The accelerating universe: still blowing minds

A few months ago, the wif and I were sipping bad beer in a hole-in-the-wall bar, part of a weekly queer happy hour of friends and friends-of-friends.  I had planned an evening of kvetching about officemates and such, but instead, I got sucked into this intense conversation with a new acquaintance about dark energy.  I tried to keep up with her rapid-fire questions, by explaining about the expanding universe, how it's expanding ever faster and faster, that we don't know why, but blame some sort of dark energy or cosmological constant.  Basically I blew her mind.  Didn't mean to.  Really just wanted to talk about politics or TV or the LA Dodgers ownership fiasco.  But I blew her mind.

This was something she'd never heard of, but was absolutely fascinated by.  And this was a well-read, well-educated, news-following person.

Which made me realize that, although astronomers have (reluctantly) accepted that the concordance cosmology is what our experiments tell us over and over again is true, the public really hasn't internalized it yet.  Even though the accelerating universe was the 2011 Nobel Prize.   Over and over while giving public talks, I'm asked about The Big Crunch.  And I have to say, "That's so 1975!  Not only will the Universe never contract into a Big Crunch, it's flying apart!"

So what's up with that?  Are we just bad at explaining stuff?  Or is the behavior and ultimate fate of the Universe really not something every educated person should know?

Astronomers to recognize Frank Kameny's contribution

This week is the superbowl of astronomy:  American Astronomical Society (AAS) winter meeting.  Several thousand astronomers will be networking, sharing new results, and awarding prizes for standout contributions to our science.

At the meeting, the AAS will honor LGBTQ civil rights leader and former astronomer Dr. Frank Kameny with a certificate recognizing his contributions to society.  While the grass-roots effort to honor Dr. Kameny got started while he was alive, sadly he passed away before the award could be given.   Several queer astronomers will accept the certificate in memory of Dr. Kameny.

I wish Frank had lived to see the ceremony, or that astronomers had gotten their acts together to honor him earlier.  After Frank was fired in 1957 from US government astronomy job for being gay, he walked away from astronomy.  After all, he had no recourse -- homosexuality was considered a psychosis. Frank played a key role in changing all that, and those of us who live openly and honestly owe him big time.   But I wonder if he missed his former profession --  taking data on the mountaintop, analyzing it late at night in the lab, going to lectures, trying to figure out how the Universe works.  Anyone know if Frank talked about this?  Would he be satisfied to be be recognized by his former profession?

The kind folks at AAVSO will be bringing their signed copy of Frank's astronomy PhD thesis, as a sort of physical memory of Frank, to be there when his citation is read.  Not sure if that's cheesy or profound, but I like it.

Will astronomers recognize Frank Kameny's contributions?

Dr. Frank Kameny is the most famous former astronomer that astronomers don't know.  Within the gay rights' community, he was a pioneer:  co-founder of the Mattachine society (an early gay rights organization); a scientific conscience that challenged the American Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a disorder as grounded in prejudice rather than science; an agitator to remove the ban on gays from serving in the government or holding security clearances.  Moreover, Dr. Kameny was a moral force who led by example, showing that gay people didn't need to hide in the shadows, grateful not to be beaten up.  Rather, we could stand up and demand fair treatment and equality.  For most of the last 50 years, that was a radical notion.

Dr. Kameny was fired from government service in 1957 for being gay.  In 2009, the White House formally apologized for his firing.  While this was a big deal in the gay rights' community, it didn't get much noticed by astronomers.  I find that very curious.  After all, the 2010 Decadal Survey (our every-ten-year examination of our profession's priorities) notes that "not all highly capable students" who are "trained in astronomical research" "will take up long-term positions in astronomy" (what a wishy-washy statement on the job market!), and that therefore students should be "educated and exposed to issues of public policy."  So, students: go read about Frank.  Professors:  include him in your "exploring career paths" workshop.  (You have one, right?)  

Two new Facebook groups seek to recognize Frank's accomplishments.  You can buy him a drink to thank him for his activism (actually it helps pay his utilities, but who's counting?), or you can support the creation of a Frank Kameny prize by the American Astronomical Society. 

Activist Frank Kameny recognized at the White House

Activist (and astronomer) Frank Kameny was honored at a White House ceremony as part of Pride month.

The U.S. government officially apologized to Dr. Kameny, who was fired by the United States Civil Service Commission 52 years ago because of his sexual orientation.

"With the fervent passion of a true patriot, you did not resign yourself to your fate or quietly endure this wrong," said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management. "With courage and strength, you fought back. And so today, I am writing to advise you that this policy, which was at odds with the bedrock principles underlying the merit-based civil service, has been repudiated by the United States Government, due in large part to your determination and life's work, and to the thousands of Americans whose advocacy your words have inspired."

Dr. Kameny was instrumental in getting homosexuality dropped from the manual of mental disorders used by American psychiatrists. He also fought a long battle with the US government over the denial of security clearances to gay people, a battle finally won under the Clinton administration.

He was also a professional astronomer, until he was thrown out of the Army Map Service. Here's his publication list on ADS. As a professional astronomer and a lesbian, I'm grateful to Dr. Kameny and the other pioneers for making it possible for folks like me to live openly.

