Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

I Am Retiring from Fermilab after 45 Years

2024-05-10T21:47:28Z

I am retiring from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory after over 45 years. My final day will be Friday, 31 May.

After beamslinging, atom smashing, neutrino making, then magnet testing, then some tech writing, I wound up becoming a radiation safety physicist.

I learned all kinds of things. I helped get physics done. I worked with marvelous people. And I had considerable fun.

Thanks to Fermilab, and to Fermilab's people, for everything.

Here's what I wrote for Inside Fermilab, the lab newsletter, in response to a questionnaire. (But the questions have been stripped out by the editor, so I seem to be rambling.) (Which, let's face it, is normal.)

I started as an engineering physicist in the Neutrino Department, learning how fixed-target beams are delivered. The Magnet Factory borrowed me to help test hundreds of superconducting Tevatron magnets. Then for a decade I worked shifts in beamline operations; during long shutdowns, I was loaned out to work on a database for Tevatron construction projects, and again to be a technical writer, editor, and programmer for a new beamline control system. When someone was needed to work on shielding analysis, I moved into radiation safety, where I have remained.

Once, at the end of a fixed-target run, I was invited to Lab F in the Neutrino Area. Experimenters had been operating a small Freon-filled bubble chamber for months. The beam intensity was extremely low, so low that it was safe for people to occupy Lab F. On this, the final night, they had removed the cameras, exposing the bubble chamber’s windows. One could mount a low set of steps, and peer into a window. A flash of light would fire each time a pulse passed through I have seen many photos of bubble chamber tracks, but that night, for the first and only time in my life, I saw the delicate, fairy-like traces of the tiny bubbles with my
own eyes. Invisible particles had left a visible trail in their wake—a trail that vanished immediately, after the flash, as the chamber cycled to be ready for the next pulse. It was a magical night.

(See page 15 of this document for a photo of tracks in the Tohoku 1-meter bubble chamber. It doesn’t do justice to what I saw, though.)

During my retirement, I plan to continue my public speaking, giving talks on astronomy, spaceflight, physics and the history of science. I hope to get more nonfiction writing done. And travel far and wide. And I hope to get better at playing the baritone ukulele, or, failing that, at least to learn some more songs.

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Who Are You Calling Obscure? (Science Fiction and Fantasy Department)

2022-05-22T01:02:51Z

Recently James Nicoll (james_davis_nicoll) polled his commentariat regarding whether they had read various authors who'd been winners of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which is supposedly given to "underread" authors who do not receive the attention their works deserve. I'm confident that James will have more to say about this topic sometime soon.

I recalled that when the folks who developed the Google Books Ngram Viewer first published a paper about their work in Science, they did a study to compare the relative levels of fame of a group of authors, and how fame changed with time. This presumed that "frequency of mention in books and magazines over the years" was a reasonable proxy for "fame."

It would seem one could also estimate obscurity this way. So it would be worthwhile to run the list of Cordwainer Smith Award winners through Ngram Viewer.

One problem: there's a limit to the number of characters a user is allowed to stuff into a query. So we cannot make a grand plot of all the winners at once.

Using James Nicoll's poll as a guide, I broke the winning authors up into groups, within which I hoped authors would have roughly comparable frequency. I then plotted the frequency of their names, within the Google Books English corpus (a subset curated for use with Ngram Viewer) with respect to time from 1900 to 2019. Three of oldest authors got special treatment in a group of their own.

Links to plots:

Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Judith Merril, R.A. Lafferty, Olaf Stapledon, Fredric Brown
Stanley G. Weinbaum, Carol Emshwiller, Edgar Pangborn, Katherine MacLean
Mark Clifton, D. G. Compton, Frank M. Robinson, Daniel F. Galouye, Mildred Clingerman, Rick Raphael, Seabury Quinn, Wyman Guin
William Hope Hodgson, A. Merritt, Clark Ashton Smith

Something funny is going on with Abraham Merritt. Not only is he far more frequent than all other authors from 1900 to 1970, but a peek back into the 19th century show that he was hugely popular in the years before he was born in 1884. I guess the string "A Merritt" must have been used for many more entities than the name of an SF writer. Most of the other authors have name-strings that are probably less common.

