Paul Nugent

Max Weber's famous phrase the 'the disenchantment of the world' has been a catalyst for scholars from a wide array of disciplines to consider what humankind might have lost as modernity's rationality and intellectualism extinguished any widespread belief in magic, spirits, and gods. A review of these works shows that, despite Weber's pessimism, there is ample evidence of continued forms of enchantment in modernity as well as many viable strategies for reenchantment. However, while Weber's statements seemed to be centred on enchantments deriving from belief in metaphysical worlds and beings, the forms of enchantment found to be compatible with modernity are based in wonder. This paper asks if a metaphysicsbased form of enchantment can be compatible with modernity. I then argue that phenomenal consciousness is a modern mystery that can serve as the metaphysical foundation for a new form of enchantment that I call fascination.

We discuss Monte Carlo techniques for addressing the three-dimensional time-dependent radiative transfer problem in rapidly expanding supernova atmospheres. The transfer code SEDONA has been developed to calculate the light curves, spectra, and polarization of aspherical supernova models. From the onset of free expansion in the supernova ejecta, SEDONA solves the radiative transfer problem self-consistently, including a detailed treatment of gamma-ray transfer from radioactive decay and with a radiative equilibrium solution of the temperature structure. Line fluorescence processes can also be treated directly. No free parameters need be adjusted in the radiative transfer calculation, providing a direct link between multidimensional hydrodynamic explosion models and observations. We describe the computational techniques applied in SEDONA and verify the code by comparison to existing calculations. We find that convergence of the Monte Carlo method is rapid and stable even for complicated multidimensional configurations. We also investigate the accuracy of a few commonly applied approximations in supernova transfer, namely, the stationarity approximation and the two-level atom expansion opacity formalism. © 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

We present the first high-redshift Hubble diagram for Type II-P supernovae based on five events at redshift up to z ∼ 0.3. This diagram was constructed using photometry from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Supernova Legacy Survey and absorption-line spectroscopy from the Keck Observatory. The method used to measure distances to these Supernovae is based on recent work by Hamuy & Pinto and exploits a correlation between the absolute brightness of SNe II-P and the expansion velocities derived from the minimum of the Fe II λ5169 P Cygni feature observed during the plateau phases. We present three refinements to this method that significantly improve the practicality of measuring the distances of SNe II-P at cosmologically interesting redshifts. These are an extinction correction measurement based on the V-I colors at day 50, a cross-correlation measurement for the expansion velocity, and the ability to extrapolate such velocities accurately over almost the entire plateau phase. We apply this revised method to our data set of high-redshift SNe II-P and find that the resulting Hubble diagram has a scatter of only 0.26 mag, thus demonstrating the feasibility of measuring the expansion history, with present facilities, using a method independent of that based on supernovae of Type Ia. © 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

We report on ground-based and HST imaging of the afterglow and host galaxy of the Gamma-Ray Burst of March 5, 2002. The GRB occurred in a R = 25.17 ± 0.14 galaxy, which apparently is part of an interacting system. The lightcurve of the optical afterglow shows a rebrightening, or at least a plateau, 12-16 days after the gamma-ray event. UBVRIK' multi-band imaging of the afterglow ∼12 days after the GRB reveals a blue spectral energy distribution. The SED is consistent with a power-law with a spectral index of β= -0.63 ± 0.16, but there is tentative evidence for deviations away from a power-law. Unfortunately, a spectroscopic redshift has not been secured for GRB 020305. From the SED we impose a redshift upper limit of z ≲2.8, hence excluding the pseudo redshift of 4.6 reported for this burst. We discuss the possibilities for explaining the lightcurve, SED and host galaxy properties for GRB 020305. The most natural interpretation of the lightcurve and the SED is an associated supernova. Our data can not precisely determine the redshift of the GRB. The most favoured explanation is a low redshift SN, but a higher redshift SN can not be excluded. We also discuss less likely scenarios not based on SNe, like a burst occurring in a z = 2.5 galaxy with an extinction curve similar to that of the Milky Way. © ESO 2005.