-So every month, the --
the fourth Wednesday,
uh, we invite a speaker.
And that speaker,
we ask them to talk about
what got them into their --
into their -- into their field,
what their influences were,
and then
what the influences have been
throughout their career.
It turns out it's a -- it's a --
it's a quite of
a human task, you know.
For example, if inviting
somebody like Brian,
who has been around,
uh, for so long,
you know, since 1960s,
and then asking him
to go back even way back when --
when he started in England,
summarize that in that one hour
is not a trivial task.
But nevertheless, uh,
I think it's so important
for the next generation
to know this,
to know what you have done.
So it's been very popular.
You know, in fact
I'm kind of surprised
that, you know,
so many here today.
But normally, on the other side,
which is the other sciences,
uh, that we have a lot of --
a lot of people coming.
And, uh, but I think
this is a beginning
with the heliophysics community.
And I'm hoping that, uh,
in the future,
we'll be able to include
more astrophysics,
heliophysics and others
because, technically,
we've been doing other sciences,
and -- and it has been very,
very successful.
So, uh, the structure
of the talks
is that they are
quite kind of informal.
This is not the usual
typical colloquium,
where we have to do
formal introduction.
Uh, normally, the speaker
does not really talk about,
you know, themselves.
So this is the only
kind of forum
where we get to do this.
So...and I'm not going
to go into that.
He's gonna do it.
So for now, all I'm gonna do is,
uh, you know,
thank Jim Klimchuk,
who recommended, uh, you know,
Brian as one of the, uh,
topmost, uh, solar physicists,
high solar energy physicists,
uh, to share
some of his experience.
So please help me welcome
our speaker, Brian Dennis.
[ Applause ]
-Oh, boy.
[ Laughter ]
Take a breath.
Take a deep breath.
Uh, first of all, I want to
thank you all for coming.
I was worried that I would
give this talk
and nobody would show up.
So it's nice to see
everybody here.
And I know a lot of people.
And so I'm very pleased
that they came.
But the first question
I had and I know a lot
of people have is, why me?
Why did they pick on me?
Well, I think it's mainly
because I'm the oldest person
in the solar physics branch...
[ Laughter ]
...is --
is my main qualification.
But, uh, I also,
uh, have to acknowledge,
uh, Jim Klimchuk,
and I don't know whether
to thank him or curse him
for putting me on this spot.
But, uh, he's responsible
for me being here.
And, uh, you'll have
to judge, uh,
after I've given the talk
whether that was
a good idea or not.
But personally,
I think it was...
Well, I --
I'll get back with you, Jim.
Don't worry.
[ Laughter ]
So, uh, this is my...
And, uh, I, um, again,
I don't know what
a Maniac Talk was either.
So I'm doing it sort of...
I'm sort of winging it.
But the title,
I always think --
think of myself as a farm boy.
And so that's sort of...
The title came up immediately.
But then, I thought it would
be interesting to talk about
who I think I am
from my perspective.
And the best way
I could think of to do it
was to refer to three movies.
-[ Man laughing ]
-I thought
Richard would like that,
which perhaps
you haven't seen them all.
If you haven't seen
all these three,
they're really great movies.
[ Laughter ]
And you'll know, perhaps,
who I relate to
in "Zorba the Greek."
It's not Zorba the Greek.
It's Alan Bates,
who played a --
an uptight Englishman
who went to Crete
and met up with Zorba,
a passionate Greek guy.
And also, uh, he got involved
with a passionate Greek woman.
And, uh, that made me convinced
that you ought to be worried
about passionate people.
And, uh, so I've tried to be
careful with passionate people.
And I-I get...
Well, I shouldn't go into that.
I-I don't have time
to talk about that, but...
[ Laughter ]
The problem is
there's so much to talk about,
I'm gonna run over time.
We're all gonna get hungry.
So don't get me started
on something like that.
Salieri in "Amadeus."
I did --
I don't relate to
Wolfgang, uh, Mozart, of course,
because I'm not
interested in music.
I don't like music.
I didn't get --
didn't appreciate the music
in the movie.
[ Laughter ]
But Salieri is -- is like me.
He's jealous of people who --
who have this genius capability
of being a great composer like,
apparently, Mozart was.
[ Laughter ]
And, uh, the movie
actually has Salieri
in an insane asylum
because he -- he went
insane of -- with jealousy.
And he was accused
of actually poisoning Mozart.
But I understand that's --
that's -- that's false.
He didn't, um,
actually poison Mozart.
But at any rate,
I took from this
that you have to be able
to handle geniuses
like Mozart was,
and you have to be able
to get rid of your jealousy,
and you have to be able to
get geniuses to work together.
And I'd think of it
as all the --
the teams I've ever been on,
there's lots of geniuses.
And they -- but they --
they have a difficult time
working together.
So that's been sort of
my role as Salieri,
trying to get geniuses
to handle geniuses
and get them to work together.
I'm not a genius myself,
but I think I have some skills
in how to handle geniuses
and how to, you know,
defuse conflicts that come up.
The other one
was "Forrest Gump,"
which, I think,
most people have seen.
And I really like Forrest Gump.
I really empathize with him.
He was in many
historic moments,
as you may remember
from the movie.
I've been in many
historic moments
as far as high-energy
solar physics is concerned,
just basically observing
and helping out where you can.
But that -- that's
my relationship to Forrest Gump.
So that's --
that's a sort of, uh, a opener.
And then, I have to use this.
And if I can press
that button...There we go.
So this is the outline
of my talk.
I'm actually gonna...
Before you all fall asleep,
I'm gonna tell you a little bit
about high-energy solar physics.
And most of you
might know this.
But there's
a big, wide diversity.
My wife is here and people
who are not in high-energy
solar physics.
So I just wanted to get them
on the same page.
Then, I'll talk
my formative years in England,
when I obviously formed
my personality, I guess.
And then, when I came
to this country,
I at first went to
the University of Rochester
in New York
for a couple years, postdoc.
And then I came to Goddard.
And I've been here
ever since.
So and then if I do have
a little time,
a little bit
about future prospects.
So the first thing is this movie
which Tom Bridgman...
Is Tom here?
He -- he made this movie, 2002.
Many of you have
already seen it.
And...but I think it's, uh,
still the best movie
which shows what a solar flare,
or actually what we have to call
now a solar eruptive event, is.
Here's just zooming in
on the sun.
Actually, there's
a little laser here.
There's the sun.
Here's the flare.
The flare's gonna happen here.
Here's the RHESSI
in red and blue.
A little...
Here's the limb of the sun.
There's the flare.
And then, we back out.
And here's the coronal mass
ejection coming off.
So that's what a solar
eruptive event is, or --
or SEE, S-E-E, as we call it.
And thanks to Tom Bridgman
for that -- that movie.
Then...here's what we think,
at least what I think,
of a solar eruptive event.
This is the level
of the understanding
of the model
of solar eruptive event.
Jim Klimchuk is gonna
pooh-hoo this
because he does more detailed.
But he only does zero-D,
so it's not that much, is it?
[ Laughter ]
This is actually 2D, at least.
Uh, but basically,
for people who don't know,
this is the surface of the sun,
of the photosphere.
Here's the limb of the sun.
And these are
magnetic field lines.
Now, the whole energy
in the flare...
Actually,
I was gonna ask people
if they know where the energy
of the flares comes from.
And if Piers Sellers
was here...But he's not.
He's supposed to be here.
I was going to challenge him
to tell me where the energy
is stored
that produces the flare.
