Just lately AOP invited David Gavaghan (1) to handle its Board of Governors and Administration Committee and invited stakeholders at an occasion on twenty fourth June 2024.
His discuss entitled “Infinite and Finite” was thought upsetting and galvanizing, a lot so we thought it was value sharing!
“There comes a time in our lives after we all replicate on what we’ve got achieved. Greater than a decade in the past I learn these haunting phrases from Mark Twain: “Twenty years from now, you can be extra disillusioned by the issues that you just didn’t do, than by those you probably did. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the secure harbour. Catch the commerce winds in your sails. Discover. Dream. Uncover.”
When Carol (Corvan) contacted me out of the blue a few months in the past asking me would I communicate at a dinner that was being held in Armagh I actually was not sure that I ought to. For these of you who know the great Oliver Sacks, who’s not with us, you’ll know what a unprecedented soul he had. In one among his later books, he confessed to having a handwritten discover in his research kitchen – as you possibly can see it says “NO” to the countless invites he acquired to talk as all he wished to do was write in his great New York Metropolis Island dwelling.
Properly, I’ve neither excuse – I don’t get always requested to talk and I don’t write so right here I’m! It is a gigantic pleasure to be right here at the moment and thanks for giving me the possibility to say a number of phrases and want you properly on this subsequent part of what may very well be an much more thrilling chapter within the Observatory’s journey.
In getting ready for tonight, I used to be struck by the marginally tormented phrase on the forefront of the gorgeous Alf McCreary publication that has sat on my bookshelf in my workplace for a lot of a 12 months “Saint Patrick’s Metropolis – the Story of Armagh ”I’m Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all of the devoted, and totally despised by many…” . Like him I used to be (am) a little bit of a blow-in and maybe as we become old, we change into extra conscious of our frailties however equally there’s some sense of studying to go “with the circulate”.
So, Carol you wouldn’t have identified that it’s nearly twenty years to the day (simply two weeks shy) that I arrived in Northern Eire to tackle the extraordinary job of serving to to modernise our infrastructure. As a toddler, rising up in Wicklow, I don’t suppose that I had ever been to Armagh so the primary time I made the journey to Armagh to see the Armagh Gaol in 2005, I used to be awestruck by the magnificence of the Metropolis.
The extraordinary inspiration of Archbishop Richard Robinson so central to its creation and whose indomitable spirit nonetheless survives to this present day. Sadly although, like many cities, villages and cities latest historical past has been difficult on this jurisdiction. 50 years in the past, the small city of Navan (which is roughly the identical distance from Dublin as Armagh is from Belfast) was roughly half the inhabitants of Armagh (6,000:12,000). In the present day Navan is greater than twice the scale of Armagh (34,000:16,300).
However earlier than I get caught into the finite there’s maybe one other unusual coincidence that I found in getting ready for tonight. The divine phrases that had been taken to be the Observatory’s motto: “ The Heavens Declare the Glory of God;” from Psalm 19 – A psalm of David. Once I walked into the board room within the Observatory final week, I used to be instantly struck by the Star – the Star of David I presume which could be very significant to me as an Irish Jew.
So right here once more the celebrities are aligned and I can not resist quoting the following line:
“The skies proclaim the work of his palms.”
If ever, this concept may very well be captured, this unimaginable picture that I noticed on this month’s New Scientist by Tom Rae, then that is it. It has the fantastic thing about a Paul Henry portray however with the extra majesty of the bountiful Milky Approach. To me this seems like infinity.
Final week I watched an unimaginable movie by the Irish Movie Director Alan Gilsenan referred to as “The Days of Timber” which options the troubled lifetime of Tomas Hardiman. In his journey of restoration, he describes meditation because the means by which he can undergo the portal of his coronary heart and past there lies infinity. Daily you right here at Armagh Observatory & Planetarium you contact the infinity of God’s work. It has the capability to encourage and rework tens of 1000’s of individuals’s lives – significantly younger ones.
The quote of Carl Sagan within the Memento Guidebook is so true:
“Someplace, one thing unimaginable is ready to be identified”
Right here arguably is a lot simpler to spark that curiosity of data – I consider that is what sowed the seed within the thoughts of Dame Jocelyn Bell who’s to astrophysics what David Attenborough is to the pure world and Jane Goodall is to anthropology.
