Rob Knop's Blog -- ramblings and rants about astronomy, cosmology, science education, general nerdism, and anything else.
Rob Knop earned a PhD in Physics from Caltech in 1997, and did a 5-year post-doc with the Supernova Cosmology Project, and contributed to the discovery of the accelerating Universe. He was an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt for 6 years before scattering out of academia. He now works for Linden Lab, the producers of Second LIfe. (Note: this is not an official site of Linden Lab! Although I work for Linden Lab, all content in this blog is posted without the review or approval of Linden Lab. All statements and opinions expressed here are my own.)
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The contents of each Galactic Interactions post are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
June 30, 2007
Category: Rant
Every day, reading the newspapers or listen to the radio, we are barraged with reminders of how screwed up our society, our country is. We see these things, and have a realization that there is little to no hope that...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:18 AM • 12 Comments •
June 29, 2007
Category: Pretty Pictures
NGC 7331 is a spiral galaxy, probably not too dissimilar from our own (except that it lacks a bar), which is relatively nearby. (At a mere 49 million light-years, it's not in our own back yard, but it's just down...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:29 PM • 7 Comments •
June 27, 2007
Category: About the Blog
I will be on the road for the next 3 days, so you are unlikely to hear from me....
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:22 PM • •
June 25, 2007
Category: Random & Gratuitous
It occurred to me this morning that recently I've been living like a college student. I don't mean that I've been going to beer-saturated frat parties, having meals made for me at a cafeteria, and futilely trying to sleep through...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:43 PM • 10 Comments •
June 22, 2007
Category: Astronomy Science
NGC 5135 is a barred spiral, similar in some ways to NGC 1365. Both galaxies are members of the IRAS "Bright Galaxy Sample," meaning that they are very luminous in the infrared as a result of vigorous star-forming activity. Both have very...
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:12 AM • 7 Comments •
June 21, 2007
Category: Science & Culture
In a recent post, I expressed frustration with the observation that those who sometimes question the tactics and language of some fighting for gender-equality then get lumped in with "everybody else who is clueless and oppressive," even if we care...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:30 PM • 17 Comments •
June 19, 2007
Category: Academia
In this post at the blog "This Week in Evolution", R. Ford Denison hits the nail squarely on the head. Why should you go to grad school? Because you want to do grad school. If you are viewing grad school...
Posted by Rob Knop at 4:24 PM • 9 Comments •
June 17, 2007
Category: Nerdism
I'm just back from Hypericon, the Nashville area science fiction convention where, as I mentioned previously, I gave a couple of talks about science stuff— although one was about science in science fiction movies. I was also on a panel...
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:13 PM • 12 Comments •
June 14, 2007
Category: Nerdism
This weekend I will be hanging out at Hypericon, a small Nashville science-fiction convention that is in its third years. I've met a number of people and made local friends there. I have also managed to finagle myself free admission...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:01 PM • 2 Comments •
June 13, 2007
Category: Science & Culture
On being attacked from all sides.
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:25 PM • 70 Comments •
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