science
Category archives for science
#AAS221
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on January 7, 2013 It was at the gathering, and all the astronomers were there, drinking coffee among the posters, hearing the NSF in despair… I am at my almost regular pilgrimage to the Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, where I hope to do some semi-liveblogging of developments and science news in my copious spare time. I…
Linkedy Links X
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on December 20, 2012 More Phenomenal random links to random stuff: life, the Universe and Everything Phenomena – new blog group under National Geographic, including some long time scibloggers: The Loom, Not Exactly Rocket Science, Laelaps and Only Human, to begin with. On the Usefulness of Useless Knowledge – Bee explains. Substantive Advice to Admissions Committees – Or, why,…
Astronomy Lecturer Goes Elf! FTK!
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on December 12, 2012 Dr Brad Barlow was nominated by his Astro 001 students for a great honour – whichever class collected the most money for this year’s THON would get to designate a lecture style of their choice, and Brad won… so he got to lecture as a character from a “classic christmas movie”[sic] As you can see,…
Linkedy Links IX
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on December 6, 2012 On the purity of science careers; the waste of civilization and other assorted snippets… and a happy Feast of St Nikolaus The Rise of the Science Politician – Matt B. continues provocative Conversations. There is an interesting thread on this on The Astronomers fb. On The Inevitability of Kardashev Civilizations – the Astro Wright continues…
Astrobiology Chair
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on November 16, 2012 Visiting Astrobiology Chair in DC: research and engagement. Applications and nominations are open for the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. “Established in the Fall of 2011, the Blumberg Astrobiology Chair is a distinguished senior position at the Library’s Kluge Center. The incumbent conducts research at the intersection between the science of…
Continuing Conversation
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on November 13, 2012 Blows against supersymmetry and facebook. Matthew Bailes continues ruminations at the Conversation – the general riff is on crowd sourcing and distributed computing, with a bit of bragging on The Beast they got down under. Ok, I’m, just jealous. I had not heard of Diaspora – be interesting to see if it can crowd out…
CyberScience Cluster Hire
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on November 1, 2012 New faculty positions in multiple science and engineering disciplines, including astronomy, emphasizing computational analysis and data mining. Penn State is embarking on a transformative cluster hiring initiative in cyberscience – computation- and data-enabled science and engineering – to lead through cyber-enabled innovation in interdisciplinary research. This cross-college endeavor will coordinate multiple faculty appointments to develop…
Holy Schrödinger’s Cat!
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 31, 2012 Schrödinger’s Qu’ran – a 2012 thought experiment – in The Conversation, Matthew Bailes updates a classic paradox… “…a physicist could extend this thought experiment to write a php script that would randomly download one of the Bible, Qur’an or even a classical quantum mechanics textbook to the iPad…” On the Dispositive Null in the Literature…
To Do:
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 17, 2012 Given ηEarth=1 Find more terrestrial exoplanets. Find habitable terrestrial exoplanets. Find inhabited terrestrial exoplanets. Go visit. Consider the following snippets: Kepler discover 5 planets orbiting inside 0.1 AU Kepler: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System Terrestrial mass planet discovered around α Cen B Kepler exoplanet survey jeopardized Kepler has lost one of…
Hello neighbour
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 16, 2012 α Centauri B, a mere 4 lightyears away has a terrestrial planet orbiting it. α Cen B b The most interesting aspect of the discovery may be the inferences we can make rather than the planet itself. The discovery by the Geneva Observatory team using the HARPS spectrograph is a wonderful example of precision high…