Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
November 11, 2009
Awesome combined image from Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra, showing deep view of the centre of the Milky Way, in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.
From Hubblesite.org
Annotated image (click for larger version)
Full image collection at Hubblesite.org
Tricolore (click for larger…
November 6, 2009
Plot complexity is not, in and of itself, a measure of the quality of a work of communication, but it is surely a measure of something:
Frodo Baggins vs Luke Skywalker:
This is just awesome - click to embiggen
- from XKCD
Really big version is here...
Hm: the Ents actually sort of show up…
November 6, 2009
LHC started overheating when a cooling unit cut out
The cause was quickly established - a bird apparently dropped a piece of baguette on a high voltage cooling unit - conjectures that it was thrown out of a passing airplane are clearly false: you can't get actual edible french bread on…
November 5, 2009
A long time ago, a massive star about 10,000 light years from Earth went kaboom.
329 years ago, we think, in 1680, the light from the supernova explosion reached Earth and was recorded as a new star by the Flamsteed, then the Astronomer Royal, looking relatively dim as nearby supernove go, due to…
November 3, 2009
reports coming out of Ukraine and neighbouring regions that H1N1 'flu strain may be getting nasty in spots
too early to tell for sure, but there are consistent reports out of Ukraine, and also possibly Belarus and Romania, that the local H1N1 'flu strain is a bit more aggressive, making a higher…
November 3, 2009
Whee!
Cassini does a bit more zipping about the Saturn system.
Pretty pictures and conceptions abound.
Cute artist concept animation of the flyby - quite good
Map of Enceladus (click to embiggen - warning BIG - click to ZOOM)
Bonus:
Today's Pretty Picture of Rhea.
From last weekend (click to…
October 30, 2009
Isis, our very own laboratory goddess, apparently knows the secret to hot and sexy science blogging.
We investigate.
Apparently it is all about leather, a shapely calf, and hot shoes - this will drive traffic up on the most boring sites
D00d!
I can totally do that.
Has it all.
Leather, shoe…
October 29, 2009
You either get this or you do not.
courtesy John F. (click to embiggen)
Loathe as I am to admit it, that is rather good.
Hm. E/mc √(-1) pV/nR is way too derivative.
Maybe Q/V √-1 pV/nR
Or,
Q/V √-1 4√(P/A ε σ)
yeah, that's the ticket!
nRT/V kBln(Ω) (TS - pV)
has potential though.…
October 28, 2009
another random walk through recent blog bits
JDEM Euclid er whatever they want to call the new joint mission is having a catfight ,
Nature News (sub) has the nasty details.
And for this they shot down LISA? A factor of two descoped, still overpriced mission?
JDEM's strength in the NAS review was…
October 28, 2009
The governator writes a letter.
A manly man letter, not at all a girly man letter.
Hm, primitive steganography.
Read the first letter of each row.
Context from the SF Chronicle
Sounds like CA is getting even better than PA.
October 28, 2009
In case you missed it, the Ares 1-X launch this morning was successful.
Ares is the new NASA expendable launcher, developed under the Constellation program, designed too provide medium and heavy (Ares V) lift after Shuttle and to provide man-rated launchers for future maneuverable crewed capsule…
October 27, 2009
my precious has returned from its mystery excursion
it vanished, my precious did, last friday
then, just as mysteriously, it reappeared today
like having a gnome it is
photos, I want photos
October 26, 2009
McDonald's to abandon Iceland
Ha ha ha.
Tommaborgari wins.
Mmmm. With cocktail sauce
October 23, 2009
30 new planets reported at "Towards Other Earths" Porto conference.
Some of them are rather interesting.
The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia reported 30 new planets reported by 7 different teams at the Towards Other Earths conference in Porto - wish I could have been there, too many meetings…
October 22, 2009
"Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation"
Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee
The Augustine Report on Human Spaceflight is out: all 157 pages of it (pdf), with press conference starting at 1 pm today.
As you know, Bob, the committee, chaired by Augustine of the…
October 20, 2009
So, I was thinking, where are the cold alien intelligences who ought to be out there, studying us dispassionately, as if we were microbes...?
Well, what if we accidentally killed them all?
No, really.
See there has been this flap about the LHC destroying the universe....
Now, it could happen, like…
October 20, 2009
Undecidable financial contracts, crowdsourcing nepotism and explaining the Nobel Prize.
We got it all...
Financial Derivatives - just intractable or formally undecidable?
- see comment by "Ken" at 20 Oct 09 11:39
yes, it looks like you can do arithmetic and boolean algebra with financial…
October 18, 2009
An interesting paper just out, suggests that modern financial instruments are computationally intractable: specifically finding that inverting the synthesis of CDOs is equivalent to finding whether there is a dense subgraph of the CDO graph.
Thus figuring whether CDOs are manipulated to dump bad…
October 15, 2009
Dear media,
The density of air is just over 1.2 kg per cubic meter. At about STP.
The density of helium is just under 0.2 kg per cubic meter.
A helium balloon can therefore lift about 1 kg per cubic meter.
There are about 30 cubic feet per cubic meter and just over two pounds per kg.
To lift a 50…
October 15, 2009
let it...
snow!
noon, 15th October 2009.
it is even sticking a bit, for now. More to come maybe.
PS: enough accumulation on elevated and "soft" surfaces to make, and throw, the first snowball of the season. Yay!
More snow expected, though I am skeptical of claims of accumulations of up to a foot…
October 14, 2009
Recently, Pennsylvania became the last state in the union of these states of America to have a budget. State budget, that is, s for fiscal 2009-10. Some 101 days after the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1st 2009.
Thereby beating California.
However, the Pennsylvania State University (not to…
October 14, 2009
There have been a lot of rather belated reports of the LHC failing due to acausal physics.
This is clearly nonsense.
We have known for a long time that it is most likely due to anthropic selection within a many worlds universe.
This is serious.
October 13, 2009
Continuing our inadvertent theme of "alternative physics", we contemplate whether the Force really is with us, and find the fundamental mass scale for MOND...
Earlier, we had a nice little discussion about the persistent fringe phenomenon of one of the alternative models for gravity that…
October 12, 2009
We had one of these annoying small leaks from our washing machine.
It started late this summer, we noticed a small intermittent leak, from somewhere underneath the machine, but it wasn't reliably repeatable, but it was enough to be a concern, not to mention a possible harbinger of future trouble.…
October 9, 2009
To President Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Honestly people, that is really all you have to say.
If you can't say anything nice then, as your mother should have told you, don't say anything.
The guy iust got the fucking Nobel Prize and half the country is having paroxysms and doing…
October 9, 2009
"...to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses..."
I am in total awe of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting.
What I really want to know…
October 9, 2009
"There is no use trying; one can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
This week, a short, innocuous little astrophysics…