I grouped him together with Hodgson and Clark Ashton Smith because they all got their start in the pre-Amazing pulps earlier than most of the others. Both have leaps in frequency, Smith in the late 1970s and Hodgson in the 2010s, that may seem puzzling, but are probably connected to the high resurgence of interest in their not-so-obscure stable-mate, H. P. Lovecraft.

Among the first group, Stapledon's highest peak is around 1983, when his name reaches a frequency of 1.95E-8, or about 19.5 per billion words. At the same moment, Brackett is at 11.3 per billion words, and Kuttner 10.5 per billion words.

Play around. Leave a comment if you learn anything interesting.

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A Salute to Space Cadets, Then and Now

2022-05-10T20:41:06Z

In his column on Tor.com, James Nicoll recently wrote:

"While hardly the first space patrol novel, Heinlein’s coming-of-age tale may be one of the best known."

Indeed, Space Cadet is, as they say over on another Web site, the Trope-Namer.

As they began production of what would become their multimedia juggernaut, the creators of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet paid Heinlein for the broadcast rights to his novel. He would not be involved in the shows, nor would his name appear in the credits, nor would their characters and plots bear more than a passing resemblance to his story, but he received fifty dollars a week.

The TV show was prominent, though not first, among a wave of US TV space adventures in the early 1950s. "Space Cadet" entered the language, somewhat as a synechdoche for all these shows and their characters.

This is my favorite thing to make an N-gram plot of. The phrase "Space Cadet" peaks in frequency in 1952 at 25.5 per billion words, declining as the craze ebbs and the shows are canceled. By 1970 it has sunk to 1.65 per billion words, even though the nonfictional Space Age is well underway.

But wait! In the 1980s, "Space Cadet" begins to climb in frequency again! A new generation has begun to employ it. By 2010, it is back to half its 1952 frequency.

What gives? I credit Moon Unit Zappa. In her 1982 novelty record "Valley Girl," she says, "Like, my mother is, like, a TOTAL space cadet!"

Ms. Zappa revived the phrase with a new meaning: "a flaky, lightheaded, or forgetful person," says the Merriam-Webster dictionary site. Nowadays this is nearly always the intended meaning, with "student in an academy for officers in a spacegoing military organization" a distant second.

It would not surprise me much if the "lightheaded person" meaning arose, but with low frequency, in the years before 1982. But I have not investigated this conjecture. I am pretty confident that the post-1982 boost in "Space Cadet" popularity is due to the Zappa Family Singers.

Meanwhile, a lot of people have been wondering when the United States Space Force is going to establish its own service academy. If and when this occurs, we already know one public-image problem its students are going to be facing.

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Now at File 770: "Two Vain Guys Named Robert"

2022-04-27T00:05:22Z

I wrote something called "Two Vain Guys Named Robert" which appeared today on Mike Glyer's science fiction news site, File 770.

It's about Robert Osband, the fan, hacker, and space enthusiast, and Robert Heinlein, the writer. They met once, in 1976, and you can see a picture of that moment.

I figured out that they had something else in common. Something odd. Read the article. It is in no way important. But it might be interesting.

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My Schedule for Worldcon, Dublin 2019

2019-08-01T18:20:15Z

The 77th World Science Fiction Convention will be held this year in Dublin, Ireland, from 15 through 19 August. I'm pleased to say that I'm scheduled to participate in several programme* events.

Talks and panels will be held in the Odeon at Point Square Dublin, which in Google's opinion is an 11-minute walk from the Convention Centre. One can shorten this journey a bit by hopping onto a Luas Red Line train.

Be aware that I am not a professional participant on New Horizons, the James Webb Space Telescope, or any other space missions. I have, however, given talks as a volunteer for NASA's Solar System Ambassadors program for 20 years, and have benefited from briefings and materials NASA has provided. I also witnessed the Kuiper Belt encounter with 2014 MU69, or "Ultima Thule," earlier this year while helping with the Launch Pad Astronomy livestream of the flyby.

Below I list my own events. The full-blown 150 page schedule may be found at this link.

[13 August: Edited to add "How Astronomy Might Break Physics."]

*Not the usual way I, an American, spell "program," but "when in Romme..."

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A Million Miles beyond Midnight: The James Webb Space Telescope
Format: Talk

15 Aug 2019, Thursday
12:30 - 13:20
Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the next big space telescope. Named for a former NASA administrator, it is slated for launch in 2021. Its 6.5 metre diameter mirror, orbiting the Sun-Earth L2 point 1.5 million kilometres from here, is designed to give astronomers superb capabilities for exploring the infrared universe. Canada, the European Space Agency, and NASA cooperated to create it. Bill Higgins reviews the Webb’s design and the astronomical phenomena it will examine.

