CPS Fellows visit the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Photo: Fellows of the Cambridge Philosophical Society outside the Cambridge Observatory at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Each year the The Cambridge Philosophical Society holds a number of free visits for members of the Society. Our most recent visit was to the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), Cambridge.
The University Observatory was founded in 1823 on a small site known as Gravel Hill, which had been used for gravel extraction. Our tour of the Institute of Astronomy and the Observatory was guided by Mr Mark Hurn, Information Manager and librarian at the IoA library within the Old Observatory building. The library includes a rare book room with astronomical books dating back to 1514 A.D. The dome of the Old Observatory building once contained a telescope, but is now empty. The building features on the cover of the CPS publication The Spirit of Inquiry by Susannah Gibson which celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
Research at the department is made in a number of scientific areas, including exoplanets, stars, star clusters, cosmology, gravitational-wave astronomy, the high-redshift universe, AGN, galaxies and galaxy clusters. The Institute houses several telescopes on its site, which include The Northumberland Telescope donated by the Duke of Northumberland in 1833. The smaller Thorrowgood Telescope, on extended loan from the Royal Astronomical Society, a 36-inch Telescope, built in 1951 and the Three-Mirror Telescope.
Notable astronomers associated with our site, such as George Biddell Airy (CPS Fellow), James Challis, John Couch Adams, Robert Ball, Arthur Stanley Eddington (CPS Fellow) and Fred Hoyle to name but a few.
More information about the Institute of Astronomy can be found here: www.ast.cam.ac.uk
Photo: Inside the 1833 Northumberland Telescope at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Photo: Dome of the Northumberland Telescope at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
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Volcanoes are hazardous and beautiful manifestations of the dynamic processes that have shaped our planet. Volcanoes impact our environment in numerous ways. Over geological time volcanic activity has resurfaced the Earth and provided life with a terrestrial substrate upon which to proliferate. Volcanic degassing has shaped our secondary atmosphere and as part of the process of plate tectonics, maintained just the right amount of water and carbon dioxide at the surface to produce a stable and equitable climate. Magma in the subsurface in volcanic environments today gives Society geothermal energy. The fluids degassed from magmas in the plumbing systems of volcanoes give rise to hydrothermal ore deposits, the source of much of our copper and other metals, critical to the energy transition. In this lecture I will describe the nature and importance of magma degassing for our atmosphere and oceans, as a source of both pollutants and nutrients, and in the formation of mineral deposits. I will describe my own research in carrying out measurements of volcanic gases (using a range of spectroscopic methods, from the ground and using drones), and analysis of erupted lavas, to understand the chemistry and physics of volcanic outgassing and its role in sustaining our planetary environment.
One of the many outstanding achievements of G I Taylor was the discovery of relatively simple statistical laws that apply to highly complex turbulent flows. The emergence of simple laws from complexity is well known in other branches of physics, for example the emergence of the laws of heat conduction from molecular dynamics. Complexity can also arise at large scales, and the structural vibration of an aircraft or a car can be a surprisingly difficult phenomenon to analyse, partly because millions of degrees of freedom may be involved, and partly because the vibration can be extremely sensitive to small changes or imperfections in the system. In this talk it is shown that the prediction of vibration levels can be much simplified by the derivation and exploitation of emergent laws, analogous to some extent to the heat conduction equations, but with an added statistical aspect, as in turbulent flow. The emergent laws are discussed and their application to the design of aerospace, marine, and automotive structures is described. As an aside it will be shown that the same emergent theory can be applied to a range of problems involving electromagnetic fields.
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