Every so often I share a post from another blogger such as Tamino whose views I respect, e.g. on the topic of climate change.
Today I’m sharing a post from someone else whose views I respect: Michael Dowling. You can find out more about his background in the Bio section below.
I’ve had many interesting and wide-ranging conversations with Michael over the last seven years.
In the essay linked to this post, Michael explores some interesting concepts, including the nature of scientific theories, confusions that sometimes arise in science and philosophy, as well as the significance and implications of living systems and consciousness.
Woven through the essay is the thread of awe and wonder.
I hope you enjoy what Michael has to say as much as I did.
After completing a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in chemistry, Michael worked for five years as an analytical chemist, before moving into the field of scientific instruments for twenty years, providing technical sales and support for complex scientific instrumentation (e.g. chromatographs and mass spectrometers), to scientists working in a wide range of fields.
Later in life, Michael studied for ordained ministry in the Uniting Church. He worked as a chaplain in aged care for six years and later was the minister of an Adelaide Hill congregation for five years.
Michael maintains an enduring fascination with science and our lived experience in the world.
Michael Dowling is retired, married and lives in the Blackwood area of Adelaide.
I attended an event organised by South Aussies for Animals today, titled “How to Make Drugs: new models of humane research” which showed a recently created documentary called “How to Make Drugs and Feel Great about Everything” (US) and followed this by a number of speakers from the NSW Animal Justice Party (AJP), SA Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), and Animal-free Science Advocacy (AFSA).
The basic thesis of How to Make Drugs and Feel Great about Everything was that animal models are unethical and ineffective, noting that 95% of drugs that pass animal testing fail at human clinical trial. Numerous people in the medical research and regulatory areas in the US were interviewed.
One of the people interviewed likened this to an aeroplane company saying their planes would crash 95% of the time, then continuing to spend the same amount of money on the same methods (of management, design, construction).
While I had seen that statistic, I was not aware that adverse drug reactions are the fourth most common cause of deaths in US. I don’t know how that translates to Australia.
On the other hand, it was pointed out that there are very likely drugs that are safe for people but that fail in animal testing so don’t get through to human trials. For example, if animal testing had been the gate for aspirin, it may never have seen the light of day (and for example, aspirin is toxic to dogs).
As one of those interviewed said: we keep wasting time on the wrong models, and while certain cancers in mice, for example, have been cured many times over, we we have no cure for pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, traumatic head injury, stroke in humans, just non-human animals. Another remarked that a problem with fundraising events like running for cancer cure is that it not always clear what the funds raised go towards or whether it’s effective.
Put plainly, billions of dollars spent on animal research is simply wasted because we are different enough from the animal “models” that it matters. The local speaker from SAHMRI later reinforced this by saying that nowhere is this more true than in brain research.
We have already seen a move away from animal testing of cosmetics, shampoo, soap etc.
There are alternatives for medical and drug testing too: organ on a chip, 3D bio-printing of organs based on an individual’s cells (for drug/toxin/disease testing and potentially transplants), and in silico methods such as simulation and machine learning.
Medicine is moving towards an era of personalised medicine, in ways other than bio-printing. Zarina Greenberg from SAHMRI talked about the ability of researchers to now take normal cells, such as skin cells, and to coax them into becoming stem cells (from which they arose) again that can then be differentiated into liver, lung, brain etc cells. For people with particular cancers, these cells can be used to understand personal disease trajectory and potential treatments.
Emma Hurst, from the NSW AJP talked about how she introduced a bill into the NSW parliament to have a right-to-release for animals used in medical experimentation and in particular for dogs and cats to be re-homed. This had multi-partisan support. The bill additionally capped use in animal research before release to 3 years. AJP also introduced (and had approved) a bill to outlaw smoking and forced swim tests which experts giving advice during the creation of the bill declared to be unethical and unscientific. Freedom of information regarding secrecy surrounding primate testing is next.
Rachel Smith of Animal-free Science Advocacy talked about work to review, update and strengthen the 3 Rs framework (replace, reduce, refine) including the addition of rehoming/rehabilitation (after use in research), reproducibility (consistent, repeatable results), and relevance (to human health).
As a former animal model researcher said at the end of the documentary, we should not break the principle of non maleficence, first do no harm, i.e. do not harm innocent beings including non-human animals.
