March 11, 2025

Author: one man

One man who's got something to say about that.
Monday Map / Science and Nature

Dark Matter Survey – Monday Map

0

Mapping the cosmos: Dark Energy Survey creates detailed guide to spotting dark matter

“Analysis will help scientists understand the role that dark matter plays in galaxy formation,” so says the official press release.

photo

Image: Dark Energy Survey

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

This is the first Dark Energy Survey map to trace the detailed distribution of dark matter across a large area of sky. The color scale represents projected mass density: red and yellow represent regions with more dense matter. The dark matter maps reflect the current picture of mass distribution in the universe where large filaments of matter align with galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Clusters of galaxies are represented by gray dots on the map – bigger dots represent larger clusters. This map covers three percent of the area of sky that DES will eventually document over its five-year mission.
Dark Matter Map

Image: Dark Energy Survey

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have released the first in a series of dark matter maps of the cosmos. These maps, created with one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, are the largest contiguous maps created at this level of detail and will improve our understanding of dark matter’s role in the formation of galaxies. Analysis of the clumpiness of the dark matter in the maps will also allow scientists to probe the nature of the mysterious dark energy, believed to be causing the expansion of the universe to speed up.

The new maps were released today at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, Maryland. They were created using data captured by the Dark Energy Camera, a 570-megapixel imaging device that is the primary instrument for the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up roughly a quarter of the universe, is invisible to even the most sensitive astronomical instruments because it does not emit or block light. But its effects can be seen by studying a phenomenon called gravitational lensing – the distortion that occurs when the gravitational pull of dark matter bends light around distant galaxies. Understanding the role of dark matter is part of the research program to quantify the role of dark energy, which is the ultimate goal of the survey.

This analysis was led by Vinu Vikram of Argonne National Laboratory (then at the University of Pennsylvania) and Chihway Chang of ETH Zurich. Vikram, Chang and their collaborators at Penn, ETH Zurich, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Manchester and other DES institutions worked for more than a year to carefully validate the lensing maps.

“We measured the barely perceptible distortions in the shapes of about 2 million galaxies to construct these new maps,” Vikram said. “They are a testament not only to the sensitivity of the Dark Energy Camera, but also to the rigorous work by our lensing team to understand its sensitivity so well that we can get exacting results from it.”

The camera was constructed and tested at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and is now mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco telescope at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The data were processed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

The dark matter map released today makes use of early DES observations and covers only about three percent of the area of sky DES will document over its five-year mission. The survey has just completed its second year. As scientists expand their search, they will be able to better test current cosmological theories by comparing the amounts of dark and visible matter.

Those theories suggest that, since there is much more dark matter in the universe than visible matter, galaxies will form where large concentrations of dark matter (and hence stronger gravity) are present. So far, the DES analysis backs this up: The maps show large filaments of matter along which visible galaxies and galaxy clusters lie and cosmic voids where very few galaxies reside. Follow-up studies of some of the enormous filaments and voids, and the enormous volume of data, collected throughout the survey will reveal more about this interplay of mass and light.

“Our analysis so far is in line with what the current picture of the universe predicts,” Chang said. “Zooming into the maps, we have measured how dark matter envelops galaxies of different types and how together they evolve over cosmic time. We are eager to use the new data coming in to make much stricter tests of theoretical models.”

View the Dark Energy Survey analysis.

The Dark Energy Survey is a collaboration of more than 300 scientists from 25 institutions in six countries. Its primary instrument, the Dark Energy Camera, is mounted on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and its data is processed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, ETH Zurich for Switzerland, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2012-39559, ESP2013-48274, FPA2013-47986 and Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0234, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union.

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.

The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

Media contacts:

  • Andre Salles, Fermilab Office of Communication, 630-840-3351, media@fnal.gov

Science contacts:

Arts and Culture / History / music

Alan Lomax Music Archive Going On Line

0

For half a century, musicologist Alan Lomax recorded and preserved priceless cultural treasure.

Thousands of recordings have been digitized for posterity, discovered in the coal country of Kentucky to the cane fields of Haiti, including many legendary voices who would have toiled in obscurity and been forgotten.

With 2015 marking the Alan Lomax centennial, the Association for Cultural Equity is making these recordings available for free.

Read more about that and HERE

Working alongside his folklorist father, John Lomax, the young Alan traveled through the South and West, shining a light on local musicians, allowing the wider world to discover the blues of a prison inmate known as Leadbelly and the ballads of an itinerant laborer named Woody Guthrie.

Those are just two of the voices first recorded by Alan Lomax, out of thousands, and tens of thousands of songs and tunes now preserved for and us and future generations.

The 2002 New York Times Obituary of Alan Lomax is found HERE

Association of Cultural Equity’s website is HERE

The Lomax Family Collection at the American Folklife Center is HERE

 

Humor / News and Commentary

April Fools!

0

I didn’t really mean that. Yes, I did. Not really. Yes. It is April Fools, but these stories actually true.

Even if they concern some serious fools in April.

