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| The Glories of the Southern Skies |
I just have to say Happy Birthday to physicist and musician, fellow Irksider and also 3rd o’March baby Brian Cox. That’s probably the end of the resemblance but not bad for an intro. Actually, we share that birthday with WW1 poet Edward Thomas who wrote a rather good poem celebrating the day, so a present for all 3/3ers (inc. my mate Eddie).
I’ve just listened
to the first of the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage Southern Skies
recorded in Sydney – the lucky lot. And lots of rubbing-it-in about the ‘Majesty
of the Southern Sky’ versus our “arse-end-of-the-galaxy” view from points Northern
(Robin Ince on poetic form, there).
Charles Darwin
clearly agreed: “Amongst the other most remarkable spectacles, which we have
beheld, may be ranked, — the stars of the Southern hemisphere…” (BeagleDiaries). Here’s an image from my setting of those words for chorus/orchestra. I’ll
post a clip of the music at a later date.
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| "We Beheld the Stars" |
The main reason
Brain (typo, but why correct it?), Robin & astrophysicist guests gave for the superiority of the Southern
Skies was the view of the Galactic Centre, the star lanes and darker dust lanes
between them. And lurking in the middle… “Almost every galaxy has a
Super-Massive Black Hole” said Devika Kamath. “I recommend looking at it from a
far distance” was sensible advice from Kirsten Banks. A terrible place, by the
way, for a galactic meeting place for technologically advanced civilisations. @AstroKirsten
gave some nice stories from Australian First Nation star-lore. At one point, she interjected, “You’re right, Brian, but not all the time”.
Fair Enough.
One thing where I hope Brian is wrong (or, scientifically speaking, a test could
be proposed which may show his conjecture to be wrong) is the following. In
another, epoch-defining IMC, episode ‘UFO Special’, broadcast 17/2/20, Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock set up the question with, “If civilisations don’t overlap,
we will never meet the aliens.” Brian replied, “The question is how close the
nearest civilisation (is at present); I think the answer may be outside the
Milky Way and therefore forever inaccessible.”
Thereby
giving me a good steer in the right direction for my lock-down project, ‘how an
engineer would find the Aliens.’ Rule 1 in engineering is ‘relax the
constraints to make the challenge easier’. If you want to find a needle in a
haystack, and you have the chance to remove the haystack, you might find the
job easier (other things being equal). I’ve written about a better place to look in this blog and in the referenced paper. If you have the time (about
20MY).
But there
may be an even better place to look, if you’re a bit impatient. And only those
lucky ‘beholders of the Southern Stars’ can gaze up there (but I recommend a
Space-based observation, for about a hundred years). Can you spot it in the map above? I will write further about the target at another time.
Happy
3/3:
“Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.”
Edward Thomas (d. April 1917, Arras)
Picture credits:
Music: “Remarkable
Sights” copyright DFG
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