This observatory and the work going down throughout this island at Birr and Dunsink has the potential to create tens of 1000’s of younger folks to take up a few of the biggest challenges of our age. I hope by now that you just see I feel the alternatives are limitless. Nevertheless human nature being what it’s, we spend plenty of time limiting our horizons and proclaiming that we’re lowering threat – the well mannered phrase is mitigating threat!
Years in the past, I had the pleasure of exhibiting James Cameron, the Movie Director, round Titanic Belfast. He was intrigued greater than something about how this gargantuan vessel was constructed as he had spent all his time contemplating the way it sank. As an engineer he was so struck by the ambition that had given rise to such a vessel being constructed. He was fascinated by the ingenuity and prowess that existed right here on this a part of Eire.
My plea is, watch out as you set out this subsequent thrilling part of the Observatory and Planetarium to not “dial down” the ambition or ought to I extra correctly say have you ever dialled it up sufficient! In 25 years, (I select this era loosely as shorthand for one more era after the Good Friday Settlement) this island shall be completely different, arguably very completely different. Local weather change could have had a a lot better influence than we’ve got already seen. The island’s inhabitants shall be significantly greater than 8m for the primary time in two centuries and arguably much more. Armagh will change into one of the wanted “small” cities on this island and shall be attracting expertise and capital from the world over. Richard Robinson’s dream of getting a College right here might properly have come true by then.
If you take a look at this map of Eire and suppose that I would even have “my” prepare between Belfast 
and Dublin travelling 3 times an hour in underneath an hour, with prepared connections for all of the conurbations alongside the route, then every part is feasible.
In Manchán Magan’s great ebook “Take heed to the Land Converse” he refers to an ideal alignment over a distance of 239km of the road that runs from goddess Áine’s residence at Knockainy close to Lough Gur in Co. Limerick working north to the ritual and tribal centre of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, Ulster, Emain Macha in Co Armagh. He says it’s arduous to grasp how such alignments had been ever created over such huge distances.
In Irish we are saying:
Cuirfeadh sé meascán mearai ort
meascán mearaí
which means a mystification of the thoughts or going astray in different dimensions.
So, earlier than I go away you and go any additional astray, I wish to share one ultimate quote that I got here throughout for the primary time in one other sensible movie by the Irish movie directed by Emer Reynolds. Once I first noticed this movie in 2017 that tells the historical past of the Voyager program, and its 2 house probes, I used to be awestruck and wished that I had been 50 years youthful! It’s one other Carl Sagan quote that captures the zeitgeist – he identifies the Earth as a Pale Blue Dot when taken by Voyager 1 in 1990.
“Contemplate once more that dot. That’s right here. That’s dwelling. That’s us. On it everybody you like, everybody you already know, everybody you ever heard of, each human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The combination of our pleasure and struggling, 1000’s of assured religions, ideologies, and financial doctrines, each hunter and forager, each hero and coward, each creator and destroyer of civilization, each king and peasant, each younger couple in love, each mom and father, hopeful little one, inventor and explorer, each instructor of morals, each corrupt politician, each “celebrity”, each “supreme chief”, each saint and sinner within the historical past of our species lived there – on a mote of mud suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a really small stage in an enormous cosmic enviornment. Consider the rivers of blood spilled by all these generals and emperors in order that in glory and in triumph they might change into the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Consider the countless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of 1 nook of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of another nook of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how keen they’re to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we’ve got some privileged place within the universe, are challenged by this level of pale mild.
To my thoughts, there’s maybe no higher demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant picture of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our duty to deal extra kindly and compassionately with each other and to protect and cherish that pale blue dot, the one dwelling we’ve ever identified.”
In closing, please make sure that this subsequent nice part of the venture that Richard Robinson embarked upon some 235 years in the past match all of the ambition he had and all of the tons of of successors which have saved the flame lit since.
In twenty years, please let nobody in Armagh (or additional afield) be disillusioned.
(1) Earlier Chief Govt of the Northern Eire Strategic Funding Board (2004 -2010) and Chief Govt of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter (2012-2015), overseeing the regeneration of one of many largest waterfront websites in Europe.