The BBC Website has collected a series of news items that either seem too foolish to be true including:

A story in the Daily Mail tells us that the Swedish Parliament have backed a ban on unlicensed dancing in public or “illegally moving your feet to music”. Bar, restaurant and nightclub owners without permits can be fined if customers “dance spontaneously and without permission” as a result of a vote in the nation’s parliament. Police say dancing can cause fighting and disorder.

While the daily mirror reports that Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes would like to create a version of the period drama set in the decade of punk rock, flares and disco. It would feature the show’s aristocratic characters “struggling in the 1970s”, Fellowes said. He added that he had several spin-off ideas “up his sleeve”.

You find links to these and several other too odd to be true stories at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32144005

Arts and Culture / music

Don Carlo Expects the Spanish Inquisition

0

An unlooked for side effect at the dress rehearsal of Don Carlo

ghosts of tech weeks past

As I entered the empty house at the Metropolitan Opera and walked down the aisle, I was hit with sudden pangs of tense anxiety and adrenaline when I saw them. There was the lighting board and stage manager’s station set up in the middle of the orchestra. Only now it is, of course, a lighting computer.

I haven’t directed a play for almost 20 years, but in an instant I was reflexively steeling myself for the exhaustion of techs and dress.

Without realizing why, I was compelled to walk back out and get a cup of coffee from the hoity concession stand for $5. But really, it was very good coffee.

I quipped that I would probably start having the dreams again too. And sure enough, I had the endless tech rehearsal disaster dream last night.

Times Change and So Do Sets

I must wonder how many of the old opera buffs there were ruffled by the modern sets of the Met’s Don Carlo, the tale that answers the musical question, ‘Will sacrificing all chance of personal happiness for the sake of duty and honor save you from the Spanish Inquisition?’

They’ve used these sets for some years now, but it takes a long time for hardliners to except change at the Met as anything but heretical.

I thought Bob Crowley’s designs were effective and quite clever, with a touch of Max Reinhardt about some of them, even if I also wonder what the Met’s grand old ultra-realistic sets might have been like.

I must confess, some relief came from knowing I had not the responsibility of making sure none those many performers bumped into the furniture.

DonCarlo at the Metropolitan Opera onemanz.com

photo: Metropolitan Opera

Tickets for Verdi’s Don Carlo start at $27, with 8 performances beginning March 30, through April 25.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor, Nicholas Hytner production.

Starring Carlo Yonghoon Lee and Barbara Frittoli, with Ekaterina Gubanova, James Morris, and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his portrayal of King Philip, and a One Man’s World special mention for the charismatic baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing the role of the Marquis de Posa.

 

Uncategorized

Gas explosion destroys another chunk of NYC history

0

Newsweek provides historical perspective on the impact of Thursday’s devastating explosion and fire in New York City

A wonderful “obituary” of the block that has been decimated by Thursday’s gas explosion

It housed a mayoral residence in the 1850s, reputedly a well-known speakeasy at the end of the Yiddish Broadway era, and of course the gear fab, retro kitsch and clothing store that was Love Saves the Day, which moved out of town in 2009.

“To see no building where there was a building was heartbreaking,” says (LSD’s owner Richard ) Herson, 68. “That was like the heart of the East Village, and I know it’s going to affect a lot of people.”

east-village-explosion B Hider Reuters Newsweek

http://www.newsweek.com/slice-new-york-city-history-goes-smoke-317484

Thanks to Naomi Rosenblatt of Heliotrope Books for the link!

Monday Map / Science and Nature / Uncategorized

Celtic Genes in the Modern UK – Monday Map

1

An article published in the scientific journal Nature reveals discoveries in the genetic history of the British-Celtic people.

celt gene map

Much of today’s British population reflects the geopolitical situation that existed there 1,500 years ago. More startling is the finding that the Celts were not one homogenized, racially connected population.

According to the abstract of the article, genetic data was scrutinized from a “carefully chosen geographically diverse sample of 2,039 individuals from the United Kingdom” and was compared with the “regional genetic differentiation and differing patterns of shared ancestry with 6,209 individuals from across Europe.” The British group consisted of people whose four grandparents all came from the same rural area, suggesting longtime residency.

Distant Relations

I remember seeing a television special about a neolithic corpse found well-preserved in a cave overlooking a community in Northwest England. Scientists were able to get a good sample of his DNA, which they compared to the DNA of a classroom of young students from the nearby town. One person in that classroom, the teacher in fact, turned out to be a match. He was a direct decedent of the ancient Briton found in the cave!

But these recent discoveries show this may not be all that unusual an occurrence.

Two significant surprises arose once the data from this large study was analyzed. First of all, while their findings show an expected migration of Europeans into Southeastern England before and after the Roman occupation, their genetic contribution to the current population is less than half. Even more surprising is the fact that the Celts of Britain were not a single racial group, but truly separate peoples confined to specific regions, which were connected through culture and tradition, but were not actually related to one another.