I have found the SeeStar S50 to be fantastic for variable star photometry and general night sky imaging.
For those of us with less spare time than we’d like, chronic back pain, and a willingness to allow our hobby to evolve (or some subset of these), devices in the category of “smart telescope” like the SeeStar, are something of a revolution.
The S50 field of view (0.73 x 1.29 degrees) is great for many deep sky objects (nebulae, star clusters, galaxies) variable stars, asteroids, some comets, Luna, and the Sun. My current primary use cases are deep sky objects and variable stars.
The fields in which variable stars appear are often themselves quite varied and beautiful and that deserves a separate post.
Below is a small gallery of some deep sky images I’ve taken with the S50 from my back yard over the last year or so, each with a catalog designation, name, constellation (unless obvious from the name) and total exposure time (from multiple 10 second images stacked by the device). Noise reduction has been applied to most via the SeeStar app.
Carl Sagan (Wikimedia)Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair)
I turned 62 on November 26th 2025.
Carl Sagan and Christopher Hitchens were both 62 when they died.
Sagan was born on November 9th 1934. He died on December 20th 1996 from pneumonia after a struggle with myelodysplasia, in which bone marrow stem cells fail to yield mature red, white blood cells and platelets.
Hitch was born on April 13th 1949 and died on December 15th 2011 after a battle with oesophageal cancer, and in the end, like Sagan, from pneumonia.
I remember a feeling of deep sadness and loss when I heard the news of Sagan’s death. I did not know of Hitch until about two years after he died but recall a retrospective sense of loss upon becoming familiar with his work.
Sagan was a scientist, author, presenter of the inspiring Cosmos series, co-founder of the Planetary Society, and the prototype of all future successful science communicators.
Hitch was a fearless journalist, writer and speaker, with an amazing recall of literature and history, an ironic wit, and blistering debating skills.
They were both great orators with a masterful grasp of the English language.
They both warned about the dangers of pseudoscience, irrationality and ideological thinking.
Both are sorely needed and missed at a time when opinions seem to carry as much weight as reasoned argument and the findings of Science.
They were not alive for long enough.
I wish they were still here.
Our world needs more like them.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. (Carl Sagan)
Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. (Christopher Hitchens)
It’s my daughter’s birthday on October 25, which as I write, is today.
Happy birthday Heather!
I was idly thinking about my family’s birthdays while having a shower this morning (as you do), which either fall on the 25th (Heather) or the 26th (Karen, Nic and I) of some month.
I started thinking about the difference between the months of each birthday.
The difference between our son Nic’s birthday in February and my wife Karen’s in June is 4 months (6-2). So too between Karen’s and Heather’s (10-6).
The number of months between Karen’s and my birthday in November is 5 (11-6).
Completing the circle, between my birthday and Nic’s is 3 months, when moving from November to February (1 month each from Nov to Dec, Dec to Jan, Jan to Feb).
Curiously, within the same year, November back to February is 9 months (11-2), which is 32, 9 divided by 3 is 3, so 3 x 3 = 9, and so on. More simply, 12 -9 is 3. Three shows up in various ways.
The numbers 3, 4, 5 reminded me of the so-called “3, 4, 5” right-angled triangle, where two of the sides have length 3 and 4 with the diagonal (hypotenuse) having length 5.
The day before discovering V1935 Cen, John Seach discovered a nova in Sagittarius, on September 21. It was also discovered independently by two observers in Japan, as described in AAVSO alert notice 907.
V7994 Sgr has so far peaked at around magnitude 6.7 with a pre-outburst magnitude of less than magnitude 23 within a couple of days!
I made a visual estimate of the nova of 6.9 just before 11:30pm last night (September 26), Adelaide time (ACST) with 15×70 binoculars, using 7.1 and 6.8 magnitude comparison stars for reference.
The images above were taken with my Seestar S50 at around 8:30pm, the first resulting from additive stacking of 59 images on the S50. The second shows the nova in cross hairs after further processing and median stacking in Tycho Tracker. Sagittarius is a busy part of the sky!
V7994 Sgr is located near the boundary of Scorpius and Sagittarius, near the “stinger” of the scorpion.