And the answer
is it's in my shoe.
[ Laughter ]
It's in my shoe.
I wanted to pass this around
because it's in
the magnetic field.
[ Laughter ]
-Don't pass them around?
-[ Man speaks indistinctly ]
-Huh? That's an excuse
to take my shoes off, ain't it?
[ Laughter ]
But that -- that's...If you --
if you don't remember
anything else from this talk,
remember that the energy
in these events comes
from the stored energy
in the magnetic field,
just like the magnetic field
that is in the clasp on my shoe.
I thought that was kinda cute.
[ Sighs ]
[ Laughter ]
But at any rate,
there's direct heating.
Whoops.
Well, let's do this one.
This is magnetic reconnection.
This is the best movie
I could find
of magnetic reconnection
with two --
the red field lines comes
together with the blue ones,
and they mate up
and then they reconnect,
and then they go off.
And, uh...well, actually,
I should go back.
I didn't talk about this.
And -- and people say,
"Well, what's the difference
between a flare and a CME?"
Well, here's
the reconnection site here,
basically where
the magnetic fields
come together -- the blue ones.
This one comes together
and forms these,
which then move down
to form these, uh,
circular loops down here.
And that's where all the --
the energy is released.
And the difference between
a CME and a flare,
in my simpleminded approach,
is anything that goes down
is the flare.
Anything that goes up
is the CME.
And the CME goes up,
and then this thing takes off
and comes rapidly
all the way to the earth.
So that's my simpleminded,
uh, definition
of what the difference is
between a flare and a CME.
So now, we can go to this one.
This...what's wrong
with this, Jim?
What's wrong with this?
This is the worst simulation
of reconnection I've ever seen.
But it's the only one
that seems to be on the Web.
The problem is...
Let me tell you.
Jim doesn't know
the problem.
The thing is, when it --
when reconnection takes place,
these reconnected loops are
so high energy
that they, in fact,
move down very rapidly.
And it's like when you have
bungee cords for a catapult.
What do you call 'em?
Slingshots or something
in this country, I think.
But these --
these act like slingshots,
these reconnected field lines.
These act like
the elastic bands.
And they shoot off
very rapidly, up and down.
So what goes up is the CME.
What goes down is the flare.
So we...
Can you do a simulation
that shows that, Jim?
Because we need, uh, some --
somebody out there
needs a movie
that shows that more
accurately a bit.
That's about all I'm gonna say
about the physics
of solar flares and --
and coronal mass ejections.
If you wanna know more, watch
Gordon Holman's colloquium.
He did a wonderful colloquium
recently.
And it's online.
And he goes into
much more detail
about the physics of this.
So this is what is --
what I think is a solar flare.
Um, it's the rapid release
of magnetic energy,
we think it now
magnetic reconnection.
It's got 10 to the 32 ergs,
lasts -- lasts about an hour.
It's in the lower corona,
way up the solar atmosphere.
Uh, heats plasma at tens
of millions of degrees,
10, 20 megakelvin,
as we call it.
The surprising thing,
originally,
was that up to 50%
of the energy
is in accelerated particles.
It's not just
in heating the plasma,
even though it's to
very high temperatures.
These particles are
moving more rapidly
than the particles
in the hot plasma.
And the electrons can go
to hundreds of MeV,
really, you know,
super relativistic.
And the ions can go
to tens of GeV, even, really.
And really, to this day,
we don't know how that --
the -- the, uh, the process
is so efficient
in accelerating particles.
Coronal mass ejection,
it's also the rapid release
of magnetic energy.
It's what goes up.
And the energy is --
is very similar.
And the millions
of tons of material
going at 1,000 miles an hour.
And it's really fast
stuff's shooting out.
Uh, you can see it with
the white-light coronagraphs
we've seen in
Tom Bridgman's movie.
Uh, and it has -- it actually
accelerates particles
but in the shock front,
primarily,
that goes out because this --
this is going faster
than the solar wind speed.
So it goes out.
It forms a shock, uh, which,
just like an aeroplane
going through the sound barrier,
it can accelerate particles,
uh, to similar energies
to what you see in flares.
And that's -- that's
the particles primarily that --
that reach the earth
and we see in, uh,
in interplanetary space.
So moving right along.
Oh, here's a recent,
uh, evaluation of, uh, flares
that we did to see
what the energies
in the different components is.
And here's 10 to the 32.
Here's the CME, the ki--
the kinetic energy of the CME,
which is the main energy,
just the kinetic energy
of the matter as it moves out.
And then, these are
all the different
components of the flare.
So when you sort of
add 'em all up,
they're very similar
to the energy in the CME.
This is averaging over
six solar eruptive events
that were where everything
could be measured
from the all the different
spacecraft observations.
And this is the energy
in the magnetic field
that's available to be released,
free magnetic energy,
basically.
But the bottom line here is,
uh, I wanna say is that,
in order to understand the, uh,
solar eruptive event,
you've got to study both
the flare and the CME together.
You can't just look at the CME
hitting the earth
and think you'll be able
to understand how it's in --
initiated and where
it comes from.
You can't just look
at the flare and --
and try and figure out what
sort of CME it's gonna send up.
You've gotta them
both together.
And, as we'll show later,
you've gotta really get back
to that energy release site.
Okay.
So this now tells us
why I study SEE,
solar eruptive events.
And my basic point
is they are
the biggest explosions
in the Solar System, after all.
And we don't understand them.
So that's the main reason
that I would think,
uh, we want to, uh, study them.
The energy released is, as I...
In my title,
it's they're the biggest bangs
in the Solar System
'cause they --
the energy released
is like 10 billion
hydrogen bombs going off in --
in a -- a few minutes.
It's not an insubstantial
amount of energy.
And it all comes,
remember, from my shoe,
from the magnetic field.
Okay.
So...But then, uh,
so then, it's --
it's what we call and ex --
an extreme example
of energy release
in magnetized plasma
in heliophysics.
That's -- that's
the scientific interest.
The, uh, the similar phenomena
in other astrophysical objects
from much further
away than the sun,
so you can't study them
in the sort of detail we can --
we can on the sun 'cause we can
actually image these, uh,
processes on the sun 'cause
the sun is relatively close.
But things like flare stars,
black hole accretion disks,
magnetars and other
more exotic things,
they have the same
magnetic fields
and the same sort
of energy release,
we think, that...
So understanding flares and --
and solar eruptive events,
uh, is helpful in understanding
these phenomena,
you know, further away
from us than the sun.
But there's also this
actually useful stuff
that the astrophysics
community have a problem
because they look at
black holes and think
...The layman thinks, "Well,
what's the use of black holes?
I can't use it."
But in fact,
we have the advantage
because we have a space
weather interest,
where these things, when they
come and hit the earth,
they have really
destructive effects
on the earth, uh,
and -- and in space
that we have to be pr --
be prepared for.
And it would be nice
to be able to forecast it.
So this is --
this is really, uh,
where all the money
is these days, it seems, is --
is understanding these --
these events from the space
weather perspective.
Okay.
So now, I'm gonna switch
and talk about
my formative years
before America, B.A.
Ahh. [ Sighs ]
[ Laughter ]
Um, well, I was,
as everybody knows,
I was born on a farm.
And this is the address.
And if anybody
wants to come visit,
the -- my brother is still...
Actually, my brother's son
is still farming there.
It's called
Thornton-le-fen, New York.
Yes, it's -- that's New York,
Lincolnshire, England.
