Category Archives: Cambridge Society

Oxford and Cambridge Weekend

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Saturday – Oxford Conference

For several years we have been meaning to attend a one day conference at Oxford University on various topics concerned with the History and Philosophy of Physics. These conferences run about three times a year and are organised by the Post Graduate college of St Cross. They appear to be open to anyone.

We dutifully made full use of our old people’s bus passes and parked at the Bicester Park and Ride (still free) and took the S5 into Oxford. We walked to the Martin Woods Lecture Theatre for our days’ conference on The Rise of Big Science in Physics.

Big Physics: The Manhattan Project

The first session was a history lesson given by Professor Helge Kragh from the Niels Bohr Institute. This lecture charted the history of Big Science before, after and including the Manhatten Project. We heard about the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a large telescope built by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse which was the largest telescope in the world from 1845 to 1917.

The liquefaction of Helium was an expensive project first undertaken by Kamerlingh Onnes. In 1904 he founded a very large cryogenics laboratory and invited other researchers to the location. In 1908 he was the first to liquify helium. He also discovered superconductivity and superfluity during this research.

Big science ramped up in cost when high energy synchrotrons were built. These were necessary to understand the building blocks of life. They became more costly as they became more and more powerful.

During the war, the Manhattan Project to build the Nuclear bomb was an expensive project, which involved organisations from across America. In today’s money, this project cost $20 billion. Huge industrial plants were built to separate the uranium isotopes.

We heard how the Americans led the high energy physics until the Europeans got together after the war, coordinated and jointly funded CERN to build powerful cyclotrons. We also learnt a little about the Russians and their spying.

CERN

Dr Isabelle Wingerter from the French National Centre for Scientific Research talked about CERN, and the Large Hadron Collider built to find the Higgs Boson particle. Listening to her talk, you became amazed how these large projects are run. How technology advances during the build, and how the documentation and project management must be an absolute nightmare. Definitely going to visit CERN when we are in the area again.

ITER

Next up was Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the ITER project. ITER is a Nuclear Fusion reactor being built in France. It will be the model for commercial reactors and should be the first reactor to generate more power than put in.

The project is funded by China, EU, Japan, Korea, Russia and the USA. Components for the reactor are built in all the counties and shipped to France to be assembled. The agreement to build the reactor was signed in 2006. All members of the project share all the intellectual property rights generated by the project. The UK participates, and the fusion reactor at Culham is used to prototype technologies to be used in ITER.

This reactor should generate 500MW for 50 MW put in. Commercial reactors will be larger. The reactor works at high temperatures and uses a magnetic field to keep the plasm in place, The device is huge, with 18 Toroidal Field Coils weighing 360 tons each. They are built to a precision of 0.2 mm. The central solenoid is 1,000 tonnes and powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier out of the water.

The work is progressing on time, work started on site in April 2014. The next two years are crucial with most of the large components being delivered and installed. Then comes the long few years in commissioning the equipment. The first plasm should be generated in December 2025.

Lunch

We left for lunch and had soup at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The queue was busy when we arrived. A few from the conference were there also. A thought, each session of the conference was around 30 minutes, with questions afterwards. Some of the questions were rather bizarre. One attendee was asking about documentation, and how to get these large projects documented. He found nobody wanted to update the Wikis. Isabelle said there was nothing better than human interaction and meetings. But what happens years down the line when everyone has left.

Interesting to hear how the published papers now had hundreds to thousands of names as authors. These were the researchers, but not the technicians who built. operated and serviced the machines.

ASTRON

Professor Carole Jackson from Astron, The Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy talked about the mega projects in Astronomy. Here we learnt about the creation of NASA and how they were the birthplace of big astronomical projects. We again heard about the hyper authors, with over a thousand authors named on a paper.

As well as building large radio telescopes, there is collaborative research where telescopes are linked together across the world to make one large machine. Pure Science research requires global participation.

Look Ahead at the Next Decade

Dr Michael Banks a journalist from Physics World, Institute of Physic Publishing, took a look into the next decade.

