Recently AOP invited David Gavaghan (1) to address its Board of Governors and Management Committee and invited stakeholders at an event on 24th June 2024.
His talk entitled “Infinite and Finite” was thought provoking and inspiring, so much so we thought it was worth sharing!
“There comes a time in our lives when we all reflect on what we have achieved. More than a decade ago I read these haunting words from Mark Twain: “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do, than by the ones you did. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
When Carol (Corvan) contacted me out of the blue a couple of months ago asking me would I speak at a dinner that was being held in Armagh I really was not certain that I should. For those of you who know the wonderful Oliver Sacks, who is no longer with us, you will know what an extraordinary soul he had. In one of his later books, he confessed to having a handwritten notice in his study kitchen – as you can see it says “NO” to the endless invitations he received to speak as all he wanted to do was write in his wonderful New York City Island home.
Well, I have neither excuse – I do not get constantly asked to speak and I do not write so here I am! It is an enormous pleasure to be here today and thank you for giving me the chance to say a few words and wish you well on this next phase of what could be an even more exciting chapter in the Observatory’s journey.
In preparing for tonight, I was struck by the slightly tormented phrase at the forefront of the beautiful Alf McCreary publication that has sat on my bookshelf in my office for many a year “Saint Patrick’s City – the Story of Armagh ”I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many…” . Like him I was (am) a bit of a blow-in and perhaps as we get older, we become more aware of our frailties but equally there is some sense of learning to go “with the flow”.
So, Carol you would not have known that it is almost twenty years to the day (just two weeks shy) that I arrived in Northern Ireland to take on the extraordinary task of helping to modernise our infrastructure. As a child, growing up in Wicklow, I do not think that I had ever been to Armagh so the first time I made the trip to Armagh to see the Armagh Gaol in 2005, I was awestruck by the magnificence of the City.
The extraordinary inspiration of Archbishop Richard Robinson so central to its creation and whose indomitable spirit still survives to this day. Sadly though, like many cities, villages and towns recent history has been challenging in this jurisdiction. 50 years ago, the small town of Navan (which is roughly the same distance from Dublin as Armagh is from Belfast) was roughly half the population of Armagh (6,000:12,000). Today Navan is more than twice the size of Armagh (34,000:16,300).
But before I get stuck into the finite there is perhaps another strange coincidence that I discovered in preparing for tonight. The divine words that were taken to be the Observatory’s motto: “ The Heavens Declare the Glory of God;” from Psalm 19 – A psalm of David. When I walked into the board room in the Observatory last week, I was immediately struck by the Star – the Star of David I presume which is very meaningful to me as an Irish Jew.
So here again the stars are aligned and I cannot resist quoting the next line:
“The skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
If ever, this idea could be captured, this incredible photo that I spotted in this month’s New Scientist by Tom Rae, then this is it. It has the beauty of a Paul Henry painting but with the additional majesty of the bountiful Milky Way. To me this feels like infinity.
Last week I watched an incredible film by the Irish Film Director Alan Gilsenan called “The Days of Trees” which features the troubled life of Tomas Hardiman. In his journey of recovery, he describes meditation as the means by which he can go through the portal of his heart and beyond there lies infinity. Every day you here at Armagh Observatory & Planetarium you touch the infinity of God’s work. It has the capacity to inspire and transform tens of thousands of people’s lives – particularly young ones.
The quote of Carl Sagan in the Souvenir Guidebook is so true:
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”
Here arguably is so much easier to spark that interest of knowledge – I believe this is what sowed the seed in the mind of Dame Jocelyn Bell who is to astrophysics what David Attenborough is to the natural world and Jane Goodall is to anthropology.
This observatory and the work taking place across this island at Birr and Dunsink has the potential to create tens of thousands of young people to take up some of the greatest challenges of our age. I hope by now that you see I think the opportunities are limitless. However human nature being what it is, we spend a lot of time limiting our horizons and proclaiming that we are reducing risk – the polite phrase is mitigating risk!
Years ago, I had the pleasure of showing James Cameron, the Film Director, around Titanic Belfast. He was intrigued more than anything about how this gargantuan vessel was built as he had spent all his time considering how it sank. As an engineer he was so struck by the ambition that had given rise to such a vessel being built. He was fascinated by the ingenuity and prowess that existed here in this part of Ireland.
My plea is, be careful as you set out this next exciting phase of the Observatory and Planetarium to not “dial down” the ambition or should I more properly say have you dialled it up enough! In 25 years, (I choose this period loosely as shorthand for another generation after the Good Friday Agreement) this island will be different, arguably very different. Climate change will have had a much greater impact than we have already seen. The island’s population will be considerably more than 8m for the first time in two centuries and arguably a lot more. Armagh will become one of the most sought after “small” cities on this island and will be attracting talent and capital from across the world. Richard Robinson’s dream of having a University here may well have come true by then.
When you look at this map of Ireland and think that I might even have “my” train between Belfast 
and Dublin travelling three times an hour in under an hour, with ready connections for all the conurbations along the route, then everything is possible.
In Manchán Magan’s wonderful book “Listen to the Land Speak” he refers to a perfect alignment over a distance of 239km of the line that runs from goddess Áine’s residence at Knockainy near Lough Gur in Co. Limerick running north to the ritual and tribal centre of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, Ulster, Emain Macha in Co Armagh. He says it’s hard to understand how such alignments were ever created over such vast distances.
In Irish we say:
Cuirfeadh sé meascán mearai ort
meascán mearaí
meaning a mystification of the mind or going astray in other dimensions.
So, before I leave you and go any further astray, I want to share one final quote that I came across for the first time in another brilliant film by the Irish film directed by Emer Reynolds. When I first saw this film in 2017 that tells the history of the Voyager program, and its 2 space probes, I was awestruck and wished that I were 50 years younger! It is another Carl Sagan quote that captures the zeitgeist – he identifies the Earth as a Pale Blue Dot when taken by Voyager 1 in 1990.
“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
In closing, please ensure that this next great phase of the project that Richard Robinson embarked upon some 235 years ago match all the ambition he had and all the hundreds of successors that have kept the flame lit since.
In twenty years, please let no one in Armagh (or further afield) be disappointed.
(1) Previous Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Strategic Investment Board (2004 -2010) and Chief Executive of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter (2012-2015), overseeing the regeneration of one of the largest waterfront sites in Europe.
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