Uh, I went to a primary school
at Gipsey Bridge,
which was about
a mile up the road.
We had to walk there in the rain
or snow, whatever.
Uh, basically,
a 2-room school.
Uh, when I was 11 years old,
everybody took the 11-plus exam
in those days.
And actually, they still do, uh,
in some parts of England.
You take this exam.
And they all take the exam.
If you pass the exam,
you go to a grammar school,
which has a standard
academic subject.
If you fail the exam --
Or they don't call it failing.
They call it "don't pass,"
I think, or something.
You go to what's
called a secondary --
what's in those days we called
a secondary modern school,
where you basically learned
the trades and trades.
And it's very difficult
if you don't pass that exam
to get transferred later on
to a grammar school.
So anyway, I managed to pass it.
I was the only kid in my school
that year that passed it.
I was the only kid for
the next 3 years that passed it.
My sister passed it
2 years earlier.
But that was it.
So I was really very lucky.
And, you know,
I credit my mother, of course,
for getting me through that
and me, of course,
because I was...
I'm no -- I'm no Mozart,
but I'm -- I'm not...
[ Laughter ]
I'm not bad, you know.
Uh, so anyway, I went
to this Queen Elizabeth's.
That's the original
Queen Elizabeth I's
grammar school,
um, in Horncastle,
which is about 15 miles away.
We had to get a bus every day,
go 15 miles
for this grammar school.
And when I got there,
I didn't know anybody
except for my sister,
who teased me incessantly
because I was there --
her younger brother.
It was terrible.
Uh, but you take this, uh,
Ordinary Level Certificate
of Education.
It's a national test
when you're,
like, 15,
in these three subjects.
And I passed everything
except French.
I was never
any good at languages.
I actually took Latin
for a while
and dropped it
because I hated it.
It was terrible.
Um, I took A-level,
the advanced level in physics,
maths and chemistry
and passed those.
And that allowed me --
You're one of --
I think it was only a few
percent of schoolkids in England
at that time
went to university.
So I was very fortunate then
to get into university.
And I went to
the University of Leeds.
Nobody's ever heard of Leeds
'cause I couldn't get
into Oxford or Cambridge
'cause I didn't take Latin.
And this...
[ Laughter ]
You had to have Latin.
You had to pass Latin
in order to get a chance
even to apply to Oxford
or Cambridge.
So that's fine. So then, I...
And it only took me,
uh, what is this?
Uh, 6 years to get a PhD.
That's unheard of these days.
And that's why I don't know
my basic physics,
a lot of things,
'cause I didn't spend time.
[ Laughter ]
And, uh,
so I did my PhD
in cosmic ray physics.
Whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops.
Wrong -- wrong button.
And then, in 19...
when I got my PhD...
-What are those air showers?
-Extensive air showers.
-Yes.
-These are cosmic rays,
very high-energy cosmic rays,
hit the top of the atmosphere
and produce showers
of particles.
Then, you detect them
on the ground.
I'll talk a little bit more
about that when I get to it.
This is just sort of a teaser.
Then, in 1964, I went down
what's called
in those days the "brain drain."
There -- there was a big problem
with lots of PhDs
going down the brain drain,
as it's called,
coming to America.
Americans were offering,
you know, jobs
and money and any --
anything they could think of
to attract people
to come down the brain drain.
There Par-- there was questions
in Parliament about it.
I'll talk a little bit more
about that if I've time.
And I didn't have any trouble
getting a green card.
I went -- had to go
to Liverpool,
to the American Consulate.
And, uh, they said,
"Well, you could get
a temporary visa
"for 15 shillings,
or you can get what's called
a green card for 15 pounds."
Well, 15 pounds was a lot
of money in those days.
And I didn't really know
what a green card was.
But I thought, "Well, perhaps
I'd better get a green card."
So I just bought --
bought a green card.
[ Laughter ]
And, you know, now, people --
people are horrified
that they...
as, uh, Simon, I'm sure,
is laughing at that problem.
But, uh, in those days,
the number of green cards
they gave out was proportional
to the people
in this country
who were from that country.
So a lot of people from England.
So they had more green cards
to give out
than they had people
wanting to come, so...
And then, well, the other thing
is we went back to England...
Well, I came to England
on the "Queen Elizabeth,"
"Queen Elizabeth I" ship --
This is a ship, by the way.
That's a -- that's a queen.
This is a -- this is a ship.
And we came over --
I came over on
the "Queen Elizabeth,"
the first "Queen Elizabeth."
And it was great.
I really enjoyed it.
But then, last year, actually,
we went back to England
on the "Queen Mary 2."
That's this one here.
Oh, here's the, uh,
sticker from my trunk.
I had one of these big trunks
with all my worldly possessions
in it when I, uh...
Let's move on here.
Okay, whereabouts
in England am I from?
Well, nobody knows
where Lincolnshire is.
But you probably will recognize
the outline of England.
Scotland's up here, still part
of the United Kingdom.
Here's Wales.
This is actually Ireland.
I didn't put the label.
But -- but Leeds is
right there in Yorkshire.
This is Yorkshire.
These are all
the counties in England.
This is Lincolnshire.
It's the second-biggest county
in England,
I'm proud to say.
And this is London down here
somewhere on the Thames,
which you may know about.
But then, this is
a blowup of Lincolnshire.
Here's Thornton-le-fen.
Here's New York.
Here's Boston.
So Boston and New York
are quite close to one another.
There's a story about why
New York was named New York.
It was named after this New York
in this country,
apparently, not York.
It's not
the new version of York.
It's...But anyway, my wife
will tell you about that.
It...if...It's a theory.
I don't believe it, really.
Anyway, so I was from there.
There's two other famous people
from Lincolnshire.
One was Isaac Newton,
who was from Wool--
Woolsthorpe here.
And the other is
Margaret Thatcher from Grantham.
So now, you know there are
three famous people from --
from Lincolnshire.
[ Laughter ]
Okay. The standard...
I've gotta show these pictures
of, uh, cute pictures of me.
[ Laughter ]
Very few people have --
I think nobody in this country's
ever seen me without a beard.
Uh, but I did, actually, not --
not have a beard
when I was young, so...
[ Laughter ]
So this is 1966.
Apparently, I did have
hair problems.
I -- I couldn't control my...
And see my --
my -- my haircut there
was a little difficult.
And this one here, I...
[ Laughter ]
I-I...I had hair problems
until my daughter was,
like, 10 years old.
And she said, "Dad,
your hair is terrible.
Why don't you use gel?"
And I had never heard of gel.
And I-I-I was told you
shouldn't use Brylcreem
'cause it gets
all oily and greasy.
So I didn't use Brylcreem,
but she says to use gel.
So now, I use gel
and have it under control.
[ Laughter ]
Okay. Here's life on the farm.
Here's -- here's some potatoes.
This isn't...
I don't have any pictures,
any photographs of me
picking potatoes
'cause people just didn't take
pictures in those days, I guess.
Or if they did,
we've lost them.
But on the farm, uh, this wasn't
like "Downton Abbey."
This wasn't, uh,
gentlemen farmers.
We were working farmers.
My father was a working farmer.
My mother --
her father owned the land.
And my father married
the farmer's daughter.
And then, he took over the land.
So it was a real working farm.
It's about 150 acres
in Lincolnshire.
But at the time
when I was born,
we didn't have any water
laid onto the house.
So the only water we had was
what we'd take off
the roof of the house.
And it drained down into
a big underground cistern.
