Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
April 8, 2011
NASA has discovered a new kind of unique mineral on a rare meteorite found in Antarctica in the '60s.
New Type of Mineral in Historic MeteoriteIt turns scientists into slavering all devouring monsters
"The new mineral was discovered within the meteorite officially designated Yamato 691 enstatite…
April 8, 2011
so, at these late night White House session, Reid offered a good old fashioned manly way to settle the issues: a round of poker, Texas hold'em...
Reid dealt.
Boehner drew 3-7 off-suit, and went all in.
Obama had ace-king suited.
He folded.
April 6, 2011
I don't listen to my phone messages...
not at work, not most of the time.
seriously, and not just because of my constant attending of meetings of the ad hoc subcommittee of the standing committee on WTF do we do now
this is because almost anyone who actually needs to get hold of me knows to…
April 6, 2011
IXO and LISA are dead and disbanded as NASA missions.
We are looking at a very thin pipeline and few new missions for a while, unless there is drastic new direction from above and strong guidance on funding.
NASA is a mission oriented agency.
This is especially true of Astrophysics.
At any given…
April 6, 2011
Martin Rees wins 2011 Templeton Prize
£1,000,000 - nothing to sneeze at.
Hope he doesn't spend it all at once...
Sean's take at CV
PZ has his knickers in a twist over this - kinda grabbed the wrong end of the stick on this one...
In contrast, Andy at eAstronomer goes all sensible and stuff on…
April 1, 2011
Friday. Prospies. Argh.
Another week over, and another dozen prospies run ragged.
So, Oh Mighty iPod One: what are they all going to do?
Woosh goes the randmozier.
Woosh.
The Covering: Now and Then - Arlo Guthrie
The Crossing: Hey Tonight - Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Crown: Must I Paint You…
April 1, 2011
Word is that President Obama will be announcing a bold new initiative in the physical sciences later today, providing major sustained funding boost and significant increases in funding across the board, including new major research faciltiies, accelerated funding of ongoing projects and more money…
March 30, 2011
A university is a self-perpetuating oligarchy.
A university chooses its own members, restricts membership, and governs from self-selected internal member promotion.
QED
Ok, so this a somewhat platonic abstraction of a private university, and the selection is from the meta-pool of members of the…
March 29, 2011
Are Economic Maxwell's Daemons allowed by the laws of econophysics?
If so, who would have one?
Presumably following the flow of hot money would reveal it.
March 29, 2011
There ought to be some.
Google Fellowships that is.
Or better still, sabbaticals.
Preferably for totally useless academics, like computational astrophysicists with random erratic interests.
Just saying.
'cause I can.
And you know they could...
Please.
March 29, 2011
After the Cronon affair, more Freedom of Information Act requests targeting faculty at public universities.
Clearly Walkers in Wisconsin in Labor are of interest to Republicans who Protest Democratic conspiracies against Governors and nothing makes the Maddow than Moore nonsense about injunctions…
March 28, 2011
A rather radical proposal from Texas came across my desk recently, courtesy of the Texas Exes...
A Modest Proposal for Texas Higher Ed:
"... The UT System Board of Regents ... has hired consultants who have publicly stated the fundamental view that academic research is not valuable and that…
March 28, 2011
"How to Survive from Tsunami" by Murata et al, is vol 32 of the Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering from World Scientific Books
Chapter 2 has the introductory phenomenology and basic physics, and the how-to-survive bit.
In view of recent events, WorldSci is putting it up on their website for free…
March 26, 2011
Savage article on JWST history and funding from Ron Cowen at Science News.
""It's a game of you lie and I'll swear to it," says Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator from April 2005 to January 2009. "The whole community talks itself into unrealistic cost estimates.... Everyone knows it's wrong.…
March 23, 2011
NISA has a concise summary of the status of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi (pdf)
Includes temperatures on reactor vessel surface where available.
They show reactor 2 as cold and unpressured, the rise in temperature in reactor 1 - so something in there is generating heat at a significant rate,…
March 21, 2011
It will probably be some years before we get the full story of what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex after the earthquake.
Information has not exactly been put out coherently or comprehensively, but we can make some inferences from the data that is out there.
It is likely that one…
March 18, 2011
The weekend is almost here, and wot a week it was.
So, we go to the local topical issue at hand: what prospects, eh?
Woosh goes the iPod.
Woosh.
The Covering: Oh Well - Fiona Apple
The Crossing: Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
The Crown: Losing Sleep - Edwyn Collins
The Root: VCR - The XX
The…
March 17, 2011
"The short wave matter
we can't see
Those distant suns
what are they to me
The radiation
falling over me"
Good wiki entry now on Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear accident
"I Am Kloot"
March 16, 2011
The Japanese Atomic Energy Authority has online environmental radiation monitors.The list of stations is here.
View Larger Map
The monitoring station at O-arai is the one between Fukushima and Tokyo.
Ambient radiation levels there are 30-40 nGy per hour.
Current levels are around 300 nGy/h - ten…
March 15, 2011
there are a number of questions that need answer regarding the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, aka Fuk-D.
As a starting point, here is an amateur online feed of radiation in Tokyo (Park18).
It is a geiger-counter, the normal count rate is 10-20 cpm, around noon on march 15th the…
March 15, 2011
On may way to the office this morning, the young man striding off to class in front of me, was in animated discussion on his phone about the desirability of getting a "tactical sight" for his handgun, and the need to pick up some more bullets.
Beretta tactical sight - for speed of acquisition!
In…
March 14, 2011
some weeks ago, a number of our colleagues became unaccountably busy, disappearing into their offices, holding long, late night telecons, haranguing stressed postdocs
what they had in common was their membership of the LIGO science collaboration
well, social networks report that at the LIGO-VIRGO…
March 13, 2011
there are two questions denizens of academia ought to always ask themselves:
could your children attend your own institution of higher education?
even if they did not get the insider's discount?
and,
could you, if you were in school now, with the circumstances of your childhood, attend your own…
March 11, 2011
ok, lets try not to have another week like this one for a while...
so, iPod, given what there was, what do we do now?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Accident Waiting to Happen - Billy Bragg
The Crossing: Capital Radio (Live) - Clash
The Crown: Good Timin' - Beach Boys
The Root: Kick…
March 4, 2011
Well, that was exciting.
So, it is friday again, and we're keeping this here blog limping along through gratuitous lite blogging, again, as we welcome the iPod iChing to the Five'n'Dime...
So, no offence NASA, the much jinxed Next Generation Space Telescope has kinda been stuck out there on its own…
February 25, 2011
Every year we contemplate the Hubble Call for Proposals demand curve.
Four years ago we started to quantify the demand curve
the calm rational analysis soon broke into a nerd gambling frenzy
we then started theorizing about proposal scale invariance which annoyingly enough apparently works
by then…
February 25, 2011
As the Hubble deadline slips away, later than ever, we ask the Mighty iPod One the question whose answer we all must know:
Oh, Mighty iPod One: what will come out of Hubble for cycle 19?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Deep Dark Truthful Mirror - Elvis Costellor
The Crossing: O Isis…