Don't miss the Perseid meteor shower tonight!

Advice on how to see the Perseids can be found at Sky and Telescope.

Slackers: the shower lasts several days (I saw some great Perseids last week), so if you miss Monday night, try Tuesday.

100th post, HST proposals, and same-sex marriage

Three quick things:

1) The California Supreme Court just heard oral arguments about same-sex marriage. At issue: Is our separate-but-equal Domestic Partner registration a sufficient consolation prize, or do the wif & me deserve equal rights? (BTW, if I had a dollar for every time a straight person asked me, "What's a DP?", then I'd have about $25. Equal my ass.)

You can watch the video of oral arguments, or try this alternate video source. That's my plan for the evening, while running S/N calculations, b/c, after all, #2...

2) Hubble Space Telescope proposals are due Friday at 8pm EST. Ack. It never ends.

3) This is my 100th post. Lately I've been reluctant to post new content, out of a fear that blogging might hurt my job prospects. Few things are confidential in academia; academics generally view blogging with suspicion (I remember a young prof in my dept arguing that they shouldn't hire anyone who finds time to blog); and blogging with a minority viewpoint makes the enterprise still more suspicious. Please feel free to talk me out of this mindset.

Now, back to Hubble proposals.

Don't forget tonight's total lunar eclipse!

Don't forget tonight's total lunar eclipse, my peeps!

As the map at left shows, the eclipse will be visible from Europe, West Africa, and the Americas. (map source and related article, with lots of useful details, at Sky & Telescope.)

You'd think professional astronomers would be vigilant about such natural phenomena, but half the folks in my department didn't know. And I learned about it from my humble local newspaper. I guess our thoughts are focused too narrowly on redshift three.

What a Wonderful World

Courtesy Kaguya, a Japanese lunar orbiter, here's a family portrait. My family, yours, everybody. The Full Earth.
Click on the image for a higher-res version. Images courtesy Universe Today.

NASA's roadmap: bad news for high-energy astro?

A new report's out from a National Research Council panel, which prioritizes missions in NASA's Beyond Einstein portfolio. (Beyond Einstein is "NASA's research roadmap for five proposed mission areas to study the most compelling questions at the intersection of physics and astronomy.") Such panels influence what missions get funded, and which get the scrap-heap.

The verdict: JDEM (a dark energy cosmology mission) is the highest priority. Then LISA (gravity wave detection from space). As for high-energy observational astronomy: screw any high-energy X-ray telescope mission. And Con-X is too interesting and important to all astronomy to spend Beyond Einstein money on it.

Links: the run-down from Steinn, and the text of the NRC report.

Opinions on what this means for the future of high-energy astronomy?

Phoenix launched!

The Phoenix mission launched this weekend, and is now zooming towards Mars. It's headed for Mars' northern polar region, to dig into the soil and water ice. It's a big, heavy lander, not a light, air-bag cushioned rover.

It contains duplicate experiments from the crashed Mars Polar Lander and the canceled Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander -- thus the resurrected mission name.





In other space news, don't miss the Perseid meteor shower! It should peak the night of Sunday, Aug. 12, which is a new moon, and thus extra dark! But because the Perseid debris cloud is quite large, any night around the 12 should work -- just get out there after midnight and look up!

Hooray for dark skies

My earlier post on dark-sky communities for amateur astronomers has spawned a long discussion of light pollution at Bad Astronomy. I'm cross-posting my contribution here:

Kudos to everyone who noted that dark-sky retirement communities are a neat fringe movement, but that it’s more important to reduce light pollution where average people live.

I recently flew back from Tucson, AZ where I had an observing run @ Kitt Peak National Observatory. Tucson’s population is half a mil, but you wouldn’t know it standing on Kitt Peak, only 55 miles away, where I enjoyed dark skies, the summer Milky Way, and two nights of data-taking scientific happiness. How is this possible?

Here’s the answer. Take any flight into Tucson at night. You’ll descend over streets evenly lit by regular sodium circles. The city is well-lighted. So what’s different from other cities? Then you figure it out. No lights glare UP, at you in the plane. Street-lights aim DOWN, at the road, and wear hats to stop light from traveling upward. Ditto for billboard lights (aimed down, not up). Car dealerships are lighted, but not blindingly. Tucson has lights. They’re just intelligently placed. They save energy, energy, & dark skies.

As a result, the countryside 5 miles outside of Tucson, AZ, is far, far darker darker than 5 miles outside my home-town of 10,000. SMART lighting, that’s the ticket. And the solution is for ordinary people to get their town councils to adopt lighting ordinances that prevent waste and reduce light pollution. Check out the noble people at Dark Sky.org, and raise a ruckus down at town hall.

The dome in the backyard

Unlike most sciences, astronomy has oodles of serious, hard-core, non-professional practioners.

Check out the NYT article about 3 communities built specificially for amateur astronomers, in dark sites, with strict light pollution controls. In particular, Portal, AZ is beautiful -- we spent hours at a campground watching a small meteor shower and star-hopping with our birding binos.