And that's all the water
we had for washing and...
So that's why we only had
a bath once a week
because we had to get
-- save water.
We got a bath once a week
whether we needed it or not.
And...But we only had
one bath full of water.
So the youngest got
to have a bath first,
then the oldest,
and then finally,
my father would have a bath
after everybody else
had got a bath.
This is once a week.
And if anybody...
That's why I get kind of upset
when people joke
about English weather
because it always rains, right?
Well, it's a good thing
it does always rain.
Otherwise, we wouldn't
have enough water.
So, you know, now you
understand why I'm...
If people joke about
the weather,
I don't laugh,
generally speaking.
It's not funny 'cause, you know,
it's good that it rains.
We didn't have any
electricity until 1952.
So the only source
of information
was a battery-operated radio.
So we used to listen to the BBC,
"Dick Barton - Special Agent"
for 15 minutes
every night at 7:00.
That's the only radio show
I really listened to.
Uh, we had pets. We had a dog.
We had what were called
no-name outdoor cats.
They're all outdoors.
They were basically
to control the rats and mice.
We had three workhorses --
Violet, Punch, and Prince.
Great horses. That's my job --
to lead them
during harvest time.
That was my favorite job,
actually, with the horses.
We had cows.
The problem with cows
is you have to milk them.
If they don't have the calves
there, you have to milk them.
And you have to milk them
twice a day,
7 days a week, 365 days.
You know this.
That's why,
when something comes up
and it's boring
and it's difficult,
then I'll say, "Jeez,
that's just like milking cows."
You know about that, right?
And -- and it's really...
I hated that,
having to milk cows.
Well, we'd only basically have
one cow that we had to milk.
But...The first time
I tried it I was really excited
'cause I learned how to milk
a cow, you know, something new.
But then, after 5 years,
you've been milking those cows.
[ Laughter ]
And then, people say,
"Well, what's motivated you
to come to Goddard,
to come to America
and do this sort of work?"
It's getting away
from the boring farm work.
[ Laughter ]
Okay.
We had chickens and cockerels.
A cockerel -- I think you know
what a cockerel is.
It's, uh, I think
you call roosters here.
But they were for eggs.
These were for meat.
We had pigs we used to kill.
My father would kill one pig
every year for the --
for the meat.
Uh, we had these crops --
oats and beans and barley
grow for you
or I or anyone know --
Anybody know that song?
And uh, we...
you know, a very mixed farm.
Uh, garden, we had all these
things my mother planted.
We had an orchard
with apples, pears, and plums.
So we -- we had plenty of food.
No problem there.
But, uh, as Richard will say,
it was all bland food.
My mother was
a bland food cooker.
But I loved it.
My...She's the best cook
I've ever, ever had.
Here's back on the farm.
And this is the house
where I was...
Actually,
not where I was born.
This is where
I was brought up.
You see it's no "Downton Abbey,"
but it's -- it's substantial.
We -- we weren't badly off.
Here's my mother and father
when they came to visit.
Uh, they only came once,
in 1970, when was it,
'69, when Christine was born.
Was that right?
This is my sister
and my brother.
My brother is...
His -- his -- his son
is still farming.
Here's on the farm.
There's tractor.
Now, all they do is drive
the tractor every day.
They don't actually
do any real work.
They just sit in the cab.
[ Laughter ]
Here's a scene.
Uh, and you can see
the basic thing thing about this
is it's flat.
And it's flat and boring.
And that's why I'm flat
and boring, I guess,
because it's reclaimed
from the sea.
This land was reclaimed
from the sea, from the marshes.
And so it's all very flat.
Okay, how are we doing
on time, by the way?
[ Sighs ]
Okay, so when I -- then,
I went to Leeds University.
And here's another picture
without a beard, when I first --
when I got my BS.
I guess it wasn't until there.
I think I grew the beard after
I got my bachelor's degree.
And this is the --
the, uh, thesis
in extensive air showers.
And this -- this,
I paid the typist to do this.
And see what a rotten job
the -- the text is here?
You had to pay
a typist to type up.
There's no LaTeX
and computers to do all that.
Here's when I got my PhD.
This is my PhD hat.
And here's...
I -- I did the work
at Haverah Park,
which is in the --
the, uh, moors,
the Yorkshire moors
north of Leeds.
And it was wonderful.
We got out of the city.
Got a Land Rover to drive,
went out of the city
to the places
where the particle detectors
were set up in, uh,
in sheds on the Yorkshire moor.
So we got to go out every day.
It was -- it was great.
I really enjoyed it.
And then, one of the defining,
formative things
that I did after I got, uh,
out of grammar school
and before I'd gone
to university, every summer,
because it was kind of
boring on the farm
in the summer
before harvest time,
there's nothing to do,
so I went on these, uh,
Concordia International
Work Camps,
uh, starting in 1958.
They still operate them,
and I would encourage...
One of the things I would
encourage young people to do
is do some physical labor
every year.
You know, spend 3 weeks
going to one of these places.
And here this is, what,
in Boston Harbour.
And here we're ready to bicycle.
We -- we took our bicycles
across on this ship,
which was a merchant ship.
My...One of our friends
in Boston knew the captain.
And he agreed to take us
across to Holland.
And so we got our bikes.
And you see I've got
my tie on here.
I'm all ready to bike across,
uh, Holland
and Belgium
into the Ardennes in France,
where the work camp was held.
And here's where we were --
the work camp was.
There was, like,
20 or 30 people
from all different countries.
It was a wonderful experience.
Here's my friend.
We had a machete.
And we were chopping down
bushes around,
uh, larger trees in --
in the forest
in the Ardennes.
Here's -- here's me
cutting wood.
And here's...
We went to Brussels,
where the World's Fair
was that year.
And that was a great experience.
And, well, here,
I've got my shorts on
and my jacket off, my tie off.
So...And it was a great place
to meet young women as well.
It seemed
a really good thing to do.
I can rec-- recommend it.
Now, the next year,
I went to Alsace.
And the third year,
I went to Algeria.
And this was during
the Algerian, uh,
difficulties that
the French were having.
So that was quite --
quite exciting. Okay.
So now I've put together
these rules to live by,
which, you know,
I'm supposed to be
telling the young people
how to live, right?
So this -- these are
my rules to live by.
[ Laughter ]
Don't get addicted to anything.
Cigarettes. For some reason,
I didn't start
smoking cigarettes.
I think my brother tried
to get me on,
and I would try and smoke
a cigarette.
It would get all wet,
and it was horrible,
and I-I just, for some...
My brother got addicted
in the Army,
and my father and mother
both were chain smokers.
My -- the secretary here
was a chain smoker.
Somehow or other,
I managed to avoid it.
Alcohol.
The only reason
I'm not addicted to alcohol is
'cause I get violent overhangs
as I've found out twice.
Don't mess with alcohol.
Tea.
My mother -- she was
a very big tea drinker.
She claims...
One of her claims
is she drank nine cups of tea
before breakfast once.
So I-I got really
addicted to tea,
but one Christmas I said
I'm not gonna drink any tea.
It's like Lent,
and I stayed off tea
for a whole Christmas occasion.
Sex. You know, well,
that's another question.
But we'll come
to that later, I'm certain.
[ Laughter ]
Crossword puzzles.
And now I currently am
addicted to crossword puzzles.
So I'm tryin', workin' on that.
Okay, treat everybody equally.
Don't stereotype.
You know, just because
you see somebody that's --
that's from Greece, don't think
it's Zorba the Greek.