Bill Higgins (Fermilab)

Kaffeeklatsch: Bill Higgins
Format: Kaffeeklatsch

15 Aug 2019, Thursday
15:00 - 15:50
Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (Convention Centre Dublin)

Bill Higgins (Fermilab)

[This will be a small gathering for anyone who wants to converse with me. Worldcon urges you to sign up in advance for it.]

How Astronomy Might Break Physics
Format: Panel

19 Aug 2019, Saturday
10:00 - 10:50
Wicklow Hall-1 (Convention Centre Dublin)

Astronomy and physics don’t always have an easy relationship, for example regarding the singularity. Panellists consider how astronomy might break physics with phenomena like resolution of the black hole information paradox, time travel, multiverses, and quantum space engines.

John Bray (Moderator), Dr Edmund Schluessel, Dr Laura Woodney, Bill Higgins

[I'm not an expert on these topics, but will try to hold up my end of the conversation.]

Latest Results from Asteroid Missions
Format: Panel

18 Aug 2019, Sunday
15:30 - 16:20
Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)

Asteroids are among the next frontiers. What lies in store for us with these floating chunks of potential in space? What missions have been launched? What data have we gathered? And who owns the material and information discovered? Let’s take a look at what we know and what future missions might reveal.

Brother Guy Consolmagno (Vatican Observatory), Bill Higgins (Fermilab), John Coxon (Moderator), Dr Michele Bannister (Queen's University Belfast)

Beyond Pluto to Ultima Thule: NASA’s New Horizons
Format: Talk

19 Aug 2019
Monday 12:30 - 13:20
Odeon 3 (Point Square Dublin)

Famed for its 2015 flyby of Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft was designed to go further. But not until eight years after launch did searchers find a small, icy target within reach of the post-Pluto mission. On New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons encountered Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69. Bill Higgins tells the story of the frozen body nicknamed ‘Ultima Thule’.

Bill Higgins (Fermilab)

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My Schedule for Worldcon 76 in San Jose

2018-08-13T03:33:18Z

The 76th World Science Fiction Convention starts this week in San Jose, California, at the San Jose Convention Center. I am pleased to be a program participant. Here are the panels I've been invited to be part of.

The Myth of the Astronaut - Who Are the Space Cadets of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow?

Friday Aug 17 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM (1 hour)
San Jose Convention Center - 210E

The current definition of an astronaut is someone who crosses the Karman line: 62 miles from the surface of the Earth. With Virgin Galactic selling trips over the line to more than 700 people already, let's start to ask ourselves: who have these idols of society been, really, and how are we going to re-shape our narrative of what an astronaut is and should be in the coming years?

Mary Robinette Kowal (Moderator), Wil McCarthy, Kjell Lindgren, Bill Higgins, Sheyna Gifford

So You Want To Build A Science Fictional Device

Sunday Aug 19 03:00 PM to 04:00 PM (1 hour)
San Jose Convention Center - 210G

Join us for an improv-technology panel - where the audience asks us to design a SFnal device, and the panelists have 5 minutes to come up with our best "non-handwavium" answers.

S. B. Divya (Moderator), Cory Doctorow, Sydney Thomson, Bill Higgins

[Challenging! This will get my adrenaline going, but I'm betting it will be fun.]

The Impact of Evolutionary Theory on Nineteenth Century Science Fiction

Sunday Aug 19 05:00 PM to 06:00 PM (1 hour)
San Jose Convention Center - 210A

A popular argument is that modern science fiction emerged as a consequence of the rise of modern science and the secular theory of progress, and rapid changes in human life brought about by technology and industry. But was evolutionary theory of equal, if not more importance, in triggering the development of modern science fiction in the nineteenth century? Was it only after Darwin and other key nineteenth century evolutionary writers that modern science fiction really blossomed? What important and essential themes and ways of thinking did evolution contribute into the creation of modern science fiction?

Tom Lombardo (Moderator), G. David Nordley, Bradford Lyau, David Brin, Bill Higgins

[Thomas Lombardo has recently published Science Fiction - The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future: Volume One, Prometheus to the Martians and this panel springs from that work.]

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