In 2021 we should have the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. This will work in the Infrared and is a joint project from NASA, EAS and CSA. $8.8 billion

2025 The European Extremely large telescope with a 39.9-meter diameter dish. This will be used to searching for exo planets. $1 billion.

The Square Kilometre Array, thousands of radio antenna, building in South Africa and Australia. (low radio interference) $1 billion

2027 Long baseline Neutrino Facility. A proton accelerator and neutrino detector. Built-in Fermilab and Sanford. To detect the symmetry violations in antimatter. 180 organisations including CERN. Cost $1.5 billion

2027 Hyper Kaniokande, 260,000 tons of pure water in a mine in Japan to detect the symmetry violation of neutrinos. Why is there more matter than antimatter? $0.8 billion.

2035? International Linear Accelerator. 20 km accelerator (250GeV) with two detectors. To study the Higgs Boson in greater detail. To be built in Japan, $7.5 billion

2040? Compact Linear Accelerator 11 km tunnel (380GeV) CERN, further study of the Higgs Boson. $6.0 billion

2040? Future Circular Collider. 100 km tunnel, first stage 250GeV, then 100TeV with protons. Higgs Boson and look for further particles. $9-25 billion

Tea

Tea was taken in the Physics Department. Chatted with a couple of attendees. One was a questioner, who had a bone to pick on documentation. Hopefully, he won’t be at the evening meal.

Closing

Professor Frank Close closed the proceedings with a summary of the days’ events.

Conference Dinner

Dinner was held at St Cross College. We arrived in plenty of time and sat in the Common Room waiting for pre-dinner drinks. Close examination of the pictures on the wall, which had all been bought in a few years from a bequest. The College was founded in 1965, admitting its first five graduate students a year later. The College moved to its present location on St Giles in 1981.

After preprandial drinks, we went into dinner. Rosemary and I seemed to be seated in quite a good position on the table. Near to the organisers and some of the speakers. Our dinner, which included wine was.

Twice-baked cheddar souffle
Confit of duck with spiced plums, celeriac mash and flageolet bean ragout.
Vanilla baked cheesecake with roasted spiced plums
Coffee, mints & petit fours

It was an enjoyable evening with lots of conversation. We left and caught the S5 bus home. Busses seem to run late into the evening and well past midnight in Oxfordshire.

Sunday – Cambridge Society

Next day was the Berkshire branch of the Cambridge Society AGM. It had been scheduled to be the last AGM. This was to be the winding up AGM as there was no one wanting to stand as committee members. Thankfully two new members were found and we are going forward.

The meeting was held at Hurley Village Hall. We held the AGM, over quite quickly. We then ate lunch, each of has brought along a dish. Then there was a talk on a cruise from the UK, to France around Spain and back again. This did not persuade Rosemary to undertake any more cruises. We might visit Bordeaux though.

I came away not a member of the committee. We were asked to look at whether it was possible to organise a tour of the Space Centre at Wescott.

A walk around Green Park, Reading

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A tour to Reading with the Cambridge Society on a rather wet and unpromising day. We met near to Green Park, parking in the CostCo a short walk from the wind turbine. We then spent the next hour standing in the rain, listening to a talk about Wind Turbines. Interesting to hear the turbine paid for itself in 7 years and has a life span of at least 25 years. The most carbon polluting part of the turbine was the concrete foundation, which could be reused by a replacement turbine. When the wind speed gets up to 70mph, the blades are feathered and its stops generating. If left operating at higher wind speeds, the blades would bend back and start to impact the column as they rotated..

We then went for a walk around Green Park, and the local new housing. Green Park has some footpaths totally shielded away from the office buildings. So you are walking down a muddy tree and bush lined path, and through the leaves, you could see the high tech buildings. A lovely pond centres the park. All the buildings housed Tech companies, Cisco, Symantec, Huawei, Veritas to name a few.