Not all people from Greece
are Zorba the Greek.
Be a citizen of the world.
I...You know, people say,
"Well, you're English."
I say,
"Well, I was born in England,
but I'm really a citizen
of the world."
That's my favorite phrase.
Don't work after 9 p.m.
It's better, more important that
you get a good night's sleep
than you sit up swapping
for an exam.
Don't mess with women
until you get your PhD.
That is -- that is -- that's
the most important one here.
[ Laughter ]
And the 6-month rule --
decide after dating for 6 months
if marriage is likely.
I did that with a lot
of girlfriends,
and, uh, unfortunately,
none of them kept --
I'm not friends
with any of them since then.
But I think it's
important to decide.
But 6 months is a long time.
[ Laughter ]
Okay.
Now in America.
Well, this is the timeline,
uh, in America.
I got postdoc position
at Rochester for 2 years,
and then, I guess,
I started messing with women,
and this is...
And my wife is still here,
same woman I married in 19 --
When did we get married, '60?
'66, was it? Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
And we've got three children,
and it's, you know,
it's worked out fine.
So the important thing
is you don't mess with them
until you've got your PhD.
And if you do that, then when
you do start messing with them,
it works out fine. Okay?
Uh, I've got an NRC postdoc,
and I became a civil servant
to Goddard,
working in Building 2.
I was very sad to see
Building 2 knocked down.
Now 21.
Joined, uh, Ken Frost
working on the OSOs,
Solar Maximum Mission,
Hard X-ray Burst Spectrometer.
Then there was that hiatus
I'll talk about for Max '91,
but we did that.
And then HEIDI and HIREGS.
The balloon instruments
were started.
Then we come to RHESSI,
and the future is, you know,
the Solar Eruptive Events 2020,
uh, proposal
and the different instruments
that are associated with that.
Which, if I have time,
which I probably won't have,
I'll come to talk about that.
Okay.
Now the pictures
of the University of Rochester.
Here's marriage, of course,
my wife with
her engagement ring,
different pictures,
farmer's son to marrying --
This is the story
in the local Boston newspaper.
[ Laughter ]
Here's me cooking lunch,
actually.
It's a Sunday lunch.
Gerry used to think
I should do the dishes,
and he would do the cooking.
But I said, "No, no.
I'm not gonna do
the damn dishes all the time.
I'm gonna cook dinner."
So I cooked roast beef
and Yorkshire pudding,
and I think Brussels sprouts
and baked potatoes.
And it was great.
It was great. Right, Gerry?
-Yeah, it was one time. Yeah.
-Yeah, well, I hate
doing things several times.
You know, if I've done
something once,
it's boring
when you do it again.
And here's me
and Gerry having fun.
Here's Gerry's car.
Gerry is a very important part
of my life in -- in America.
I stayed -- I roomed with him.
And he actually,
in a roundabout sort of way,
he's great with women.
I mean, he was messing
with women before,
I think, before he got his PhD.
[ Laughter ]
But he was great
to have as a...
-Yeah, I didn't have my PhD yet.
-I know. I know.
But you introduced me
to my future wife,
and, uh, so everything
worked out fine.
Okay. But I was working on
Gamma-ray Spark Chamber
with Graeme Duthie
and Giovanni Fazio at Rochester.
And also the OSO-3 Particle
Spectrometer with Mort Kaplon.
I think Gerry was
working on that.
And has there been any results
from that instrument, Gerry?
[ Laughter ]
I couldn't find any papers.
I'm still listed
as the person that's --
that knows where the data
is from this spacecraft.
But I don't -- I don't know.
Okay.
So at the end of my stay
at the University of Rochester,
I decided that,
well, I get to get
a permanent position somewhere.
So I said, "Well, I should --
"I should go and look what they
call the Reverse 'Brain Drain,'
and I'll try and get back
to England."
So I contacted Dr. Jelley
at the Atomic Energy Authority
at Harwell,
which was the main
research center in England,
and he said, "Oh, great.
"Yeah, you --
your qualifications,
"you know, you've been working
on extensive air showers
and gamma rays.
You'd be great."
And he offered me a job.
And he said,
"Well, the only thing is,
uh, you have to go..."
Well, actually, I've got
a letter from the Hoff Board,
which was appointed
by Parliament
to try and attract people
to come back from America
to work in England.
So I said, "Okay."
But they said,
"Well, we want you to come
to New York to meet us."
And I assumed they were
going to try and attract me
to come back to work in England.
So I went up to New York,
you know, fairly carefree,
and they talked to me.
And then, about a week later,
I got this letter.
And it says, "It is with regret
"that I have to write saying
the board did not,
in the end, see its way
to recommend you for an offer."
So they didn't offer me the job.
I was -- I was kind of stunned.
And my wife was very pleased,
I think,
because she didn't want to go
to England in the first place.
So at any rate, it turns out
this was kind of
controversial in England,
and the Hoff Board
was chaired by this guy,
Henry Hoff,
who I've later found out,
when I was preparing this talk,
is actually William Cooper
who's written several novels
that, uh, became quite famous
and, in fact, inspired
Kingsley Amis
to write "Lucky Jim."
He's -- he's...And he worked
with C.P. Snow as well,
so this guy was quite famous
as a novelist.
I think he was
a rotten chairman of the, uh,
of the Reverse "Brain Drain."
But anyway, so anyway,
what happened was I also applied
to Goddard at the same time.
And I came down to Goddard
to be interviewed,
and I thought, "My God,
I've just failed to get into --
get back to England. What are
they gonna do to me at Goddard?"
Well, it was...I had a choice.
I could go and work
with Carl Fichtel
in gamma ray astrophysics
or Ken Frost.
They offered me
two jobs, basically.
I couldn't believe it.
So I opted for Ken Frost.
Here's Ken Frost.
And started working
in X-ray and gamma ray.
And he was -- he was, sorry,
he was working in solar physics,
but we were allowed to do
some astrophysics as well
with the X-ray/gamma ray
instruments that he --
he was working on.
And it was great because,
basically, at that time,
we were exploring this
new window on the universe.
The X-ray and gamma ray's
just been observed in space
for the first time.
And we could make all
these observations of flares
and X-ray sources
and the diffuse
X-ray background,
which I spent most of my time,
for the first several years,
working on rather
than solar physics.
And this is one of the things
that I'm more proud of is
I helped start
the Goddard Soccer League.
And as you see, in 1973,
we were the champions
in the spring and the fall.
[ Laughter ]
And you may recognize
some people.
That's me there.
This is Larry Orwig,
Norm Ness, Art Serlemitsos.
I think that's Pete Kenney.
I'm not sure.
This is, uh, Rick Rothschild,
Mario Acuña,
Pete Serlemitsos, Dave Thompson.
And I can't remember
these guys' names.
But that was a great,
great thing to --
to -- to play in this.
And I think that's why
I'm still standing here
because I used to play
two games a week,
and I really was
in very good shape then,
much better than I am now.
But any rate, it...
So when I started at Goddard,
we get to...uh...
Perhaps I'll skip this,
but just to say that this
is what Ken Frost was --
was known for at the time.
He was the first person.
When you're looking at X-rays
and gamma rays, uh, you do it
with a scintillation detector.
This is the central detector
here.
And when they flew
that first of all,
there was so much background
from the charged particles
going through it
from the diffuse X-ray
background
that you couldn't see the
sources you were interested in.
Like if you were
interested in the Crab,
it was swamped out
by all this background.
