The Oldest University

The Anatomy Lecture Room, University of Bologna, Archiginnasio.

The University of Bologna is generally recognised as the oldest in the world. Although it's a bit hazy - there are no documents confirming the foundation of the institution - it's generally accepted that it was founded in 1088, and by 1125 was the most important European centre for law studies (eat your heart out, Oxbridge).

The Old

It's possible to visit a building where classes were held from about 1563 until 1803, called the Archiginnasio - it was erected especially as a university building. It was severely bombed during WWII, but has been pieced back together. The students over the centuries left their coats of arms all over the walls of the corridors, stairs, porticoes and vaults, making a colourful panoply.

Archiginnasio, Courtyard

Archiginnasio, Bologna. Tourists, not students, these days.

Colourful hallways of the old University.

Student Coats-of-Arms.

The drawcard of the Archiginnasio is the Anatomy Theatre, lined in wood with a marble-slabbed dissecting table in the centre, where corpses were dissected. The Anatomy Theatre was built in 1637 by Antonio Levanti. It contains statues of famous ancient and Bolognese physicians and a figure of Apollo surrounded by heavenly constellations on the ceiling. The hall has largely been reconstructed after very serious war damage. The Lecturer's Chair consists of a canopy supported by two famous "skinless" wooden statues, signed and dated by Ercole Lelli in 1734 but actually made, at least in large part, by Silvestro Giannotti.

Strangely appropriate figures in the Anatomy Lecture Room.

Remains, bombed in 1944. Before reconstruction, obviously.

Outside the Archiginnasio is Piazza Galvini, presided over by a statue of a famous ex-student, the physicist Luigi Galvini. He discovered electric currents in animals, giving the English language the word "galvanize".

Galvini.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries Bologna helped to sort out argument between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, and the city earned the title 'La Dotta' ('The Learned') and a prominent reputation for its law faculties. Outside the church of San Domenico are two curious canopied tombs holding the remains of law professors, one of which is decorated with a carved relief showing a medieval law lecture in session.

But perhaps the most famous alumni of Bologna University? It's hard to choose: Dante, Petrarch, Dürer, Goldoni...or one Nicolò Copernico. Read more of the history here.

Medieval tomb with carved relief of a law class. Some things never change...

The New

Porticoes plastered with flapping papers advertising rooms for rent, English tutoring, political demos, books for sale; young people in grubby but lively bars and cafes, or sitting on the dirty flagstones (what's with that?) in Piazza Verdi. Bookshops everywhere. Yep, a modern university.

Università di Bologna is still going strong.

Sitting on the ground, Piazza Verdi. 

Students News.

The modern University of Bologna.

Student life.

Archimede’s Bath

Archimedes. Imagined by Domenico Fetti (1620)

There’s an exhibition on at the Capitoline in Rome at the moment (until January 2014) that’s all about Archimedes. There’s interesting stuff about Syracuse in Sicily - his home town - in the 3rd Century BC when he lived; and some working models and digital films that show how some of his ideas worked - think giant hooks to scoop enemy warships out of the sea, huge mirrors to start fires on their decks, water clocks, levers to lift heavy weights ("give me a place to stand and I can lift the world"), and the famous ‘Archimede’s Screw’. It certainly was astonishing engineering for the times.

A “myth of Archimedes” took root shortly after he was assassinated by a Roman soldier, thanks to the Emperor Marcellus and the writings of the architect Vetruvius and the historian Plutarch. Forgotten for centuries, the inventor was re-discovered in the Middle Ages by Islamic civilisation and then again by the Renaissance.His teachings were the basis for discoveries by Galileo Galilei and Leonardo Da Vinci. 

But most intriguing of all - the museum is exhibiting two examples of a hip bath that would have been in use in the public baths in Syracuse in Archimede’s time -- a terracotta receptacle with three stepped levels inside to sit on.  Archimede’s bath! That from which he leapt, possibly partially soaped (if they used soap), crying ‘Eureka! I’ve found it!’

The exhibition.

And the story of why he needed to figure out what he figured out is also fascinating. It seems that the king, or tyrant, of the day ordered a new crown from a goldsmith and provided the gold to make it. When it was finished he suspected the goldsmith of making an alloy of the gold with silver, and thus cheating him. Archimedes, the resident genius, was given the task of finding out conclusively. 

