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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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Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
An article from New Scientist suggests that we are shortening the life of the Universe by looking at it. To which I say "foo"— primarily to the New Scientist article, not quite so much to the scientific paper behind it. (I do not leave it completely off the hook, however.)
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:16 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Astronomy Science
Astronomers have long assumed that supernovae are the source of at least most of the cosmic rays that hit Earth. Woah, slow down... cosmic rays? Right, you hear the term all the time, but do you really know what they...
Posted by Rob Knop at 6:50 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
Every so often you will come across somebody who has a "killer" list of "problems" with the Big Bang. While there remain unknowns and questions about the Big Bang— just as there do with biological evolution— the basic picture of...
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:34 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Astronomy Science
This is mostly just an MLP ("Mindless Link Post"), and it's nearly two weeks late, but there's a post by Julianne over at Cosmic Variance that I think is of crucial importance. People who are outside the field of science...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:15 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
Following the talk I gave in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe, we held a couple of Q&A sessions. The original plan was to have questions right after the talk, but the Second Life main grid crashed...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:32 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
I managed to get through my 15-20 minute "talk," and just as I threw it open for questions Second Life had a database problem and everbody in-world had to be logged out.... We got back in 40 minutes or so...
Posted by Rob Knop at 3:39 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Second Life
Just a reminder: I'm giving a talk / Q&A session about the discovery of the accelerating Universe today in Second Life. The talk is at 10:00 AM PDT / 12:00 Noon CDT / 1:00 PM EDT / 17:00 UT. Find...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:05 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Second Life
Next Tuesday, July 31, at 10:00AM PDT (17:00 UT), I'll be giving a talk and Q&A session in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe. The talk is being hosted by Troy McLuhan of the Science Center Group....
Posted by Rob Knop at 3:37 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Astronomy Science
This is really cool. Several years ago, the Gruber Foundation established a prize in cosmology. Last year (2006) the award went to John Mather and the COBE team; you may recall that Mather was one of the two winners of...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:00 AM • 18 Comments •
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 •