So you had to put
a shield around it.
And when they put
a lead shield around it,
they found that, well,
that increased the background
because the lead --
the particles would interact
in the lead and produce showers
that would increase
the background
rather than decrease
the background.
So Ken developed this
anticoincidence shield
where he actually made
the shield
out of a scintillator as well.
And you look at it
with photomultipliers,
but you just look
at the signals
in the central detector
that are not in coincidence
with the sheet signal
from the outside.
And that cut down
the background.
That was what people used,
uh, all the time after that,
after this one was, uh,
was developed.
And Larry Peterson at, uh,
UCSD was developing this
at the same time.
But that's what Ken Frost
initially was --
was known for.
And then there were
the Orbiting Solar Observatories
initiated by John Lindsay,
the same Lindsay that
the Lindsay award is --
is named after.
And this always amazes me
that Ken Frost had instruments
on all these, uh,
OSOs and then SMM,
you know,
just one after the other.
And basically didn't
really have to write
a very significant proposal.
There was only him
and Larry Peterson
that wanted to build
these instruments.
So it's -- it's such a --
so different from now
that he could actually
get these instruments
built and flown
without much competition.
And this is OSO (F),
the first one I was
really involved with.
And again, it has this big
anticoincidence shield viewed
by these photomultipliers.
And then this is
the central crystal.
This is just a thin crystal
because we just were
interested in the --
in the X-rays,
not the gamma rays.
Uh, 14 to 250 kilovolts,
but this is
scintillation resolution,
so it's not so good resolution
as RHESSI is, certainly.
But this was the, uh, the best
we could do at the time.
It had a very thick --
a thicker window here to absorb
the low-energy X-rays
so pulse product
wasn't such a problem.
But then came
the Solar Maximum Mission,
which Ken Frost, well,
he was the project scientist,
and he did --
went a long way
to making sure
that the Solar Maximum Mission
was actually
selected and funded.
And it was the first mission
to concentrate on solar flares,
and we called them
solar flares at the time
because we didn't know
about coronal mass ejection.
Um, and it was
the first spacecraft
repaired in orbit in 1982,
as you may know.
And its payload...
This is its payload.
It had instruments covering
many different wavelengths.
The hard X-ray
burst spectrometer
was Ken Frost's instruments
that I-I worked on.
And here it is.
And you'll recognize it.
It's very similar
to the instrument
that Ken had flown on OSO --
OSO (F), OSO-5.
And the thing about this
that I am very proud of,
actually, is the PI data rights
were waived.
Before this,
the PI of any instrument
would have the data rights
for his instrument
for the first year after launch.
And then after that,
he still had the data,
and he could make it
very difficult
for anybody else
to get access to the data.
And that was a big issue
because a lot of,
you know, outside people,
university people,
wanted to get access to data
and analyze it,
but they weren't allowed to
unless they made friends
with the PI.
And it was, to my mind,
an outrageous system.
And it's still, to some extent,
used in astrophysics.
But in solar physics,
I'm very pleased to see
that all the data
from all the instruments
is basically publicly available,
and we can all access it
on the internet
or whatever and --
and analyze it
completely freely.
And I think that's they way
that science should be done.
So but the -- the paper,
143 citations,
it was very popular at the time.
And a little bit recently.
This is the citations per year
that you can get from NASA ADS,
which I've been
looking at and found
rather sobering to see
how little my papers are --
are referenced,
especially my thesis work.
Only one citation to my thesis.
[ Laughter ]
But here's the Neupert Effect.
Uh, perhaps I won't
have time to go into this,
but this has been popular
ever since Werner Neupert,
uh, suggested it.
I had the brilliant...
Well, he said that
the microwave light curve
is the time integral
of the soft X-ray light curve.
I had the brilliant idea,
well, if...Sorry.
If that's true,
then it'd be more useful
to plot the time derivative
of the soft X-ray light curve.
This is my -- the extent of my
mathematical wizardry, you know.
[ Laughter ]
And it turns out that's true,
and this is some RHESSI data.
Here's the RHESSI light curve,
the hard X-ray
light curve here.
And here's the derivative
of the soft X-ray light curve.
And they match up quite nicely.
In fact, the --
the -- the slight differences
are kind of interesting,
and I think this
tells us something
about the actual energy
release process itself.
And there's 178 citations.
I'm very pleased
with that, actually.
Um, but the best way
to get citations
is to write review papers.
And I wrote a review paper
in 19...
When was that? 1985.
340 citations.
They're still citing it
because it's a review
of all
of solar hard X-ray bursts.
That's the way
to get citations,
and I recommend
that young people,
when they get into a field,
write a review paper
because that forces you
to learn the subject,
for one thing, plus, if you...
You can then get lots
of citations
if it's a good review paper.
So, you know,
after the success of this,
I wrote another one a couple
of years later,
and I only...
Then I, somehow or other,
I got to write the third one.
I got so bored with it
that I had to asked Richard,
and he graciously, uh,
agreed to help me finish it.
So this one is
Dennis and Schwartz.
It's only got six...
I'm sorry, Rich,
it's only got 67.
[ Laughter ]
Okay. So but the thing was...
Perhaps I'll, uh, skip this.
This is the thing why the first
one got so many citations.
This is the size distribution
of flares that I published
in the first review paper.
It's a parallel [?]
over like four orders
of magnitude.
And that was really
kind of surprising.
But it's being used and copied,
uh, for the Avalanche
Model that Lu
and Hamilton did.
They show this plot as well.
Per Bak in "How Nature
Works" includes this.
And he, in fact, talked here
at a colloquium about his, uh,
his self-organized
criticality theory.
I mean, as he was talking,
he showed this plot.
And I -- I was kind of shocked.
I didn't know it was actually
being used. And I said --
I raised my hand and said,
"That's my plot."
And so he...Actually,
if you look in his book,
he talks about coming to Goddard
and giving that colloquium,
and he says,
"The -- the author
of this paper..."
You know. So I'm --
I'm famous in that --
that respect.
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, moving right along.
This was the model that we had
at the time of SMM.
This is just after
SMM that this...
If Joe Gurman is here,
I think he's the one that
actually finally published this.
Uh, the original version
was written by Gordon Hurford
on a napkin
at some dinner we had.
And then Keith Strong
put it in IDO
and made these nice spirals.
But basically, at that time,
uh, we used to say that --
or George Duchak used to say,
well, "A miracle happens here,"
and some energy is released
from the magnetic field
or from somewhere.
We didn't know
how that happened.
But the energy is released here.
It heated up the plasma,
and it accelerated particles,
and they were seen at footpoints
here, and there's the --
the footpoint where
the electrons
and the ions come down.
The ions go down deep,
the electrons not so deep.
And so this model was what
we knew about at the time.
And then, of course.
Gosling in 1993 came up
with "The Solar Flare Myth,"
which kind of shocked people up
because they thought, well...
Well, but what it said
was that the flares
do not generally play
a central role
in producing
major transient disturbances
in the near-Earth
space environment.
Well, okay, fair enough.
Uh, the central role
is given to events known
as coronal mass ejections.
Well, fair enough.
By the time
you get to the earth,
it is the coronal mass ejection
that causes the problems
at the earth primarily.
And most of the particles,
as you can see,
are accelerated and shot.
So the flare takes this,
for the space weather people,
a secondary role.
And we were worried
that this would then divert
all the funding
to people who wanted to look
at coronal mass ejections.
But that...
