This is my last column for 2009, and what a year it has been! The heaviest blow to my own serenity was the loss of two dear friends—Tom Van Flandern passed away in January, and Tony Bray in July. They are sorely missed. Geoffrey Burbidge and Halton Arp are both currently unwell, suffering the rigours of four score years and more, and Patrick Moore turns 87 in March. I have booked my flight to visit him for his birthday, and am so looking forward to spending some time with him at Farthings. There was tremendous cheer in 2009 as well of course, and leading the race was the completion of The Static Universe, my collaboration with Patrick Moore, and the bonus of having it accepted by prominent science publisher Apeiron. If I say so myself, it is a tour de force, and has been very well received by those who have seen the pre-publication draft. I look forward to some well-considered responses from readers, even serious rebuttals. If I’m wrong, tell me so!

 As is customary now, I shall devote this column to a summary of the year’s Breaking News. In January, I ran this letter from Chip Arp:

“Dear Hilton,

There is terrible news about Tom Van Flandern. He was brought to the hospital with blood clots in his lungs and expected to die within the hour. A very risky blood thinner avoided that threat. But the cause remains colon cancer metastasised - untreatable. I talked to him in his bed in the hospital last night. He will try to beat the odds but he realizes it is improbable. He was concerned about carrying on the work of the Meta Research Bulletin in notifying independent researchers about important events which would be avoided by normal media. The only person that he and I could think of was you. Your interests in newer and more correct theories, your connection to the South African magazine, attendance at conferences, etc, etc. You should talk to Tom, about this.

Regards, Chip”

 In February, I mourned Tom’s passing:

On that overcast Saturday morning, after yet another starless night, I awoke with great sadness to the following email from Tom Van Flandern’s son Mike:

“At 8:54AM on Friday January 9, 2009 Tom Van Flandern passed on. I cannot begin to express what this man meant to me. I'll write more later as there is so much I want to say about my father, Tom. But right now I and the rest of his family just needs some time to grieve. I do take some solace in knowing we did everything possible to maximize Tom's quality time once he was diagnosed. Also, Tom was well sedated and died peacefully. Goodbye Dad, I love you so much. –Mike”

 By March I was in an environmental saddle, sounding off about the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth, and Al Gore’s appalling, self-serving, and factually bankrupt road show, An Inconvenient Truth:

I consider myself an environmentalist. I would like to see human beings become better citizens and treat their planet with greater respect. However, as a scientist, I am really deeply despondent about the whole paradigm that has arisen around Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth road show. The reason is simply this: The theory of catastrophic global warming he has publicised so brilliantly is completely unfounded in fact.

 In April, I swung away from political matters and talked about astronomy from a physicist’s perspective:

Astronomy is the study of the greater environment, that part of the Universe that appears to us as the celestial sphere—the sky. By day, it is dominated by the Sun, our very own star, but by night it becomes a wonderland as the Earth’s shadow dims the sunlight and allows us to see the Milky Way. With the naked eye we can see, depending on conditions, the Moon (the Earth’s only substantial natural satellite), 6 planets, part of the Milky Way galaxy, and our sister spiral galaxy, Andromeda M31. Of course, there are also transient phenomena that come and go from view relatively quickly, like artificial satellites, comets, and meteors. And Jumbo jets!

 Sometimes I tried to be apolitical in my writing, and May is a good example. It’s hopeless! I thought I’d discuss the astronomical distance ladder and stay away from the controversy, but one simply cannot. The controversy is built in.

We live in a 3-dimensional Universe. Maybe the defining characteristic of celestial objects in general is how far away they were when they sent their portraits to us. It can additionally be argued that distance is the defining problem of astronomy. The spatial arrangements in 3 dimensions of objects we see on the sky, and the quantified relationship between them, sets the ground and marks the field of play.

There are a number of techniques in use, reducing in effectiveness as remoteness increases. Within the Solar System, we are somewhat spoiled for choice. Radar (bouncing a radio beam off a remote object and timing its return) is excellent, and not only gives us a phenomenally accurate measure of distance and relative velocity, but can be used also to scan surfaces and produce relief maps (for example, the surface of Venus).

