Category Archives: News

News, Reason

Catering Manager Outraged At Expectation To Handle Pork

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Hasanali Khoja, an Islamic chef for the Metropolitan Police, is sueing for religious discrimination after being expected to handle pork in his new job.

He’d previously arrived at an informal arrangement whereby he wasn’t expected to handle pork products, but his new placement has no such leniency.

And why should it? It’s just his belief, unauthorised and unjustified. Quite why an expectation for a chef to handle pork is religious discrimination is, I freely admit, beyond me. Oh, I can see why – but I don’t get how such a case is even allowed to get as far as the news.

Fine, if you have a delusional belief that prohibits you from handling certain foods and your bosses allow you – in your job as a catering manager, remember – to not touch such food, then lucky you. Someone else has been the man that you couldn’t be. But when you get transferred and are suddenly outside this umbrella of leniency and you view an expectation to handle pork products (remember – your job is a catering manager) as religious discrimination? Hell, you’re not going to leave your job. Why should you? You’re a catering manager who has decided they can’t touch pork. Your will should be done.

Seriously. Let’s apply this to something else. I’m working in an office, and I don’t like to touch paper because I have a personal belief that this isn’t right. Not a physiological issue, not a phobia – some mythical being has commanded that I do not touch paper.

Let’s assume for a moment that I would even get a job after saying “By the way, I can’t touch paper” in the interview. If I have a lenient boss who allows me to work without the requirement to touch paper, I’m very lucky. But why should I take such luck and generosity for granted? When my boss is replaced and I’m expected to touch paper just as everyone else is, why should I take umbrage?

It would be too much to ask that I wear gloves. Then surely I could touch the paper and save myself from hell.

Mr Khoja said: “The Met has shown no sensitivity towards my religion. Their response has been ill-thought and discriminatory.”

ULTRA FACEPALM

News, Science

Two new European missions are go!

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At 13:12 UTC today, two European observatories blasted off without a hitch onboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. Controllers in Germany confirmed readings from both spacecraft about 40 minutes after liftoff, following their half hour flight and deployment from the launch vehicle. CEO of Arianespace, Jean-Yves Le Gall, described the launch as “perfect”. Both spacecraft are now en route to their designated L2 point approximately 1.5 million kilometers away.  Now, both of these missions are actually a really big deal for astronomy…

Firstly, we have Herschel. To me, infrared astronomy is by far the best astronomy! By observing the infrared, we can really draw a lot information about the structure, and particularly the formation of stars and galaxies. Since its launch in 2003, I have been an avid follower of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (named for the great Lyman Spitzer) and it continues to make astounding discoveries and send back beautiful images to this day (though now on borrowed time – it is expected to run out of helium coolant “at any time”.)

Spitzer has peered into stellar nurseries to show us baby stars, and revealed the intricate structure of Andromeda’s inner dust lanes. Now, Herschel (named for William Herschel: discoverer of Uranus) will become the new standard in infrared astronomy. It has a massive 3.5 metre Cassegrain telescope, making it the largest space telescope ever launched, and crucially, it will bridge the gap between previous space-based infrared missions and ground-based observations, by observing a waveband of ~55-672µm. Herschel’s huge mirror and cutting edge photometric technology will allow it to observe some of the coldest and most distant objects in the known universe. We can expect a lot of amazing science to come out of this mission.

Herschel (left) and Planck

Then, there’s Planck. This spacecraft, named for the German quantum physicist, Max Planck, is the third generation Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) mapping probe. It is the successor to WMAP (2001) which itself followed COBE (1989) and its principal mission objective is to measure the polarisation and intensity of anisotropies in the primordial CMB radiation that permeates the universe as a remnant of the big bang. It will also be carrying out a number of other scientific tasks, including measurements of our own galaxy’s magnetic field. Its scanning sensors will achieve several times the resolution of WMAP, with around 10 times the sensitivity, and the findings of this mission will be extremely exciting for cosmology buffs, as they will actually help us to understand the size and shape of the whole universe.

Personally, it’s thrilling for me to see these two great missions launch together in yet another flying success for Arianespace and ESA. These spacecraft will greatly influence our understanding of cosmic origins in several years. Excited? You should be!

News, Science

Kepler begins its search for Earth-like planets

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Yesterday, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft began its 3 and a half year mission to hunt for planets among over 100,000 stars. It has been in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit for over 2 months since its flawless launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta II rocket, and now that it has finished commissioning and has been focussed optimally, it is ready to start… staring.

Kepler will stare continuously at a single patch of sky throughout its mission. This is known as a fixed field of view. By looking at exactly the same stars with great sensitivity, the Kepler science team hope to measure very slight periodic dips in their apparent brightness. This will signal the transit of an orbiting planet from our perspective. The Kepler mission will achieve an unprecedented level of precision, by using a collection of techniques known as differential ensemble photometry. Variations in seeing and extinction are accounted for, and shot noise is dealt with onboard the spacecraft.

So high is Kepler’s sensitivity, that it will be able to detect transits from planets comparable in size to Earth orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. Of course, the mission was designed this way from the outset and in fact, in the case of K- and M-type stars, it will be able to detect planets as small as Mercury! To begin with though, we can expect the first findings to be large gas giants, as these can be confirmed relatively quickly. NASA states that such discoveries may be announced early in 2010.

Kepler spacecraft and fixed field of view

You can keep up with the Kepler mission at NASA’s mission news page.