To some extent, it happened,
but, uh, I think
with RHESSI, we've --
we've shown that the flare
observations are also important,
and, really, you need
to understand them both together
because they -- they seem to
occur together primarily.
Here's the Masuda Flare,
which is another
Earth-shattering thing
when...Here's the solar limb.
Here's the soft X-ray loops
that are hot and heated up.
Here's the normal footpoints
in hard X-rays.
They saw this X-ray source
in the corona above
the soft X-ray source.
And this pleased
some of the modelers
because they were saying,
"Well, there's got to..."
That they think there's energy
release here above this source,
and this is the energy, uh,
that's released here
by the reconnection
and appears here in electrons
that produce the hard X-rays.
So this was the first
sort of confirmation
that the energy release
was, uh, magnetic
reconnection in the corona.
And then we had this proposal
here, the SHAPE proposal,
which I won't go into
in any detail.
It was submitted in 1986
to do both gamma
ray spectroscopy with --
with high-res -- high grands,
it was called.
And then this was
the gamma ray imaging device
which have the same
Fourier-transform type of,
uh, imaging that RHESSI does.
And this was sort of
the precursor to RHESSI.
But unfortunately,
it was submitted in 1986
just after
the Challenger accident,
and all NASA proposals
were put on hold.
And so, by the time
they reviewed it,
it was too late
for the next Maximum.
We had to go
to the Max '91 program,
which, uh, I worked on
with Dick Canfield,
Ernie Hildner,
and Alan Kiplinger.
And we put out this report.
The primary objective
of this was
to shake some money free
from NSF and NASA,
and it was successful in
getting funded for -- for this.
HEIDI, that Carol Crannell
led, and that...
I don't know if you can
see who that is.
Does anybody know
who that might be?
That, I think,
is Colleen Hartman,
who was Carol Crannell's
student at the time.
So she was at Goddard in...
This is about 19 -- 1990.
This is getting -- working
on this HEIDI instrument.
Okay. This is HIREGS.
The Berkeley --
Berkeley balloon instrument,
which, uh, had Germanium
detectors similar
to, uh, RHESSI.
And that flew several times
in the Antarctic, I think.
This one only flew once,
and then we switched to,
uh, to -- to RHESSI,
to preparing for RHESSI,
unfortunately.
So this is now RHESSI.
Everybody knows about RHESSI.
Seven hundred and sixty-seven
citations, look at that.
That's what you want
to do is write a paper
about an instrument
that's so successful,
and then, uh, get all
these citations.
So this is RHESSI.
And, uh, we're
running out of time.
So I'll just say, well,
it's Fourier-transform imaging,
and that shuts everybody up.
But it's really very simple.
[ Laughter ]
And it's -- it's been very
successful, blah, blah, blah.
Here's RHESSI people.
These are all Mozarts
in my mind.
Bob Lin here was...
If it wasn't for Bob Lin,
RHESSI wouldn't have
happened, literally.
This is Reuven Ramaty,
who was one of the fathers
of gamma ray astronomy.
And unfortunately, he died just
before RHESSI was launched.
Here's Gordon Hurford,
Bob Lin, Hugh Hudson,
Gordon Emslie,
David Smith, and Nicole Vilmer.
All great people,
and, you know,
made a really good team
to put RHESSI together.
And here's other people.
And I'm waiting for Richard
to recognize himself.
-I see myself.
-[ Laughs ]
Does anybody see Richard?
This -- this is Richard here.
This is an old picture --
That's the only one
I could dig up.
I don't know where
I got it from.
Anyway, these are all the people
that have, uh...
Or some of the people.
I couldn't get pictures
of all of them, but...
We don't have time
to spend on that.
But now, I just wanted to point
out that we now think
that the real action
is in the corona.
That's where
the energy release is.
And you can tell that because
this is a RHESSI source here.
This is the low-energy source
that's, uh, the --
the high-temperature plasma.
Here's a hard X-ray source
in the corona
where the energy release
is taking place.
And here's, uh, Sui and Holman,
who saw an X-ray source here
in the corona
and another one at
higher altitude with reversed,
uh, energy, uh, contours
and different colors.
And they postulated
that the energy release
of that was here
and that the stuff
that went down
was going in this direction.
Here's the footpoints.
The stuff that went up
produced an X-ray source here
but then went off to produce
a coronal mass ejection.
So that's why we --
we're pretty sure
that the energy --
that the real
interesting part...
Now this is...I don't have time
for this, unfortunately.
But this is the movie
I wanted to show you.
This is actually
available in "Nature."
It was published in "Nature"
by, uh, Yung Su,
who, uh, was here at Goddard,
did his PhD work here.
But we're running out of time,
and I'm gettin' hungry,
so we'll move on.
But here, again, it shows...
You can actually see in
the AIA data that the, uh,
the field lines are moving in.
One of these loops,
actually you can
see it moving in,
and then you'll see it move out,
up and down here.
So this is the best example of,
uh, you know, real movies
showing magnetic reconnection
in action.
And you can see
the RHESSI sources here.
Again, the low-altitude one
and the higher altitude
one on opposite sides
of the reconnection side.
This is Terry Forbes' diagram
of what he thinks we're seeing,
and it's rotated here
to actually the way
it was on the sun here.
So this is his model showing
the current sheet formed here
and the particle --
the -- the magnet fields
going up and down
and, uh, accelerated particles
and heated plasma.
So that's, uh, the best example
that I know of.
Now let's --
let's just move on here.
That...So the thing is the...
For the C2020,
this was for the heliophysics
decadal survey.
We put in this proposal
called C2020 thanks
to Albert's,
uh, brilliant insight.
And, uh, we concentrated
on the energy release side
here inside this circle.
So we -- we said,
"Well, anything that happens
inside this circle,
we want to know about.
Anything that we can't get
at inside the circle,
if it comes out of the circle,
we want to be able to see it.
So we want to be able to look
at the X-rays in the circle
and also the X-rays
at the footpoints.
And that means that
we've got to be able
to see this weaker source here
when there's strong footpoints."
And RHESSI has
a problem with that.
And you wanna be able to see
the gamma rays from the ions
because we don't know
what their contribution
is, their relative contribution,
the -- the energetic
neutral atoms
that have now been seen,
and we also want to measure
all the plasma properties
and the magnetic fields in here.
So it's a tall order, but that
seems to me to be the, uh,
the next step
that we need to go on.
And then Bob Lin,
his last paper,
he basically outlined
the observation requirements,
and he came up with FOXSI,
the focusing optics X-ray,
and it needs to be
10 times RHESSI.
You all gotta beat RHESSI
for the sensitivity
and dynamic range.
GRIPS, which, uh, actually,
uh, should say that, um,
what's his name,
Steven Christe is --
is working on --
working on this at Goddard.
Albert Shih is working on GRIPS.
It's now being built at,
uh, Berkeley
for a balloon flight to --
in the Antarctic next year.
It's going to be 10 times
RHESSI in sensitivity
and angular resolution
in gamma rays.
Energetic neutral atoms,
Albert Shih is working on that.
And the context observations,
we hope other people
are working on these as well.
So this is the C2020 mission
concept that we put together.
It will never fly like this.
It's a Christmas tree,
as you see.
Everybody calls this
a Christmas tree
with all the instruments
added on.
Here's the person for scale.
So it's a big mission.
We've costed it out in
the heliophysics decadal see --
survey at over
a billion dollars to fund it,
so it's not gonna go
with the current budget.
