Pi Newspaper | December 2011 science@pimedia.org.uk


pimedia.org.uk |21 science


Faster than the speed of light?


Or just insane? The current neutrino controversy shows the importance of peer review


Benjamin Parker ‘The Assassin’ by Steve Mills, winner of Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s birds behaviour category.


Photography red in tooth and claw


Nature is seen in all its wildness at the Natural History Museum this winter


Alex Willsher


THE Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is no longer the small, select affair that it once was. Boasting in excess of 40,000 entries across 90 countries, it is now a touring exhibition, which starts life at none other than the Natural History Museum here in London. Anyone can enter, from amateurs to esteemed professionals. Indeed, there is even a category for the under-tens. As someone who was relatively


new to the world of wildlife photography, I was intrigued by the balance between prior preparations and chance required for the execution of such breath-taking photography. Had the photographer simply been in the right place at the right time, or did capturing the perfect shot require greater preparation? ‘The Assassin’ by Steve Mills


comes to mind. Those who think that they could whip out their Sony Cybershot and recreate the snaps seen at the exhibition would be much mistaken. I soon realised the intricacies and hastiness of the decisions made in order to seize that opportunity. Anyone who visits the exhibition, or indeed its website, will note the


spew of technical information at the foot of each blurb. I later learnt that these figures represent the dimensions of the lens and the shutter speed, to name but a few. These tools remain at the discretion of the photographer, which enable them to highlight features within their art. Take a look at ‘Wings of a Gull’ by


Jan van der Greef. The photographer has almost instinctively used a slow shutter speed in order to capture the bird’s wing movements, whereas in ‘Racket-tail in the Rain’ by Petr Simon, a fast shutter speed better suited the photographer’s vision. It is just that – a vision. Whereas


you or I may simply marvel at a robin in the snow, a photographer is instantly calculating which camera to grab, along with the settings that will best portray his story. Whereas some photographers


may have been in the right place at the right time, others spent weeks planning for their entry. In ‘Family Tree’, photographer Paul Goldstein followed the cheetahs in his photograph for two weeks before they all climbed a ballanite tree in formation – making for a fantastic shot.


In ‘Moonlight over Aloba’, photographer Marsel van Oosten


made the arduous journey to the extremely remote location in Chad simply to take his photo. What strikes you most on


arriving at the exhibition, after traversing much of the museum, is the breadth and unpredictability of the photography on display. In a snapshot in time, there is information far beyond the immediate scope of the photograph before your eyes. You instantly imagine the photographer of ‘Polar Power’, Joe Benni, in the water with just a fin and rope for support. Andy Rouse, the photographer


of ‘Making an Impression’, when confronted with a young male mountain gorilla, decided to stop and get out his camera - hardly a typical reaction. The humble nature with which the photographers accepted the audience’s congratulations was inspiring. The talent on display at this


exhibition is not to be missed. Over a hundred photographs feature; and a picture really can tell a thousand words.


The Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition appears at the Natural History Museum until March 11 2012. More information at nhm.ac.uk


RECENTLY a team of international scientists, working primarily at the INFN-Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, and the CERN laboratory in Geneva, proposed that subatomic neutrino particles can travel faster than the speed of light. This is a controversial statement to say the least. In fact, it is probably the most


controversial statement made in the scientific community for decades. If proved right, it could destroy one of the keystones of modern physics – special relativity – leaving scientists with yet more work to do to establish a grand unification theory. Indeed, however you choose to


describe this statement - whether it be fascinating, flawed, brave, scary, preposterous - it cannot be denied that it has not only gripped the world of particle physics and beyond, but has also become a fantastic, though perhaps unlikely advertisement for the peer review process and why it is so important in modern science. The first step in the peer review


process (which I like to call “in-loop”) is validation from your immediate colleagues or co-workers. Does this make sense? Is this feasible? Am I just being crazy? The second, much more


difficult step is to seek independent endorsement of your results (“out-of- loop”) from people outside of your home institution but within the same research community. This normally involves


submitting the research as a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. However, anyone who has submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal will tell you this: the peer-review process can be painful. The initial hurdle is to find


suitable referees who actually agree to read the paper in the first place. Only once a suitable committee of peers has been established, can the real fun begin. It can be many months, and many hours of corrections, before


agreement is reached on the technical content of the paper and the research can be published. But many scientists will tell you that this experience, although time-consuming and frustrating, often leads to a better publication and ultimately a better understanding of the research within the community. This is why the scientists at Gran


Sasso and CERN have set a perfect example to the rest of the science community by actively asking for their work to be scrutinised. By uploading their paper to an online pre-print archive (arxiv.org, run by Cornell University), they have taken the first step towards peer-review, and acceptance, or rejection, of their results. They are not shying away


from confrontation, nor are they professing to have all the answers. Their approach is simply to be as open and transparent as possible with their findings, and wait for someone to prove them wrong. In fact, since the initial paper


was published in September of this year, some 80 counter-articles have cropped up on the archive in the space of a few months (albeit mainly theoretical calculations). The initial paper has therefore


acted as an extremely good catalyst for this particular area of physics and will undoubtedly lead to better and more robust scientific discoveries, as more scientists accept this global challenge. It does, however, remain to be


seen whether these findings will eventually make it through the peer review process, or if a completely independent experiment carried out by another research group on the other side of the world, will provide a quicker route to validating these potentially world changing results Nevertheless,


these


scientists should be applauded for their courageous approach to communicating new and interesting science, and for putting their faith in the peer review system.


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