SCIENCE - IRELAND

Take an Irish science safari

• Birr Castle with its famous telescope near the centre of the picture. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons

              

MARY MULVIHILL

GET READY for a summer of sea, sand and, whatever about sun, lots of science. Next month, Ireland is hosting Europe’s biggest general science gathering, when thousands of visitors from around the world will descend on Dublin for a week-long festival of all things scientific (see dublinscience2012.iefor details).
This may come as a surprise to some people: after all, Ireland is famous for writers and musicians, but less well-known for our inventions and discoveries. Yet, we have a world-class scientific heritage that arguably starts more than 5,000 years ago with Neolithic astronomers in Newgrange. And exploring many of our great “geeky” destinations, even for a day trip, will take you to fascinating places off the beaten track.
And while Ireland can easily claim dozens of important scientific hotspots, if you did no more than see the “seven wonders of Ireland” listed here, you will have seen a lot.
Those seven wonders range from the expected – think Newgrange and the Giant’s Causeway – to less well-known locations, such as some of the oldest fossil “footprints” in the world at Valentia Island, and the lattice girder railway bridge over the river Boyne at Drogheda, Co Louth.
Birr Castle’s telescope
Birr is a great family day out and a must for any scientific tourist. The world’s largest telescope was built here in 1845 by William Parsons, then the third earl of Rosse. The massive instrument was the most powerful of its day, and with it Parsons discovered that many nebulae were actually spiral galaxies containing millions of stars. The telescope features in a Jules Verne novel and remained the world’s largest for more than 70 years.
Visit : The telescope is fully restored and Birr Castle also has a science museum, and beautiful gardens. Birrcastle.com
Broom Bridge’s Eureka moment
A classic Eureka moment happened at Broom Bridge in Cabra, Dublin 7, when a revolutionary new type of algebra was invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Hamilton, Ireland’s greatest scientist, was walking the Royal Canal towpath in 1843 when he had his flash of inspiration. He scratched his equation in the stone and a plaque now marks the spot.
Hamilton’s “quaternion” algebra describes things moving in three dimensions, and it was used to help land a man on the Moon. Scientists from around the world visit Broom Bridge in homage – it’s time more Irish people did that too.
Visit : Join the annual Hamilton walk every October 16th, or enjoy your own canal-bank walk with the Ingenious Ireland podcast tour at iti.ms/KF6cIA
Walk in the footprints of dinosaurs
Some 385 million years ago, an early four-legged creature that resembled a lizard walked along a mudflat. Its footprints in the wet sand later turned to stone, thanks to chance and chemistry, and the resulting trackway can now be seen at sea cliffs on Valentia Island, Co Kerry. These fossil tracks are among the oldest of their kind in the world, and they record the evolutionary step of vertebrates leaving water to breathe air on land.
Visit : There are interpretation panels at the site. Valentia’s many other claims to fame include the site of the Victorian telegraph that joined the Old World and the New. See iti.ms/KF6xuP
Take the great coast road
It goes without saying that the Giant’s Causeway is one of our Seven Wonders of Ireland, and the geological formations here are a “must see”. But how to get there? Simple: take the Antrim coast road, and enjoy a feat of engineering that is packed with fascinating geology, and a great scenic route along the Antrim Glens from start to finish. Much of the route lies on a “fossil” or raised beach, left high and dry when the land rose after the end of the last Ice Age.
Visit : Take the A2 from Larne to the Giant’s Causeway, and stop frequently to explore.
Go stone mad in the Burren
One of Ireland’s most special landscapes is surely the Burren. The wildflowers are at their best in May, but the region is worth exploring any time for the limestone karst landscape, the caves and seasonal turlough lakes, and, of course, the flora and fauna. Try the new loop walking routes, details of which are at shannonregiontrails.ie.
For a great weekend, combine the Burren with some bird watching at the Cliffs of Moher and a visit to Liscannor for its flagstones, quarry, “rock shop” and memorial to the local man who invented the modern submarine, John Philip Holland.
Visit : There are information centres at Ballyvaughan and Kilfenora. See burrenbeo.comand theburrencentre.ie
The elegant Boyne Viaduct
This was a wonder of the engineering world when it opened in 1855, the longest lattice construction of its kind. It still carries the Dublin-Belfast railway across a steep gorge at Drogheda, 30 metres above the Boyne estuary. The wrought-iron girder design by Irish engineer John Benjamin MacNeill ingeniously minimised the bridge’s weight (although the original ironwork was replaced with steel in the 1930s).
Visit : The train north from Drogheda, or admire it from the riverbank
Astronomical Newgrange
This elaborate burial mound is arguably the world’s oldest astronomical observatory, and justly one of our scientific wonders. It was precision engineered so that, each winter solstice, the rising sun shines through a special opening to light up the inner chamber. It was built by Stone Age people who had neither metal tools nor the wheel, yet their observatory marks the turning point of the solar year and was built 1,000 years before the astronomical alignment at Stonehenge.
Visit : Brú na Bóinne visitor centre, iti.ms/NIpZ86


And some other scientific destinations . . .

The Boyle festival, Lismore
Many truly great scientists were born in Ireland, among them Robert Boyle (1627-91), the “father of chemistry”. If you’ve heard of Boyle’s Law, then you’ve heard of Robert: his famous law describes the relationship between the pressure, volume and temperature of a gas.
Boyle was born in Lismore Castle (his father came from England during the Plantations), but spent most of his working life in England, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society in London. The Robert Boyle Summer School in July celebrates his work. robertboyle.ie.
See the light at Hook, Mizen and Loop Heads
Lighthouses are engineering at its most challenging and best, and with three lighthouses now open to the public, this could be the start of a great new coastal heritage trail. Hook Head (above right) claims to have the world’s oldest intact operational lighthouse: there has been a light on this treacherous rocky point since the fifth century. The fog signal station on Mizen Head is reached by a spectacular footbridge that crosses a steep chasm and was built in 1910. See hookheritage.ie, mizenhead.netand loophead.iefor more information.
Prehistoric oak roadway, Corlea, Co Longford
Science, in the form of tree-ring dating, revealed that in the year 148 BC the Iron Age people of Corlea cut down some 300 oak trees and built a road across deep bog to some dry land. It was a huge undertaking – at two kilometres this is the longest timber trackway so far found in Europe – yet it seems to have been little used, and probably disappeared into the bog within a few years. Corlea visitor centre ( iti.ms/NImQoI) has a preserved section of trackway on show.