Brian York's Life

Astronomy, Science, etc.

Written on June 19, 2008

Well, my second entry. I guess that means I haven’t given up that quickly on this particular project. So I’m either a little bit stubborn or actually enjoying writing this. I’m almost afraid that it’s the latter, since that’ll mean that I’ll probably spend an inordinate amount of time on writing these, which wouldn’t be good at all. On the other hand, having something to do with my time, in case I ever have a lot of spare time and nothing to do (the chances of which are rather slim), might be a good idea.

So onwards to my actual point (in case any of you aren’t already thoroughly aware of this, I tend to be wordy. Very wordy). I’m probably going to end up making a few changes to this journal as time passes (well, ok, this isn’t my main point yet, but it is one of my main points). While the ‘life’ journal is going to (almost certainly) remain simply me talking about what’s going on in my life (and whatever else interests me), I’ll likely be creating a second journal (whose name I’ll think up later) involving less autobiography and considerably more in the way of thoughts, commentary, and whatever else. It’ll also help me with putting together what I still see as the main point of this site, which is its content (sadly out-of-date content, but that should change soon). My next project (before this one) is to put up what I have of the Triremes in Space set, and then see what changes I’ve made to both the Jumpstrike universe and its game (Jumpstrike has become far more a setting than a game lately, so I may look it over with an eye towards chopping out the tactical game entirely if it wouldn’t be fun anymore).

So, onwards to my main topic: Astronomy. There are a few things I’ve been thinking about lately, and they seem to tie in with what I’m doing right now (and with physics in general, and the sciences in general for that matter). So I’m going to talk about them for a bit, since I really don’t have a heck of a lot else that I should be doing at the moment.

  1. General Astronomy-based stuff

    Ok, this field (like lots of fields these days) seems to have a bit of a problem with over-specialization. What I mean by that is that, often enough, people in the field work in one narrowly-defined area, and never actually move beyond it, or are completely clueless outside of their comfort zone.

    Take me for example. I’m trying to avoid that problem (and my supervisor is being extraordinarily helpful, up to and including suggesting ways for me to train in different sub-fields), but the fact remains that I’m working in a very small area (Damped Lyman Alpha systems) which is so far away from my previous very small area (Interstellar meteoroids) there might as well be no overlap at all. Part of that is strictly physical (DLAs are galaxies that happen to be between us and Quasi-stellar objects (Quasars), and are thus lit up by the QSO, as a result of which we can study their internal composition and learn about what the universe was like many billions of years ago, while interstellar meteoroids are less than 1/1000 of 1 gram and come from within a few hundred lightyears of the solar system (vs. a few billion for DLAs)), but part is also that they’re observed with different methods, and have different data reduction techniques (etc.) It doesn’t help that my meteor work was theoretical and the DLA work is observational, since that just gets me into that other big divide in science as a whole — theory vs. practice.

    In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that Astronomy is a really bad area for this stuff. Not only is there the theoretical/observational divide, and the various divides according to what you’re studying, there’s also a divide based on what methods you use to observe (spectral vs. image, radio vs. optical vs. microwave vs. x-ray etc.) So, for example, my supervisor, who’s actually done a fair bit outside her specialization (like our current project, which is looking at Diffuse Interstellar Bands, which have only really been looked for close by, in DLA systems) has no real knowledge of how to do radio astronomy at all, which means that we’re going to have to learn it (some DLAs are best observed in radio).

    Now, some of this is just what happens when you have a lot of specialized knowledge (and can’t learn everything), but some of it seems to be needlessly enforced by people restricted or lazy. I’m not really sure what can be done about it, aside from (myself) trying to at least keep up with other fields and learn as many of them as I can, and advising other people to do the same, but it’s a problem that I’m really running head-on into at the moment, so it’s on my mind right now.

  2. Broadening my focus

    Ok, the same thing happens elsewhere in physics. As expected, probably. And it’s just as much of a problem there. But the other problem is that people outside of physics don’t know anything about it, and often seem to actively resist gaining such knowledge (or just assume that it would be too hard). In some cases, this is likely true (heck, I find Quantum Mechanics hard going, and I’m a physicist), but the general principles (and, perhaps, more important) outlooks of physics should be understandable to most. So why do people avoid learning it?

    Part of it is the fault of bad physicists, and bad physics teachers. I’ve certainly known the occasional person who seemed to delight in making things harder than they had to be, and that really ends up helping no one. There’s also a reluctance to even try to appeal to people outside the field, or teach them as much as can be taught (which varies — a science student should be able to absorb most of the basic stuff, including the math (calculus mostly), while, as important as the math is, a non-calculus-based (and even non-mathematical version) of physics might be teachable fairly easy — the important thing to get is the methodology of physics. The commitment to finding out, and (finally) accepting the results of the experiments (at least until more accurate results appear).

    Of course, doing that is likely to be hard. And I probably shouldn’t talk about it until I’ve tried. So I’ll stop for now, and just note it as a problem.

  3. And now, on to science

    Nothing that I said above is exclusive to physics (except that physics has a slightly higher math content required for even the most basic results), and the same problems exist in the other sciences as well. There’s a lack of interest in learning about them. There’s a general perception that they’re too hard (or, almost as damaging sometimes, too easy). And there are people who just aren’t trying (or have given up trying) to reach out and educate. And I don’t know what to do about it any more than I did above. It just frustrates me sometimes.

