A long summer

Indeed it has been a long summer, though the good weather appears to be drawing to a close. Over the last few months, I have attended three cosmology conferences or workshops and also been on a two-week holiday in the Dolomites, where I occupied my time by doing things like this:

La Guglia Edmondo de Amicis, near the Misurina lake.

and enjoying views like this:

Cima Piccola di Lavaredo, from the Dibona route on Cima Grande.

This explains the lack of activity here in recent times.

Returning home a couple of weeks ago, I was full of ideas for several exciting blog posts, including a summary of all the hottest topics in cosmology that were discussed at the conferences I attended, and perhaps an account of my argument stimulating discussion with Uros Seljak. However, it has come to my attention that there are other physicists in other parts of the world who happen to be working on the exact same topic that my collaborators and I have been investigating for the last few months. The rule in the research world is of course "publish or perish" (though some wit has suggested that "publish and perish" is more accurate) – so most of my time now will be spent on avoiding being scooped, and the current hiatus on this blog will continue for a short period. Looking on the bright side, once normal service resumes, I hope to have some interesting science results to describe!

In the meantime, I can only direct you to other blogs for your entertainment and enlightenment. Those of you who like physics discussions and have not already read Sean Carroll's blog (a vanishingly small number perhaps?) might enjoy this post about Boltzmann brains. I personally also enjoyed this argument against philosopher Tom Nagel.

For people interested in climbing news, I can report that my friends on the Oxford Greenland Expedition that I mentioned once here have returned safely after a successful series of very impressive climbs. I found their regular reports of their activities in the expedition diary well-written and rather thrilling – not just the climbing, but also the account of the journey to Greenland by sea in the face of seemingly never-ending gales! Well worth a read, as is this.

Oxford Greenland Expedition

I sometimes wonder about the mix of topics I mention on this blog – is there too much physics, or not enough? Well, today's post is about something completely different: it is a straight-up publicity plug for the Oxford Greenland Expedition. This is a sea-faring and rock-climbing expedition organised by a group of students, and is exactly the kind of exciting exploratory adventure to which the title of this blog refers, so I'd like to support it as best I can. They have a fundraising page here. As I'll try to explain, I think it is a great plan, and they deserve all the support they can get!

The climbing members of the expedition team are all current or former students of Oxford University, and members of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club, whom I have known for a varying number of years (I've climbed on the same rope as many but not all of them). Between them, they have dreamt up an outrageously bold and brilliant plan for a climbing expedition in the Arctic – as the 'Objectives' page of their website puts it, their goals are:

1. Sail to Greenland!
2. Climb the Horn of Upernavik!
3. Sail north! Find an 800 m pillar! Climb it!
4. Explore for new climbs!
5. Sail back!

(The rest of the website is quite amusing too, if you poke around it.) The Horn of Upernavik appears to be a very dramatic 1000-metre-high piece of rock rising straight out of the sea near Uummannaq:

The Horn of Upernavik.

It has apparently also been the objective of several previous expeditions to climb the Horn, but none of them have succeeded. So if this team succeeds, they will be making (a small amount of) history ...

Although all are very good climbers and mountaineers, they are definitely firmly within the ranks of the enthusiastic amateurs rather than elite professionals. I think this makes the audacity of the undertaking all the more wonderful, and appealing to romantic ideals.

Incidentally, two of the members of this team (Ian Faulkner and Tom Codrington) were last year part of a different and equally inspiring expedition to Krygyzstan, during which they, along with Ian Cooper, made only the second ever free ascent of the Mirror Route or Rusyaev Route on Peak 4810, after Alex Lowe and Lynn Hill. A report of this climb and some other stuff they did was published here. So they've definitely got a track record with achieving amazing things!

Anyway, best of luck to the team in their efforts this summer!