The AAVSO finder chart below must be rotated at least 90 degrees clockwise to match the field above.
So far, as of September 27, 41 observations have been submitted to AAVSO, 19 of which are visual estimates (via telescope or binoculars) shown here (black), with my observation in cross hairs. A couple of observations from imaging devices are also included (green).
John Seach discovered a nova in Centaurus on September 22 2025 (see AAVSO alert notice 906), which appears to have peaked at magnitude 6.4 and is now fading below magnitude 8. Its pre-outburst magnitude was 16.7.
The images above were taken with my Seestar S50, the first resulting from additive stacking of 39 images on the S50. The second shows the nova (V1935 Cen) in cross hairs after further processing and median stacking in Tycho Tracker.
V1935 Cen is located near Alpha Centauri (aka Rigel Kentaurus) as shown in these Stellarium images for approximately 8:30pm Adelaide time (ACST).
Photometry (with Tycho Tracker) from the S50 images gave a visual band magnitude of around 8.1 at 8:15pm on September 26.
The AAVSO finder chart below must be rotated 90 degrees clockwise to match the field above. The bright star bottom is Alpha Centauri.
As I write this (the morning of September 27), 19 observations have been submitted to AAVSO, giving this early light curve, with my observation in cross hairs. Observations are visual estimates from telescopes of binoculars (shown as black) or visual band photometry from imaging devices (e.g. DSLRs, CCDs).
I set my alarm for 2:15am this morning to observe and image the total lunar eclipse visible from Australia. It started at around 2am and finished just before 5:30am, with totality from 3am, to around 4:20. This ABC News article gives a nice overview and a table with the relevant times.
I observed the last part of the partial phase and the early part of totality, with the unaided eye and 11×50 binoculars. I also took some images (above) and a seven minute time lapse (compressed to 14 seconds) near the onset of totality with my Seestar S50. A longer time lapse was impacted by cloud. Still, I was happy with what I saw and imaged, if a bit low on sleep. Clouds encroaching during the later stages of the eclipse.
The tail end of the eclipse through cloud (iPhone 13 images)
The light curves of the two recent bright southern novae, V462 Lup and V572 Vel, have developed somewhat since I last wrote about them, the first peaking at magnitude 5.2, now 11.1, and the second peaking at 4.8, now 10.3.
T CrB remains quiet and foreboding, low in the early NW evening sky, taunting us with its pre-eruption ellipsoidal variations.
Writing this update reminded me of a long-standing plan to write a nova distance calculator plug-in for VStar, based upon the rate of decline of a nova.
A 2020 ABC News article about a semi-trailer carrying chickens in Adelaide (of exactly the sort I recently wrote about in Estimated Witness) contains the following mind-bogglingly insane words:
The RSPCA attended the crash scene.
Spokeswoman Carolyn Jones said the chickens involved in the crash were taken to an Ingham’s processing facility at Burton in Adelaide’s north where their welfare would be assessed.
Up to 1,000 chickens died.
“Clearly a very distressing scene with so many crates that had toppled over and many birds that were loose,” Ms Jones said.
“We’ll be monitoring the welfare of the surviving and the injured birds.”
Umm. Their welfare would be assessed… At an Ingham processing facility…
It makes me feel so much better to know that the RSPCA was on the scene, and that Ingham and RSPCA were keeping an eye out for an unknown number of chickens’ welfare…
RSPCA Approved chicken. It’s in the name, along with their oxymoronically titled podcast: Human Food.
Up to 1000 chickens died. On the scene or in the “processing facility”? Ultimately I’d say 100% died except those who managed to run the hell away from the truck and didn’t get run over by a car.
Seriously!!
They were on their way to be slaughtered!
The only thing a chicken slaughterhouse “cares about” is whether or not it’s worth “processing” (euphemism alert!) a chicken or disposing of its dead or dying body! It’s all about the cost!
And who knows what the RSPCA cares about. Cute cats and dogs and bugger all else apparently. Kick a dog and we’ll prosecute you. But slaughter as many pigs, cows, sheep and chickens as you like. That’s fine. They’ll even approve the death of pigs and chickens so long as they “lived well” and were slaughtered “humanely”. Oh, and don’t export live sheep! Just kill them in Australia!
