deliver, on the agreed date. All communication can be done remotely, all questions have an answer, all problems are easily solved with a quick email.

Of course, that’s not how it goes. In the business of building instruments in particular, there’s hardware and software, and teams are made up of a diverse group of people with a variety of duties and backgrounds. Moreover, they’re made up of humans, some of whom don’t like email, others only work on Tuesdays, others have a sick kid at home – and most, if not all, are working on too many different projects to keep on top of everything. Teams are spread over several countries and across timezones, interfaces are complicated.

Regular meetings or conference calls are basically the way to keep the wheels of a project turning. It forces people to bring that particular project to the fore in their cluttered minds and gets them to talk about what’s recently happened. Face to face meetings are essential for people to get to know each other and get stuff done together; it’s almost impossible to ignore someone who’s physically at the same table, rather than just an annoyingly recurring name in your bloated inbox. Travelling to see someone for a meeting also tells them that you care enough about this project to spend a few hours on a train or plane to discuss it with them.

Meetings can of course be a waste of time – if they’re badly planned, badly timed, badly managed – and I’ve shamefully been responsible for some of those myself. But the fact is that they can be extremely effective ways of keeping the wheels turning and making progress. On a personal level, humans are social animals, and we respond better to a real-life human than to the haunting ping of our inboxes – better still, to a real-life human who is enthusiastic and willing to make an effort. That’s why I do my best to dial in to telecons, and these days write many of my blog posts from hotel rooms.

[It's also why videoconferencing really needs to grow up and be useful (or institutes need to invest in the good stuff that simply works as needed): only when it feels like your're actually in the same room, and nothing less, is it delivering what it needs to.]

And while I’m on the subject, there’s only about a week left to sign up for .Astronomy 5, which will take place from 16 to 18 September in Cambridge, MA. It’s been very cool to discuss the plans for the next event (without having to worry about all the local planning!). We’re always looking to diversify in every possible way – skills, ideas, background, geography, profession, gender, age etc. So whatever you can bring, please sign up on the form and tell us about it.

Fortunately, it seems like all the staff were safely evacuated and the telescopes are ok – though, as I understand it, damage assessment is still under way.

Amanda Bauer (astropixie to most of you) has an excellent and extensive set of updates, links and pictures, and her blog post has gathered a large number of comments from astronomers and locals.

Stay safe, Ozzies!