  4. Why is thinking science is too easy also dangerous?

    Feynman called it “Voodoo science”. Carl Sagan used the term “pseudo-science” (as do many today). And both terms are rather over-used, and applied over-broadly (and sometimes incorrectly). Whatever you call it, it’s people taking the forms and language of science without the substance. Sometimes, there’s a deliberate attempt to deceive. Sometimes, there’s just a lack of knowledge. But always it’s a problem, since people who haven’t had a certain amount of science education often can’t tell the difference. And this can cause people, even very intelligent people, to mistrust science in general because of the way it’s been misused (of course, a lack of knowledge of statistical practices can cause the same thing even without bad science being involved, as can a rush to apply scientific discoveries in the form of technologies that don’t work, but that’s another topic entirely).

    The problem is that doing good science takes time, knowledge, effort, an resources. But people who’ve been exposed to the discoveries of the sciences without their methodologies, especially the stories of scientists from past centuries who made important discoveries without using much in the way of anything except pen and paper, can (and have) come to the conclusion that the theory you can come up with in five minutes at home, even if you can’t test it, is worth as much as any other theory and should be investigated. Sometimes, very rarely, this is true. Most of the time, there are hidden (sometimes not that deeply hidden) problems in the math, or the theorist didn’t bother to do the math, or the theory contradicts some extremely well-accepted (and well-verified) principles (and is thus unlikely to simply be accepted), or it’s a trivial result of a theory that already exists. Alternately, the theory can’t be falsified (tested), doesn’t predict anything new (or at all), or is simply otherwise worthless. Such flaws, however, while easy enough to spot given the necessary knowledge, can be extremely hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have that knowledge. And thus we create a group of people who are interested in science, who enjoy thinking about it, but, because they haven’t been exposed to the methodology or underlying principles (often mathematical), become disenchanted or convinced that they’re being persecuted for not belonging to the establishment.

    Now, granted I’m oversimplifying (I’m a physicist after all, and thus willing to assume that a cow is a spherical point mass in order to make the math easier), and granted that heterodox theories sometimes have been rejected out of hand, but it does no one any good to give people the impression that it’s still easy to do good science at home without collaborators or a solid grounding in theory. It also really doesn’t do anyone any good to give the impression that the important part of science is coming up with neat new theories. Without experimental results to explain (or predict (actually, especially predict)), wide distribution for the purposes of easy testing by multiple groups, and a willingness on the part of both theorists and experimentalists to work together on figuring out what’s going on, modern science doesn’t happen. Oh yes, and error detection and analysis. Those are absolutely crucial. There will be errors, and uncertainty, in anything you try to do in the sciences, and the surest sign of the amateur (more than that, the amateur who isn’t worth taking seriously) is not realizing this, not taking steps to avoid it where possible, and (most especially) not being extremely open in experimental reports about what was done to deal with uncertainty, and how much there likely still is. And yes, every scientist forgets that on occasion. And there’s the temptation to gloss over possible errors in trying to get your work published or your theories accepted. But you try not to. Modern science simply can’t function without everyone involved doing there best to discover and publicize the limits of the information that they’ve produced.

    Yes, it was different 150 years ago. That’s mostly because there were a lot of fundamental ideas which hadn’t been discovered or explored yet, and which could be explored (not only theorized on but tested) fairly easily (for the time, at least, which is all that really matters). It isn’t so easy now, because most of the more obvious stuff has already been discovered. You can do the double-slit experiment that underlies so many quantum paradoxes with a laser pointer and a CD (although the second part, where you measure at the slits themselves, will be more difficult). But you’re unlikely to be able to look for the new fundamental subatomic particle you’ve just thought up without time on a particle accelerator. Time that costs millions of dollars per minute. Time which grant committees aren’t going to give you unless you can show them that you know what you’re doing, what you’re looking for, and how and why you expect to find it. Unfortunately (and, I think, no one is sadder about it than those of us in the sciences) the age of the amateur scientist is largely over (in most areas at least). There are still places where someone with even basic training can make fundamental discoveries (soft matter physics (foams and bubbles) being one I can come up with right away, and it also has the advantage that all you need to test most theories are two sheets of plexiglas, water, soap, and a camera (and a lot of time and patience)), but these areas are smaller and harder to find, and even there you’re likely to need at least basic undergraduate calculus to make much of a start.

    So what can be done? I’m not sure. I’ve just been thinking about this stuff and, well, both getting depressed and getting the feeling that there’s some sort of solution that I just can’t quite put my finger on. And, with everything else that’s going on, what I can do (at least) is write about it, and hope that someone else will figure out the solution. If there is one.

Wow, that was long. And not a little depressing. I had no idea that it would end up being quite like that (although I should probably have guessed) when I started writing it. Oh well, such things will happen I suppose….

Now, on to something a bit happier. I’ve recently been thinking about the advice that I, as a new graduate student in astronomy, would give to someone who’s either in high school or just starting their undergraduate work, and who’s thinking about astronomy as a possible direction. Basically, I can summarize it thus.

I think that’s all about that. Hopefully it will prove useful to someone. Wow, is it ever quiet here. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been here alone for this long. Usually, between the four of us and the animals (well, the cat — snakes don’t make much noise) this place is much louder. I guess 8-year-olds do that to a house. It’s somewhat spooky actually.

Recently my fiancé mentioned something in her own journal. Specifically she said

For anyone considering becoming married, I have some well thought out advice.

Elope!

Morgan, in “Blue and Green Checker Board Stiches”

I’d just like to take this opportunity to point out that she’s absolutely and completely correct. Heed her advice. This has been a public service announcement. And that’s it for me, for now. And this was in non-philosophical mode…

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Entry last updated July 16, 2004

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