It has been assumed that the Anglo-Saxons had replaced the Celts after pushing them to the outermost fringes of the landmass through a series of conquests. It is now clear that they mixed and mingled with them to a much larger extent than previously supposed.

Unlike the Viking and Norman invaders who ruled large sections of Britain for many years but left little to no genetic markers among the general population, the Anglo-Saxons lived separately from the original inhabitants for only a short time before they began to intermarry with Celts on their way to creating the modern Englishman.

Rather than being exterminated through war or the introduction of disease, the local Celts more likely were assimilated into the new culture.

Unique to Themselves

But the biggest surprise for me comes when looking into the Celtic connection. The Celts were anything but a single people. The findings “show that in non-Saxon parts of the United Kingdom, there exist genetically differentiated subgroups rather than a general ‘Celtic’ population.”

As the map illustrates, some of the most interesting discoveries include:

The Southeast English contain a notable amount of Celtic blood melded with Anglo-Saxon.

The Cornish, while Celts, are more closely related to the English than previously thought, but remain distinct from the people of Devon, just as the people of Devon remain genetically distinct from the rest of England.

The Welsh bear no genetic relationship with the Scots, and the Northern Welsh are less closely related to the Southern Welsh than the Scots or Cornish are to the English.

The Northern English consist of different groups, all more closely related to their ancient locals than to the southerners, while some are more closely related to the Scots than others.

The two major genetic groups of Northern Ireland remain separate from the “Irish” and from each other after all these years, one having been there since the ancient kingdoms centered on Scotland’s Kintyre peninsula and the Isle of Islay, the other migrating from the Scottish Lowlands around 1600.

Enviable Lineage

As an American, my heritage derived from Scottish, English, and Welsh ancestry is fascinating to me. Since we have a relatively short history on this side of the world, I am also fascinated by the sheer depth of unbroken years where peoples ate, drank, and were merry among their friends and family in places like England for eons before recorded history.

And I find it remarkable and amazing that a place the size of Britain, which is roughly as large as Ohio and the southern part of Michigan, had such unique and different kinds of people, with their own ways and idiosyncrasies, and still do to this very day.

It is hoped these recent findings shall provided added inspiration for the modern resurgence in regional pride and the celebration of local customs and culture across the United Kingdom. For example, only in recent years has the official Received Pronunciation taught at school made room for accents of “regional colour” among the announcers and personalities heard on the BBC. The more the merrier, I say.

And you can read more about these recent scientific findings in the very nice article at the BBC website HERE.

Read the article abstract, see more maps, or purchase the full article at Nature‘s website HERE.

 

music / Uncategorized

NYYS Masters Scheherazade’s Mysteries – Concert Review

0

And Beethoven’s Many Moods

With Joshua Gersen conducting,  guest star Elena Urioste shone bright in Beethoven’s violin concerto, opus 61, followed by an NYYS ensemble rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, op. 35, full of memory, passion, and promise. I couldn’t have been more delighted.

“I have no idea whose credenza Urioste was interpreting at the end of the first movement, but it was punctuated by dramatic double stops, with fluid runs up the neck, and heart-piercing tone in the lengthy sustain she achieved time and again in the highest notes, clear and poignant as tears in sunlight. And all of it crowned by a marvelous passage where she accompanied her own trebly melody with a sonorous counterpoint across the lower strings….

During the interval, the stage lost the featured soloist, and gained considerably more orchestra members, including a second row of bassists and the full complement of percussionists required to achieve the depth and splendor of Rimsky-Korsakov’s lavish tone poem…Their performance across all four movements was magnificent.”

Read the Full Review

Monday Map

Persia, Exotic and Mysterious

0

Monday Map – Persia in 1676, according to John Speed of London

Few places named upon earth evoked more potential for exotic wonderment than Persia,  the crossroads of empires and home to many different strains of ancient peoples.

Persia 1676 antique map

From the ancient Persian empire, through Alexander the Great, to the various waves of Arab and even Chinese influence, to the Great Mongol hoards, Persia had absorbed an astonishing array of cultural influences by the time of the expansion of Islam and Arab influence took permanent hold.

But it was the Hazār Afsānah, a collection of Persian and Indian folk tales compiled in the Middle Ages that insured that Persia would forever be associated with exotic adventure.

Known today as One Thousand and One Nights, the collection was expanded to include other famous tales from that part the region, featuring the likes of Ali Baba and those forty thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor.

A colossal version of this map may be zoomed in on at This Web Site.

And many other antique maps of Persia can be found HERE.

music

Nels Cline and Jules Lage Live

0

Somebody’s been practicing with a metronome! And its Julian Lage and Nels Cline.

A mid-sixties Gibson Barney Kessel model (Nels Cline) and a Manzer Bluenote (Julian Lage) together in some amazing space jam Jazz.

I must confess I only knew of Cline as a guitarist in the progressive folk country phenomenon Wilco. What a great and unexpected turn of the ear. Tasty and oh so impressive.

Their collaboration is available on the record Room, available at iTunes and other music outlets.