After the moment of revelation in the bath - the body displacing the water - Archimedes took two balls of metal, one gold, one silver; both the same weight as the crown. The gold ball was smaller, because denser. He sank each, and the crown, in a basin full of water one by one and measured the resultant overflows. He found that although they were the same weight, the gold displaced the least, the silver the most, and the crown somewhere in between -- proving that it was an alloy. 

History does not record what happened to the goldsmith, but poor Archimedes was killed in his prime by a Roman soldier in 212 BC in the siege of Syracuse by the Romans. This was generally deplored, even by the Romans, as a very bad thing. History does not record what happened to that soldier, either, though the moment is the subject of a number of art works.

A model of Archimede's idea of the universe.

This is what the Museum website says about the exhibition:

“This exhibition presents Archimedes - a key figure of universal culture - to the wider public for the very first time. The staggering significance of his writings matched by his phenomenal intuition in the field of mechanical technology made Archimedes the precursor of the genius and inventor. His name is still synonymous with invention and innovation in industrial production and design. This prompted the idea for an exhibition that would offer concrete testimony not only of his studies but of the city where he lived and of the technical and scientific civilisation that gained ground in the Mediterranean area in the 3rd century BC - and of which Syracuse was a splendid example. In the background are the relations between Syracuse and Alexandria in Egypt, a city visited by Archimedes and many learned figures in the 3rd century BC.  

Archimedes' death at the hand of a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC was an epoch-making moment for the Ancient world and, paradoxically, marked Archimedes' rebirth, as the Romans started the process that turned him into a legend and celebrated the "divine genius" behind the concept of machines never previously seen.The exhibition then narrates the second rebirth of Archimedes, commenced in the 13th century with the gradual rediscovery of his writings. After catalysing scholars, artists and scientists, Archimedes became a point of reference for the leading lights of the Scientific Revolution, who employed Archimedes' writings to lay the bases for the new science popularised in the 17th century.”

I picked up a few photos of the exhibition from around the web (no photos allowed at the exhibition), but strangely no one seems to have recorded the bath - the BATH! You’ll have to go check it out for yourself.

While you're getting around to it, here's a video that describes how Archimede's Principle really works (as my rough story above does not!):

The Giant's Causeway

'The Giant's Causeway'

If you visit the famous rock formation known as 'The Giant's Causeway', on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland, let me just sound a note of caution about the audio guide. Now, the main thing I wanted to know - and I think most people would want to know - is...why? Why - or, possibly, 'how' - do the rocks form into near-perfect hexagonal shapes? What forces of nature could have produced such a curiosity? You would think - I did - that the audio guide you procure from the snazzy new visitor's centre (a piece of architecture worth visiting itself) would provide at least a glimmer of information on this score. But no - the main content you get, narrated by a lilting Irish voice, is about fairy stories. Or rather, giant stories. This may be great for intriguing small children (not that many small children listen to audio guides), but it very quickly becomes boring when you are clambering over a true wonder of nature, and wondering yourself...why? Or, possibly, how?

It may be that the audio guide did venture some information about the geology, but I missed it amongst my irritation with the story of a giant, the name of whom escapes me, running around the Irish coastline of antiquity, and leaving behind various rock formations. You know the sort of thing - shaped like a boot, shaped like a camel, shaped like a pipe organ.

The new visitors' centre. Nice.

And so it is to trusty Wikipedia that I must turn for a brief explanation of the strange geology that formed The Giant's Causeway:

Some 50 to 60 million years ago, during the Paleogene period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. Horizontal contraction fractured in a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which are also fractured horizontally into "biscuits". In many cases the horizontal fracture has resulted in a bottom face that is convex while the upper face of the lower segment is concave, producing what are called "ball and socket" joints. The size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleogene period.

Wikipedia does, I must admit, also refer to the legend of the giant - 'FinnMacCool' - but we'll skim lightly over that, to sit and marvel at the geometric geology. There are about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, starting in the cliffs and leading like stepping stones down into and under the sea. Most are hexagonal, though some have four, five, seven or eight sides. Sit with me on one of these columns, watching the rough seas of the Irish Coast wash in, and marvel again at the question - why? Or, possibly, how?

But here's another curious fact: there's another place where a similar formation exists - Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa in Scotland, roughly due north of the Antrim Coast. All part of the same ancient lava flow? Or a Causeway from one place to the other built by a Giant....?

Amazing. Why? Or, possibly, how?

The locals make the most of their 'most popular attraction in Northern Ireland'
with themed potato chips. I knew you'd want to see this.

See? It's a giant's boot, right?

