Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
April 3, 2014
In the great tradition of tracking Amazing Norwegian Meteorite Stories, we bring you:
Meteorite almost hits Norwegian skydiver
h/t Stjörnufræðivefurinn
Short Norwegian version...
March 17, 2014
Imagine you were a very clever ant, living on a large log, floating in a big lake...
BICEP2 at twilight
...a very large, deep, cold lake.
Being a not incurious, clever ant, you contemplate the lake in its infinite and insurmountable vastness.
Surely knowing what lies on the lake, or even beyond…
January 24, 2014
Sparkling, stinging, cold
Fine microcrystals of snow
Dance of the sunrise
January 6, 2014
You are at university.
Do you like stars, and stuff?
We revisit old ruminations on career paths 'cause it is topical...
Another rehashed blast from the past.
Should you do astronomy as an undergrad? (the following is in part shamelessly cribbed from a colleague’s previous freshman seminar for our…
January 6, 2014
So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school …
A seasonal revisit of some old rumblings*
*NB: this discussion should not be construed to be anything but hypothetical ramblings, they do not reflect in any way the official position of any academic institution,…
December 18, 2013
What should a high school student do to get on a track to become an astrophysicist?
Reworked from a rework from an oldie.
Something prompted me to think it is time to lightly update and republish this series, possibly with added bonus parts!
So, you're in high school wondering what to do with…
December 18, 2013
An interesting new twist for the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society will be the "Augmented Reality" poster - an instantiation of the very rapidly growing augmented reality features appearing everywhere through smartphone apps or google glass.
V838 Mon poster by Vogt et al
will…
December 13, 2013
Although many moons have passed, we once again approach The Mighty iPod One, and we once again ask the impossible:
Oh, Mighty iPod, is there indeed invasive terrestrial scum on Europa, transmitted through the mystery of lithopanspermia?
Woosh goes the Mighty iPod.
Woosh.
The Covering: Peace On…
December 11, 2013
Tonight it begins:
Stekkjastaur is headed for town.
Be good.
Believe!
December 11, 2013
This is awesome!
I am reliably informed that this was one of the all time great concerts.
Skálmöld and the Icelandic Symphony in concert at Harpa.
October 30, 2013
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious ship which will peer far and wide...
The European Space Agency is being very sensible and mapping out its schedule for large and medium science missions for the medium term, under the Cosmic Vision program.
In particular, the first of the large missions, L1, has…
October 11, 2013
"Text of Bolden Response to Wolf Letter Re Chinese Participation in Kepler Conference" - from spacepolicyonline.com
>From: Bolden, Charles (HQ-AA000)
>Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:20 PM Central Standard Time
>To:
>Cc:
>Subject: Response to Chairman Wolf
"It is unfortunate that…
October 10, 2013
When it is darkest, men see the stars.
This afternoon I needed to check something urgently, and as is my habit in this day and age, I jumped to a website where I knew the information was available.
A few seconds later, with some irritation I went to hit "refresh" as the request failed to go…
October 10, 2013
the venerable Chronicle of Higher Education had a few interesting tidbits in last week's issue:
How a College Took Assessment to Heart, Lebanon Valley College takes an accreditors warning to heart - the key issue being that the informal committee of "General Officers", the Vice Presidents, with the…
September 18, 2013
The google+ hangout on SETI searches for KII and KIII aliens using WISE is archived on Youtube:
Enjoy
September 17, 2013
A google hangout this afternoon:
"Today, September 18, 2:00 PM
SETI Institute researchers Jill Tarter and Franck Marchis (host & moderator) will hangout with Jason Wright, professor of astronomy at Penn State, Matt Povich, professor of astronomy at Cal Poly Pomona and Freeman Dyson, theoretical…
August 26, 2013
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics is currently holding a "Rapid Response Workshop" on Black Holes: Complementarity, Fuzz, or Fire?, August 19-30.
Organizers: Raphael Bousso (UCB), Samir Mathur (OSU), Rob Myers (PI), Joe Polchinski (KITP), Lenny Susskind (Stanford)
The lunch talk today is…
August 15, 2013
Many physical scientists learned of the curious phenomena of the Cargo Cult from Feynman's commencement address at Caltech, as reproduced in his book, "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!".
In the address, Feynman cautions us against the conceptually similar notion of Cargo Cult Science, where people…
August 12, 2013
Is the general audience "black board" talk at KITP today, giving an overview of the quantitative approches to morphogenesis program currently unverway.
Symmetry breaking and mechanics.
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics runs parallel programs and currently there is a biophysics program New…
August 9, 2013
Lawrence Krauss just wrote an interesting letter: "Higgs Seesaw Mechanism as a Source for Dark Energy" - Krauss & Dent, PRL 2013
in it he argues for a see-saw mechanism in the Higgs sector which gives a natural scale for dark energy which is small, as observed.
The key point is that the energy…
August 9, 2013
Final day of the "A Universe of Black Holes" workshop with a session: "Modeling Black Hole Accretion and Outflows" - all MHD sims today...
Chris Reynolds (Univ. of Maryland) starts with - The temporal variability of model accretion disks
Had to miss this. Go check it online, Chis gives fab talks.…
August 8, 2013
More random goodness from the intertoobz including a special topical PSU section for my colleagues
John McCarthy interview - wrote LISP - an old friend.
Galactic Center Orbital Models - new animation from Ghez' group.
Humans of New York - fascinating photo blog h/t poic at CR
Simons…
August 8, 2013
Last year EANA, the European Astrobiology Network Association put up a series of 18 introductory astrobiology video lectures constituting the AstroBiology Course Lectures:
Introduction to Astrobiology
Formation of the Solar System
Origins of Life: current theories
Comets and the origin of life…
August 8, 2013
The workshop on Massive Black Holes at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics continues with today's session on "Co-evolution of black holes and their host galaxies".
I continue a semi-liveblog of the proceedings.
As before, talks are online here - podcast, audio and video options; pdfs of…
August 7, 2013
We are back to "Massive Black Holes"
Happy Birthday Alberto!
Alberto Sesana (AEI) leads off with "Probing massive black holes with space-based interferometry and pulsar timing"
starts with overview of gravitational radiation - characteristic frequencies, amplitudes, timescales
Baby Black Holes - up…
August 6, 2013
the Massive Black Holes workshop at KITP continues, with another Black Hole Pairs session
Mike Eracleous kicks off: Observational Searches for Close Supermassive Binary Black Holes
emission line signatures of close (~ sub-parsec) supermassive binary black holes
cf "A Large Systematic Search for…
August 6, 2013
"Massive black hole pairs" is the topic of today's session at the BHOLES13 workshop at KITP
Talks are online here - note that slides of talks show up later as speakers get their act together and send in slides
Monica Colpi (Milan) starts the session with Formantion of Binary Black Holes in Galactic…
August 5, 2013
and we are back from lunch
J. Johnson (LANL) talking about supermassive stars as seeds for supermassive black holes - going to be getting more technical
supermassive star has a gas mass ~ 105 solar masses (as oppesed to few hundredish solar masses for standard Pop III stars that could provide low…
August 5, 2013
Visiting lovely KITP for the A Universe of Black Holes programme, and specifically the associated "Massive Black Holes: Birth, Growth and Impact" workshop.
As usual the talks will (eventually) be posted on line, both slides and web, but in the mean time I will be semi-transcribing my semi-coherent…