After the walk, we headed by car for lunch at Cunning Man. Not far away, but seemingly miles by road. Very busy pub serving lunches. Not sure now what I ate, but it was fine.

Culham Centre for Nuclear Fusion

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Another trip organised by the Berkshire branch of the Cambridge Society was a visit to the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. This was not exclusive to the Cambridge Society, we populated two groups of around 10 people for the tour. There were several other groups visiting.

We arrived in bright sunshine, checked in at the gatehouse and drove to the visitor car-park. We started off with a short talk and then we were on the way to see MAST. This was a British device looking at new ways to contain the hot plasma. It was undergoing an upgrade, adding new containment electromagnets, and a redesigned device to remove the gas and debris from the fusion reaction. It was not operational and was being dismantled to fix a leak which was letting in air. Hopefully, it would be up and running in a couple of years.

After MAST we saw JET, which is still at the forefront of Nuclear Fusion research. It still holds the record for generating the most power. It also had recently been upgraded and was building up to break new power records. It is funded by a collaboration of European countries and was testing out manufacturing ideas to go into the ITER reactor in France. For instance, the robotics required to perform maintenance tasks, such as replacing the Beryllium lining tiles. When a test is run on JET, it can consume 2% of the UK national electricity supply.

I find it amazing how old these devices are, and they are continually being upgraded as the science improves. ITER  will be the first Nuclear Fusion reactor which will run and test out a commercial reactor engineering build. After it has been built and tested, the first fusion reactors may enter service. This is still 30 years away so it is likely I won’t be around.

After the tour, we left in the torrential rain for the pub, The Swan in Sutton Courtney. Nice meal, and the company of some Cambridge alumni for interesting conversation.

 

Berkshire Cambridge Society Annual Lunch

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We drove to Henley Business School for the annual Cambridge Society’s Berkshire branch annual lunch. The day was bright and sunny. We arrived in time for a glass of fizz before lunch. The lunch is a three-course buffet before a speech by a relevant speaker. This year we had  Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the previous vice-chancellor from Cambridge University. He gave a fascinating speech about the future of universities. He felt the elite universities would succeed, but some of the smaller universities were likely to fail. As for Cambridge, he did not see the number of undergraduates would increase. It was not economic, it costs £18,000 a year to teach a student at Cambridge, and the revenue was just £9,000. A definite loss. The proposed reduction in student loans from £9,000 to £6,000 was going to put additional pressure on Cambridge University revenues. Thankfully the Cambridge colleges have some large endowments which make up this funding shortfall.

Fawley Hill Museum

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The Berkshire Cambridge Society visited Fawley Hill Museum on an open day on the 4th June 2017 on one of the four annual slots available for community groups to visit and ride on Sir William McAlpine’s private railway on his estate at Fawley, Oxfordshire.  A life-long railway buff, Sir William has over the years amassed an extraordinary collection of redundant railway artefacts and memorabilia and now has his own station, engines (steam and diesel), rolling stock and 1.25 miles of track. There are about 12 trips a day and each trip takes about 15 minutes. Visitors are free to travel as often as they wish. There is also a magnificent carousel, which was working, a museum, a model railway and an animal sanctuary. 

We rode the Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0ST No.31 and the Class 03 0-6-0 diesel locomotive, no D2120, on its first official passenger outing. All great stuff.

 

 

Berkshire Cambridge Society lunch

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The Berkshire Cambridge Society (BCS) 2016 Lunch was held at the Henley Business School.  Members from both the Oxfordshire and Berkshire societies attended the lunchtime meal.  The dinner was a buffet dinner, like the previous year, with very clever carved vegetable decorations.  The highly interesting guest speaker was John Baxter, former Group Head of Engineering BP and now Chairman of the Advanced Nuclear Research Centre and Visiting Professor in Nuclear Engineering at Strathclyde University.