Aurora Borealis

Photo: Bob Rooney
http://library.byways.org/assets/78907

Ah yes, the Northern Lights - those beautiful, ephemeral and startling colours that light up the night sky in the far north, usually in the depths of winter when the earth is covered in snow and ice. I can only speak theoretically about “the Lights”, as they are known, since I’ve not yet managed to be far enough north at just the right time in just the right place to experience them. Yet. A jaunt to the Scottish Highlands next week might - just might - give me a chance...This video was taken in Sweden


Lights Over Lapland Photo Expedition video of CME impact on 1-24-2012 from Lights Over Lapland on Vimeo.

In general, the further north you go (or south - the equivalent southern hemisphere phenomena is known as Aurora Australis. Never seen that either) the better are your chances of seeing this eerie and lovely spectacle. You also need to be away from big towns and cities, because their artificial night lights can prevent a good viewing. The same is so of a full moon. So: choose the depths of winter, travel as far north as possible, travel as far away from civilisation as possible, choose a dark moonless night...and still you may not see the Aurora.

Latest activity?
From Spaceweather.com

And what are they, exactly? I’ve looked it up, and I still can’t really tell you. They are caused by astronomical activity of some kind, I think to do with sun spot activity. Charged particles are thrown out by the sun, and drawn into the earth’s magnetic fields at the two poles. Or something like that. This Scienceblog gives a fairly clear explanation...it seems that the earth’s atmosphere is protecting us from the flares of radiation that the sun sends out.

In fact, the Lights’ occurrence is not confined to night time - it’s just that you can’t see them in the daytime because of the sun’s light. They also, rather mysteriously, occur in a twelve year cycle of non-activity and (relative) activity - and this winter is the active peak of the cycle.


With my journey north coming up, I have been keen to track the Lights’ activity, and the Spaceweather site has quite a lot of information - though usually just after the event, rather than before. It seems that 14th February was a lively night. And I quote:

Happy Valentine's Day

"On several occasions the sky was full of auroras from horizon to horizon," says photographer and aurora tour guide Chad Blakley of Abisko National Park, Sweden. "We had many happy couples celebrating with us tonight. Most of our guests agreed that it was the best Valentine's day that they had ever shared together."

And how about this breaking news:

Update: Geomagnetic activity intensified even more on Feb. 15th when the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth tilted south, opening a crack in Earth's magnetic field. Solar wind poured in and fueled a G1-class geomagnetic storm, now subsiding.

I’m not sure what that means, but it does sound exciting.

When looking for some stunning images of the lights, I learnt that

Jim Henderson, 62, has witnessed 350 aurora displays and seen some of the most impressive lights close to his rural Scotland home. Amazingly, he has only ever had to travel more than a few miles from his cottage 25 miles west of Aberdeen to capture the dancing beams.

See Jim’s spectacular pictures at: The Daily Mail Online The beautiful red one was taken on 21st January 2012.

Hmmmm.....Aberdeen. Perhaps Aberdeen should go on the itinerary....



The Aurora from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Schrődinger’s Cat

 Taking a break from reading philosophy over my summer holiday, I thought, as you do, that a little quantum physics might be relaxing. Have you heard of Schrődinger’s Cat? This is the name of both a book by John Gribbin, written in the early 1980s, and a thought experiment proposed by Erwin Schrődinger, an Austrian scientist, in the 1930s. This was a time when things were hotting up in the world of quantum physics, and the thought experiment was meant by Schrődinger to show the absurdity of what all the current mathematics and thinking were showing: but did it?

In the thought experiment there is a closed box which contains a live cat and phial of poison. Now, the mathematics showed that a radio-active atom might decay or it might not; there is a precise fifty-fifty chance that one of the atoms in a lump of radioactive material will decay in a certain time. In the cat’s box, there is a trigger which will break the phial of poison and kill the cat if and when the radioactive decay occurs. In the everyday world we would be content to say that the cat is either dead or it is alive. But in the theoretical world of quantum physics, the radioactive decay does not either occur or not occur unless it is observed. Thus, the cat is neither dead nor alive until we open the box to check. Before that, it is in a kind of limbo, an indeterminate state.