But the different instruments
on it like the --
the FOXSI, the GRIPS instrument,
perhaps the coronagraph,
the ENA, they may be able
to go on separate,
you know, SMEXes
or individual or --
or balloon flights.
I think GRIPS, uh, is having
this Antarctic flight,
the long-duration
balloon flights.
So we're --
I'm still hopeful that,
uh, the different instruments
will --
will be able to get
in orbit eventually.
So here's the instrument status,
and we can...
They -- they're all, you know,
being worked on,
and since Simon Bandler's left,
I don't have dimension solaris X
because he's --
we're trying
to put his microcalorimeters
with EV energy resolution
to do actually imaging
and soft X-rays, actually image
the individual lines.
That's an exciting prospect.
So dos and don'ts.
Here's my sort of final slide
for -- for young people.
Study plasma physics.
That's one thing that,
since I only took
3 years to get my PhD,
I really didn't get a good --
I did -- I did take a course
in plasma physics,
it was a Catholic university,
with Carol Crannell,
and that's all I know
about plasma physics,
which is not very much.
Um, work with as
many Mozarts as possible.
You know, they -- they can
be annoying and difficult,
but you gotta work with them.
You know, it's...They're --
they're the ones that make
the real breakthroughs.
But overcome conflict.
Don't get jealous
and don't get egotistical.
That -- that's my sort
of goal to myself.
And I -- I think it -- it --
you benefit from -- from that.
And work on
major space projects.
You know, working on RHESSI
is great
because you just keep
getting funded every year,
you know, and it's...
[ Laughter ]
As long as the instrument
keeps working,
and if you build it right,
it keeps working up there
because nobody can get their
hands on it to mess it up.
Make all data and software
publicly available.
That, to my mind,
is critical.
And, uh, and I can say
physics is doing
a great job in that.
Collaborate with all
capable scientists.
You know, be --
be open and free to --
to work with anybody
and everybody that, uh,
you think is able
to contribute something.
Avoid management roles.
[ Laughs ]
Holly knows about that.
And always carry...
This is my wife, actually.
She says, "Always carry $100
in cash to pay off the muggers."
[ Laughter ]
That's important when you go
down into D.C., of course.
Don't -- don't be
afraid to admit
you don't know something
that you are supposed to know.
That's an important thing
because people sit
in the audience,
and they think,
"Oh, I'm supposed to know that,
so I can't ask a question
to reveal that I don't know it."
Get -- overcome that.
And don't take life
or yourself too seriously.
And finally,
my family says hi.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Sorry I ran over a little bit.
[ Applause continues ]
-So was -- wasn't he
so funny and great?
So let's give him
another round of applause.
[ Applause ]
Yeah, because we don't
have a lot of time,
I'll take a few comments,
suggestions, whatnot.
So if you have
something quick, uh, please,
here's your time now.
-What...Was there
a particular incident
or situation or event
that got you focusing
on solar physics
as opposed to any other?
No.
[ Laughter ]
No, I mean, I...
When I first came,
I was doing astrophysics,
and I liked astrophysics
because, you know,
my work is curiosity-driven.
And I hate when Dick Fisher
will say, "Well, you --
you proposed to do something,
see, but who cares and so what?"
I hate that question
because I care,
and I'm doing this
because I'm interested.
But you have to...
In order to get money,
you have to convince people
that have the money
that it really is important.
And, you know, solar physics,
well, I guess one thing
that motivated me
was solar physics
and X-ray and gamma rays.
You get lots of photons.
I was...When I was doing
the cosmic ray work,
the highest-energy cosmic rays,
you get one a year
if you're lucky.
And that's --
that's a little difficult.
But the other thing
about solar physics,
if I was doing
my career over again,
I would pick a field that didn't
have an 11-year cycle.
Eleven-year solar
cycle is a killer.
You've gotta fig --
figure out something
to do in solar minimum.
And, uh, so that --
that's difficult.
But -- but no.
It's just sort of happenstance.
My whole career
has been drifting along
and going with the tide.
And...no. No.
I-I can't think of any --
anything that really
motivated me.
I didn't...In fact, moti--
the whole subject
of motivation is difficult.
I don't really know what...
I think I'm motivated by fear
of embarrassing myself
more than anything else.
[ Chuckles ]
Yes?
-My big question...that I also
came by the Cunard lines.
-Oh.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-That's a great ship.
It was a great ship.
Yeah. Yeah.
If anybody gets a chance
to go across...
It's not a cruise,
I keep telling people.
Peop...Richard will say,
"Oh, you're goin' on a cruise."
It's not a cruise.
It's a transatlantic crossing.
And it's different.
You don't stop anywhere.
There's nowhere to stop.
[ Laughter ]
And it was great.
You know, both ways,
I had a ball.
It was wonderful.
-I came at a time
when it was very cold.
-Yeah. That's not so good.
-North Atlantic.
-Yeah. That's not so good.
We went last year in May.
For the first 3 days,
the captain wouldn't
let us out on deck
because it was so windy.
But there's plenty to do.
There's plenty to do.
I was thinkin', "7 days,
you're gonna get bored."
But nothing...
It's great. It was great.
-Okay. What...
-This is --
this is the grandchildren.
Say hi.
-There's another one.
-Oh, sorry.
-Last one.
-Yes, sir?
-I work in, uh, earth science.
And the sort of perception
of my field
is that, now,
we're always under pressure.
Everything is very rushed.
We're in a tremendous hurry
all the time.
And it's --
it sounds like you --
you're, um, your --
your time has been maybe
not more work, more relaxed.
But you're more able to take
the long view about things.
-Now, I -- now I am.
-Wondering if you could --
if you could comment on
whether that's accurate,
or whether it's maybe a shift
that's been going
through Goddard over the --
over your time here or --
or what.
-Oh, I think there's been
a definite shift.
I mean, you can imagine that Ken
Frost could get instruments on,
what, six different spacecraft
in the space
of one 10-year period.
And it -- without writing
a serious proposal.
I mean, for OSO-8,
I wrote the proposal myself
in about a couple of weeks.
It was, like,
15 pages or somethin'.
But I just wrote it myself.
And it was accepted.
And, you know, there was
no problem with that.
And there was
actually more money
than you could think
of things to do with.
But now, you know,
and also the bureaucracy now.
It used to be that,
you know, they -- you --
you could sort of do things
that you wanted to do.
And there was -- the problem
was spending the money
rather than getting headquarters
to give you the money.
The headquarters
had all this money
they didn't know
what to do with.
So they shoveled it out here.
But yeah. Um, but no.
I think 'cause now
you've gotta write proposals.
You've...
I think you've gotta work
with other people to help you
write the strongest proposal.
And you gotta take
the proposal-writing seriously.
And, uh, it's unfortunate,
but that's the way it is.
And, uh, but like I say,
don't take it
too seriously, you know.
It's -- it's not
the end of the world
if you don't get
that proposal funded.
It -- it may be that
you're not intended
to get it funded or something.
I don't know. It's, uh...
[ Clicks teeth ] I...
But, well, uh, do the best
you can, I tell you. [ Sighs ]
-Okay.
-All right.
So I-I think, uh, we'll --
we'll -- we'll stop it there.
So one final announcement --
Uh, next month,
we'll be on the other side
with another scientist.
And then, November, last one,
it will be John Mather.
So just we'll send announcement.
And as you can see,
they are very, very interesting.
So one final round
of applause for Brian Dennis.
[ Applause ]
-Thank you.