 

Cambridge donors luncheon

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Made our way over to Cambridge for the buffet lunch given to Gonville and Caius donators.  Met up with Richard & Andrea   Saw the new Master of Caius Sir Christopher Hum MA, KCMG.  Master from January 2006. Previously had a career in HM Diplomatic Service,culminating in postings as British Ambassador to Poland (1996-1998) and to China (2002-2005). Continues to follow the politics, economics and international relations of contemporary China. 

 

Marylebone Cricket Club

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Our first Cambridge Society trip of the year was to the Marylebone Cricket Club.  We were counted in at the Grace Gate and congregated in the Tavern stand.  We were split into groups of 25 for the tour.

First stop was the pavilion, where we entered into the Long Room.  When matches are playing, the long room would have over 200 people standing and seated.  In the centre of the long room are the doors out to the wicket.  The players would have to come down the stairs from the changing rooms, walk through the crowded long room to the doors in the centre, and out onto the ground.  The trip back would either be elating or embarrassing depending on the outcome of the players innings.

Next we moved on to the committee room, where we sat and listened to the history of the MCC.  Rosemary was not overly impressed by the quality of the committee tables.  There was a lovely gavel, looking like a small cricket ball and bat.

Next on to the home changing rooms, where all the centuries scored in test matches by England are posted.  One century from Bill Edrich, and two from John Edrich.

Back down the stairs and up again to the museum.  The shutters on the entrance were jammed, so we had to take the back entrance through various small narrow corridors.  Here we saw the ashes and lots of memorabilia from test matches and the history of cricket.  There were odd exhibits, like the stuffed sparrow, which had been killed by a cricket ball.  There were many photographs of players, and numerous signed cricket bats.

Now we walked around the ground to the nursery end, where there is a small field for practice and for playing lesser matches, along with the indoor cricket ground and ECB offices.  At this end, there are the Edrich and Compton stands, these are not tall and must not be increased in size.  Making them bigger would hide the tress in the background.  To this aim the National Westminster Media Centre is tall, but build on two towers so that the trees can be seen under it.  We took the lift up to the Media Centre where we can an excellent view of the ground.  The Media Centre was a large monocoque aluminium structure, which was build, be a shipbuilder in Torquay.

Final visit was the Lords Tavern for a beer and lunch.

While in London we paid a visit to Alfies antique fair.  Here we saw lots of gorgeous goodies.  There seemed to be a lot of fantastic lighting from the 60s.  I was quite taken by it, until I spied the price on one rather small light fitting of £450.

Transformation Alumni weekend in Cambridge

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Transformation Alumni weekend in Cambridge.  Stayed at Steve’s old college, Cauis, in an old building off Harvey Court.   Slight delay to departure for Steve to find credit cards, only prolonged by him deciding we’d go in Rosemary’s car so she could “drop him off at Heathrow” on Sunday so he could catch evening flight to Saudi for work.  Rosemary thought Heathrow not on normal route home and how she’d rather not drive to Heathrow and risk humiliation of going round and round in circles prior to finding scenic route home, and she also felt tea party at CUP infinitely more appealing.

Arrived in Cambridge to find had somehow lost alumni booklet etc (which has not materialized since).  Checked in at Harvey Court with no problems (what do you expect at such an establishment?) and walked to the Law Faculty at the Sidgwick site to collect our own separate itineraries. 

Both of us off to the Scott Polar Research Institute to learn about the poles, exploration thereof and current work of the institute.   Large confusion on R’s part over differences between North Pole, Pole of Inaccessibility and the drifting North Magnetic Pole.  Views of the poles on the dome ceilings, executed in 1930s, in the main hall.  Fascinating to note that the North Pole was first seen only on 12 May 1926 and how several aspects of the North Pole dome now out of date in a few years of its painting.  Irritating to note that Steve had forgotten camera. 