'Pandora's cat' - alive last time I checked

You can see that this was – and still is – a rather shocking conclusion. Einstein baulked at it, and spent much of his later career trying (unsuccessfully) to prove the science wrong. We non-scientists might find it either absurd, or exciting in a science-fiction kind of way. Let’s think about this: nothing is real unless it is observed (you might suspect that we are straying into philosophical realms again, and you might be right...).  In the world of the atom, how do scientists study what goes on? Everything is ridiculously small - Gribbin gives this example:  imagine the head of a pin in the centre of St Paul’s Cathedral. Floating up in the extremities of the roof are some dust motes. The pin head is like the nucleus of an atom, and the dust motes are its electrons. That’s how much empty space is in the atoms which make up everything in the world. To observe the behaviour of electrons, we need to shine light on them, which means bouncing photons of light off them. A photon won’t much disturb a big thing like a house, but it (or electromagnetic energy with a short wave length) will have a huge effect on a small thing like an electron. So the very act of observing the electron or atom will knock it about and change its nature.

The quantum physicists developed a conclusion they called ‘the uncertainly principle’, which says that there is no such thing as an electron which possesses both a precise momentum and a precise position. We can measure one or the other but not both. We cannot know the present in all its details (said Heisenberg).  As Gribbin says:

To Newton, it would be possible to predict the entire course of the future if we knew the position and momentum of every particle in the universe; to the modern physicist, the idea of such perfect prediction is meaningless because we cannot know the position and momentum of even one particle precisely. (p. 157)

In quantum physics the observer interacts with the system [being observed] to such an extent that the system cannot be thought of as having independent existence...we, the observers, are in a very real sense part of the experiment – there is no clockwork that ticks away regardless of whether we look at it or not...all we know about are the results of experiments...It is interesting that there are limits to our knowledge of what an electron is doing when we are looking at it, but it is absolutely mind-blowing to discover that we have no idea at all what it is doing when we are not looking at it. (p. 160-161)

And this is before I even get to Einstein’s Time and the news that since a photon travels at the speed of light, for a photon time has no meaning. To the photon the Big Bang and now are the same; everything in the universe is connected to everything else by a web of electromagnetic radiation...and, by the way, it is possible to imagine experiments where particles move backwards and forwards in time. Then there are all the ‘virtual’ particles that come into existence from nothing and go out of existence, and appear to ‘know’ that we are watching them.

So if you’re following this so far (and haven’t dismissed it all as a crazy thought experiment that is merely a game), consider that “by observing the photons of the cosmic background radiation which is the echo of the Big Bang, we may be creating the Big Bang and the universe”.  (p.212)

And then the intriguing possibility – considered by respectable physicists, remember, not (or not only) sci-fi fiction writers – that the theories suggest that there are many worlds existing parallel to our everyday world, possibly an infinite number of them; “existing in some way sideways across time from our reality, parallel to our own universe but forever cut off from it.” (p.235) – Gribbin calls this the ‘Many Worlds’ theory, a term not uncommon in philosophy and one long pondered (starting with Plato) in various forms, well before the quantum physicists started to find physical experiments which suggest it. Just by the way.

In the 'Many Worlds' theory (also called 'Everett's Interpretation') when the box is opened, the observer and the already-split cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are decoherent, there is no effective communication or interaction between them.

Please appreciate that I estimate that I understand perhaps half of Gribbin’s excellently-written book, and that quantum physics can’t be explained in a short review, least of all by me. But the tantalizing ideas are absorbing. Gribbin’s book finishes with the state of play in 1983:

The success of the Aspect team’s experiments...has eliminated all but two of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics ever put forward. Either we have to accept the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’, with its ghost realities and half-dead cats, or we have to accept the ‘Everett interpretation’ with its many worlds. It is, of course, conceivable that neither of these two ‘best buys’ in the science supermarket is correct, and that both these alternatives are wrong. ..but if you think this...an easy route out of the dilemma, remember that any such ‘new’ interpretation must explain everything that we have learned since Planck’s great leap in the dark, and that it must explain everything as well, or better than, the two current explanations. That is a very tall order indeed...In the absence of a better answer, we have to face up to the implications of the best answer we’ve got. (p.253)

I can’t wait to read Gribbin’s sequel, written about 15 years later: ‘Schrődinger’s Kittens.’

If you want more information, you could start with Wikipedia, and this BBC page gives a brief overview. If you're really impressed with the whole question, you might like to buy this T-shirt.

Images from:

http://criminalbrief.com/?p=12725

http://media.photobucket.com/image/schrodingers%20cat/imnotminkus/random%20funny%20stuff/just-look-up-schrodingers-cat-on-wi.png?o=4&sortby=sevendaysview#!oZZ13QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fmedia.photobucket.com%2Fimage%2Fschrodingers%20cat%2Ffreebasa%2FFunny%2Fschroeder.jpg%3Fo%3D13%26sortby%3Dsevendaysview