Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
October 8, 2009
Obama and friends: Celebrating the Year of Astronomy in Style.
Obama Star Party!
With Bonus Real Stars.
"The President and First Lady host NASA astronauts, area middle schoolers, and innovators in the field of astronomy for a night of fun, learning, and stargazing on the South Lawn. October 7,…
October 6, 2009
Nobel Prize in Physics, in case you hadn't heard, went to Kao for Fiber Optics and Boyle and Smith for developing the fundamental CCD technology.
Some people, naming no names, seem a little unhappy about this.
Well, ol' Alfred had his purpose when he endowed the Nobel Foundation with his ill…
October 2, 2009
The Ig Nobel Prizes are out, and Iceland wins big.
The title, explains it all (short version, with apologies to Krugman).
Long version, with translation, follows.
Yes, it is Ig Nobel Prize time, and the winner in Economics are the new Vikings of Finance:
"Economics: The directors, executives, and…
September 30, 2009
Have you ever been in the Zone?
Where you are totally Focused and just cranking it out?
I want to know what is going on in the Zone.
No, I don't mean Poisson noise while doing trivial kinematics with bouncy spheroids in bounded rectangular arenas!
I mean The Zone.
You find it when tackling very…
September 29, 2009
been a while
time for some assorted links
'cause y'know, linking is an intrinsic good
Robust Quantum Money - and who says theoretical physics is impractical?
A Small White Dot Gone
Oh, My Country - Iceland descends into a caricature of a bad joke about itself.
Told you, you should have thrown…
September 25, 2009
there's something wrong, metaphorically, with this image...
city folk...
from Gorbachev's NYTOpEd on nuclear weapons
September 25, 2009
NASA sees water everywhere it looks! In surprising places.
With pictures.
But maybe not where you heard...
No, not the Moon, as interesting and useful it might be.
This is the other gorgeous water discovery, this thursday...
Yes, there is water on Mars, again.
This is actually a very nice result…
September 25, 2009
Peace feels like "the kiss you get from your Mom before you get on the bus for school!"
Diddi (via Ms Hurtz)
It is that old "warrior poet" tradition...
Apparently it is a good way to get lots of kisses.
September 25, 2009
Explaining the post-deregulation investment banks of Iceland.
Or, how to make money off banana trees north of the arctic circle...
The Banana Republic of Iceland: Always Six Months Ahead of the Rest of the World
It is of course Inconceivable that something like this would actually happen in a…
September 23, 2009
H1N1 swine 'flu is coming home, and it is a big hit on campus.
With universities starting, and the weather cooling, the prospect for an early and nasty 'flu season was evident, and, amazingly, proactive measures were taken.
The first signs were the free, stand-alone, water free, hand sanitizer…
September 19, 2009
So, having established that Obama is NOT truly beholden to the financiers, what may happen to settle the financial world and straighten the economy.
No, really, he is not: no more than he is beholden to, say UC or Harvard.
I mean it is not like his administration is stuffed with academics from…
September 18, 2009
It is often noted on the Intertoobz that President Obama has a number of financial institutions in the top 20 list of "institutions whose invididual members donated to Obama's campaign".
So, the bankers bought Obama?
Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, UBS AG, Morgan Stanley
these come in…
September 18, 2009
For over 20 years, the binary star DI Herculis has been measured to have anomalous precession, inconsistent with the predictions of general relativity, in the limit of two spherical masses orbiting with the measured orbital parameters.
So, either there were some other classical torques in the…
September 18, 2009
Check out the Revolutionary Minds guest blog. It is worth browsing through.
They invite people to comment on interdisciplinary questions of very broad nature.
Current topic is:
Cross-disciplinary work has sparked provocative new technologies, solutions, and insights. What problems do you see as…
September 18, 2009
Scienceblogs is introducing an optional user membership program.
This would provide more control and filters and notice for regular readers.
Here is your opportunity to provide input.
You can tell me what features you'd like, or not like.. but really you should go to the
blog which binds and rank…
September 17, 2009
Quark Expeditions are running a competition to send your favourite blogger to Antarctica... you too can vote.
Nah, not for me, can't get rid of me that easily.
There are, currently, 613 entries - people who volunteered to go south and blog about the experience.
The competition closes on September…
September 17, 2009
Swift does a large field mosaic image in the ultraviolet of M31
Ok, so Astronomy Picture of the Day beat me to this...
Andromeda in optical (click to embiggen)
Swift took a 330 picture mosaic of our nearest respectably sized neighbour galaxy, the venerable, and naked eye Andromeda, aka M31. They…
September 17, 2009
I both really like this song and find it hard to listen to sometimes.
September 17, 2009
HD61005 is a nice normal, young star with a dusty disk that will likely make planets one day. Real soon now in fact.
But HD61005, like some other stars, is different.
It is warped.
Well, the rim of its disk is.
Warped disk of HD61005 (click to embiggen)
The above picture is a Hubble image with the…
September 13, 2009
More State Universities are going to furloughs...
And the funding agencies may agree to let faculty take salary from grants for furloughs.
This is not a good thing, furloughs are rational if sharp cuts are a short term necessity, because they avoid long term job losses and they can be implemented…
September 12, 2009
NuStar is a small explorer class hard x-ray focusing telescope.
It is now scheduled for launch in august 2011.
NuStar is optimised for the hard x-ray range, looking at energies from 6 keV to 79 keV, with energy resolution of ~ 1 keV and, sub-arcmin angular resolution ( Prof. F. Harrison PI).
The…
September 11, 2009
Hubble post-refurbishment engineering and early science images were released on wednesday.
Go check them out.
Here is the press release and image link
sorry this is late, I'm on a field trip in the middle of somewhere...
Showcases Wide Field Camera 3 very nicely!
All the images are here - there…
September 9, 2009
Our astrobiology graduate seminar has started, and last week it got interesting as we pondered "weird life".
I'm a co-PI of the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center, and as part of our program we run an Astrobiology graduate seminar, which is generally topic based.
This year it is more student…
September 8, 2009
Ok, here we go again... someone thinks it is funny to compare economics with astronomy...
Worse, than that, it is Chad hisself, hovering near one of the antipodes of the blogosphere.
It was of course Krugman who started it, but Sean had to go stir it up, didn't he?
Then Dave's got to go…
September 8, 2009
Augustine Panel delivered its report and recommendations to Obama today.
This is important, it will set the menu of options for Obama to choose NASA's future, and a decision needs to be made, and soon.
Almost none of the options are good.
The basic problem is that NASA "Exploration" - the human…
September 8, 2009
To understand the furore over The President's speech to school children, it is probably sufficient to ignore the facts of the matter and precedent of previous addresses by Presidents of various hues, and just note that a lot of peoples' fears are based on "What would I do given that access?".…
September 8, 2009
can't remember if I put up a pointer for this yet, but
Billy Bragg podcast #14 - Half Bragg, Half Blokes was put up this summer.
September 4, 2009
trump trump trump
strange things flash into my mind on hot friday afternoons
The Toy Dolls
Original TOTP version, with period costumes.
Strangely enough, this is one of the best songs to ice skate to.
Who knew?
September 2, 2009
yes, it is linkedy link time,
because it has been a while,
because I can, and...
because linking is an intrinsic good, ain't it?
Sometimes it is what is not said that matter. (It all goes back to this).
why yes, yes it does
e-Astronomer on a roll: University Challenge - don't get me going about…