Lunch at Browns and then to the Herbarium to hear about 300 years of plants and history.  We heard how Botany professor John Stevens Henslow had taught and later recommended his pupil Charles Darwin as the naturalist on The Beagle.  We were privileged to see actual plant specimen collected by Darwin (to Henslow’s standards) and now extinct.  But the most striking aspect of the talk was the enthusiasm of Curator Prof John Parker and Assistant Curator Gina Murrell.  Their recent work was into how Henslow’s botanical investigations on the nature of species helped Darwin in his evolutionary thoughts.  We caught up with them again at the evening reception and were enthralled to learn how Gina had found vital Darwin material in an off-site “archive” due for demolition.  She remarked how the line between work and leisure was very blurred for her.  What a marvellous state to be in.

Enthusiasm at this last event, meant both of us missed our next engagement.  Steve decided we should go to M&S and, due to existing article of clothing looking as though he’d slept in it for several days, R should find him a new suit for Saudi trip.  Major discoveries at M&S: a) their inches are smaller than they used to be and hence larger than normal sizes needed and b) ties cost a small fortune.  Lessons learnt are to not drink beer & generally diet and, when going on a business trip, not leave ties at home. (Later heard, one of the others going to Saudi lost his luggage, so, as suggested by R, S should have taken both suits and hence perhaps clothed the lad who’d lost his wardrobe.)

Opening Reception in the Fitzwilliam where we were wined and canaped and heard the Vice-Chancellor talk.  Quick wander around the Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts, before heading back to Sidgwick for A Philosophical Evening (with cheese & wine).   Four names proposed as Cambridge’s greatest philosopher, with Francis Bacon winning.  Wine and cheese not on a par with that the Reception.

Saturday saw Steve into Cosmology and big bangs in general while Rosemary took a more catholic selection of talks.  Steve started with “Origins of Cosmology” and Rosemary with “Egypt from A – Z” by Dr Toby Wilkinson.  Egyptian talk was totally brilliant, cohesive and engrossing.  Later learnt the Berks branch of the Cambridge Society is trying to book him for a talk.  We coincided for “Journey from the centre of the earth” and divided for Steve to hear Dr Simon Singh’s “Big Bang: The History of the Universe” and Rosemary to hear Claire Tomalin speak on Pepys. Steve discovered two books entitled Big Bang had been published this year, one of them more personally involving than Dr Singh’s version.  Rosemary discovered she needed to read both Pepys and Ms Tomalin’s biography of the man immediately and also how amazingly young Ms Tomalin looked (she couldn’t possibly have matriculated in 1951, could she?).

Sandwich lunch before David Starkey’s highly entertaining, and with only (for him) a few mildly controversial remarks, “That was the year that was” about the Gunpowder plot of 1605 and the never ending problems of religions in society.

Simon Singh, David Starkey, the vice-chancellor and Griff Rhys Jones were the guests for David Frost’s “Tea with Frost” discussion.  Steve briefly shot to fame as being, in common with Griff RJ, one of the occupiers of the Lady Mitchell Hall back in the summer of 1973 and one of a very select few in the Hall to confess to being so.  As we left, one old boy said to Steve (having read Steve’s label) “I’ve got your number, Blasdale!”.  He later confessed to being a Millwall supporter and therefore not entirely spotless himself.

Drinks at The Eagle (rather expensive but reasonable beers) with Catherine, Peter and David from the Berks branch before a very good Thai meal with them and (to quote) “so to bed”.

Sunday, lost several things in the room in space of just a few minutes, but finally collated all possessions into the car and walked into Cambridge for breakfast at The Copper Kettle. Steve off to Lucy Cavendish college (aimed at “mature”  ie over 21, female students.  Over 21?  Mature?  What are we?) and Rosemary to private alumni viewing of The Cambridge Illuminations.  Sublime.  Trinity curator superbly informative.  One day R will get the book.  Steve joined her for a quick check on her favourite painting –

Sandwich lunch before tour of the cast gallery (later discovered Selina did NOT go there while attending the Classics Conference in July.) Shameful lack of dedication.

Hideous drive down M11, M25 not too bad, but low lying, glaring, setting sun blamed for short detour on M4 during return trip home.  Steve made his flight.