 In June I had to say something about that bottomless dollar-sink, the Large Hadron Collider. If there is at least one thing we astronomers can learn from this debacle, it is how to write up a motivation for $13-billion of research funding based on science that no one apart from the recipients of the funds could validate and verify. It’s a travesty when we stand to lose the historic Jodrell Bank radio telescope because we can’t raise a paltry 100,000 Euros!

HEADLINE: AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT WITHDRAWS FUNDING FOR THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER.

HEADLINE: AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT REINSTATES FUNDING FOR LHC.

 In July I paid homage to a great icon in astrophysics, someone who has “been there, done that” as Professor Paul Jackson put it. A few weeks ago, I was asked by a physics professor at the University of Western Australia to be an examiner of a student’s PhD thesis. Of course I’m not suitably qualified to do the job and had to decline the invitation, but I have to confess to being immensely flattered, all the more so when I learnt whose shoes I was to fill—none other than Geoffrey Burbidge, who had to withdraw because of illness. Eish!

I am terrified of Geoffrey Burbidge. I admit it. He makes me quake in my boots. The larger by a considerable margin of the famous husband-and-wife team that has earned the moniker “B-squared”, Geoff is certainly a different kettle of fish. Margaret, on one hand, is a motherly figure, treating visitors to their lovely San Diego home to tea and crumpets in the glorious English tradition. Dealing with her husband is quite another matter. Geoffrey does not suffer fools gladly, and it would seem to me that by his definition, all the world’s a fool. And that includes me, of course.

 In August I vented my spleen at being blacklisted by the supposedly impartial Cornell University online archive, arXiv. I’m not mad any more. When I was introduced to some of the other black-listees, I realised that the invisible arXiv moderators (are they perhaps Dark Moderators?) had paid me a compliment. Thank you, Paul Ginsparg and company. You’re creating martyrs.

Astronomy ought to be an observational science. It really should. It used to be, after all, a hundred years ago or so. Ideally, astronomers would point their instruments at the heavens, find astounding new things, and publish them where we could all share in the joy of discovery. I wish it were so. The appalling truth is that we are permitted to see only what a faceless, nameless group called “the moderators” deems fit for our eyes. Thought Police are alive and well in the world of space science, and who knows, some of them might even be friends of ours. Alas, so great is their commitment to anonymity that we would simply never know.

 Our new Chairman took over in September, and I welcomed her. Before the pc mob lynches me (have you noticed my stretched neck and charred ankles?), let me hasten to pronounce that what I’ve said in the preceding sentence is quite kosher, and no one at the Durban Centre is offended or confused. It was all done by kindness and lateral thought. Then I went on to rattle the cage of microwave background analysts:

And now, with a swift flash of legendary cunning, I revert to the old trick of plagiarising something from The Static Universe. The following excerpt is from Chapter 7: The Microwave Background—Surround-Sound Radio. 

Let’s face it; if the Big Bang chaps could show that the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation really is a picture of the early Universe as it commenced expansion, they’ve got me! They will have established beyond doubt that the Universe is indeed non-static, and given the Standard Model of Cosmology sorely needed “predictive” success. They would finally screw the lid down on the Big Bang critics that I seem to represent. I will have no choice but to knock my king over and concede the game. So why am I not worried?

 Then came October. I cheerfully trod on hallowed ground. One of the most-cited pieces observational evidence raised in support of Big Bang Theory is on close inspection just a load of old codswallop. 

The much-vaunted “perfect fit” curve published by John Mather et al in 1991 allegedly shows the exact alignment of theory and observation in the Microwave Background Radiation. It is indeed a wonderfully precise match, the result of years of intense scrutiny. In private correspondence, my friend and helmsman Professor Paul Jackson shared the experience. “I remember following with excitement the build-up to that figure, which happened over many years from 1967.  Wobbly non-satellite data plots first emerged with huge error bars. The eventual super-accurate FIRAS results of COBE had error bars so small that they had to be multiplied by 400 to be visible on the plot.”  

 In November, I tackled supernova light curves and the notion of universal expansion:

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has over the years been home for radically innovative thought. From its days as focus of the Manhattan Project which gave us the first nuclear weapons, out-the-box thinking has characterised the successes of Los Alamos. The legendary Dick Feynman was a citizen there, and so was plasma pioneer Tony Peratt. The most recent news to reach me from Los Alamos is a paper that addresses supernovae light curves in a way that prompts me to say, “Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Why didn’t I indeed?

Happy and clear New Year to everyone!