Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
June 27, 2008
Stormy friday, and we idly ask the iPod: what about the weather?
Will the Mississippi flood down river? Will the droughts continue elsewhere?
We gots to know.
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Donna Non Vidi Mai - Pavarotti
The Crossing: Dies Bildnis is bezaubernd schön - Mozart…
June 26, 2008
Early tantalizing Phoenix lander results from Mars.
Phoenix wet lab results
Soil is alkaline and loaded with (probably) water soluble salts - Mg/Na/K and chloride.
Suggestive of liquid water processing at some point.
Ph is 8-9 - not bad, certainly survivable.
No carbon, yet.
June 25, 2008
Who is Obama's Science Adviser?
Obama seems to have number of technology advisers:
Julius Genachowski, former FCC, on communications;
Alec Ross showed up at the science debate by proxy, but he is really a computing and networks guy,
Larry Lessig at Stanford and Daniel Weitzner at MIT are also…
June 25, 2008
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Colbert BFF, is back on The Report...
Man, he's good.
Best Friend Fyzzicist indeed.
Neil is doing a Nova Science Now series over the summer.
Dark Matter in 12 minutes, tonight.
Stephen, of course, does not see the colour of matter.
With free Phoenix Lander blurb for Mars thrown…
June 25, 2008
Hardly seen any of the footie to date, just caught the second half of the Spain-Italy quarter final, and now the last 30 mins of Turkey vs Germany (replay).
ESPN, for some strange reason, feels obliged to tell us, to three significant figures, how many kilometers they estimate various players have…
June 20, 2008
Frantic, frazzled frændfólks friday.
So, oh mighty iPod - will any good come of all this, and you know of which I speak...?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: It's Going to Happen - Undertones
The Crossing: Housefly Blues - Wee Hairy Beasties
The Crown: Lullaby
The Root: Uffington…
June 19, 2008
Phoenix has been digging shallow trenches on Mars, and hitting hard stuff, which is bright white - like maybe ice.
Now bits of the stuff are vanishing before our eyes...
The scoop had dislodged some ~ 1cm chunks of the white stuff which were displaced to the end of the trench.
These have now…
June 19, 2008
What is your take on the philosophical, or theological, tone in some recent popular treatments of modern physics?
Mark Vernon is a journalist and author of After Atheism and other books.
Mark is looking for feedback from readers of popular books on modern physics or cosmology which touch on the…
June 18, 2008
NASA is really getting into the blog thing...
GLAST blog is up and running, with mission performance updates and near future action items etc.
Steve Ritz himself is running it.
GLAST seem to be doing fine, some minor glitches shaken out, I'm sure they gave the people involved a nice adrenaline…
June 17, 2008
why is there always One that hatesdoesn't click with you...
The Female Science Professor got her student evaluations...
As she notes, there is always one student who really does not like the class, the professor, the material, the method, anything...
Always.
One.
At least one...
Now, she has some…
June 13, 2008
"So, you get through grad school. You do research that gets lot of citations. You get tenure...
...then Larry King wraps it up: "Tomorrow, we'll talk about psychic kids." "
'cause y'know linking is an intrinsically good thing to do, sometimes.
June 13, 2008
Hot and sultry friday.
We ask the iPod: will GLAST really detect cold dark matter annihilation radiation from centers of nearby galaxies?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: My Flying Saucer - Billy Bragg
The Crossing: Revenge - Spoon
The Crown: Real Wild Child - Iggy Pop
The Root:…
June 12, 2008
About a week ago, George Will, in a column, asserted incorrectly that Cuba was letting NorwayChina drill for oil in Gulf waters.
The meme was promptly picked up and eventually asserted by the US vice President.
Where did this come from?
The rumours predates Will's column.
It surfaces in several…
June 12, 2008
A few weeks ago I noted that the spring had the potential for some worrying flooding in the Mississippi basin
Still there.
As a quick glance at the Weather Channel reveals, the upper Mississippi basin is facing historic flooding right now.
Or the USGS waterwatch.
Now, last I checked, the eastern…
June 9, 2008
In case you missed it, NASA announced selection of the six SMEX concept studies that will be downselected to two launch missions in 2012-2015.
And the winners are...
CPEX: Coronal Physics Explorer - NRL
Solar coronography - looking at flares and mass ejections
GEMS: Gravity and Extreme Magnetism…
June 7, 2008
New Sigur Rós album coming out, they they do a free concert with Björk in Reykjaví at the end of June.
In the meantime video and free download of Gobbledigook - first song on the album - here - signin required.
Album pre-order also available online.
They seem to be on form.
Astonishing video - good…
June 6, 2008
Sunny, glorious friday, as we head home.
So, we skip to the Great iPod and ask: what is in store for us in the near future, oh Great iPod One?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Chilling of the Evening - Arlo Guthrie
The Crossing: Billy Bragg podcast #1- Prehistory to the end of…
June 6, 2008
I've spent the last couple of weeks at the Aspen Center for Physics.
As always, it has been productive and a pleasure, but I noticed one big change as I was puttering around town.
Real Easte Sales down 38%!
The Aspen housing market is outrageously high, and prices go up double digit percentages…
June 6, 2008
Cordesman of the CSIS has a presentation on potential Middle East nuclear conflicts
From the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nov 2007, where Anthony Cordesman is a fellow.
Iran, Isreal and Nuclear War
- 77 page pdf version of a ppt presentation.
Some interesting graphics - eg…
June 6, 2008
Three times smitten by my spear he pressed the dust
The Phoenix lander
has picked up some stuff, and, yup, it is red...,
and we have microscopic images of Martian dust.
30-150 micron dust on the optical microscope - dust kicked up by the lander, probably.
The scoop picked up some white stuff…
June 5, 2008
John McCain's website is puzzling:
The "Decision Center" shows a four tab banner:
Decision Center General Election Obama & Iraq Golf Gear
It really is a link to on-line sales of "McCain Golf Gear"
It is still there, eight hours after TPM noted it.
Strangely the John McCain Store, linked…
June 5, 2008
Battery anomaly on GLAST launcher, launch now no earlier than 11 June.
Instantaneous slip rate is > day-per-day
Current launch window is good for another 8 weeks or so though.
This too shall pass.
June 5, 2008
Senate Select Intelligence Committee has released its second report on 9/11 and Iraq related issues.
Better late than never.
Senator Whitehouse is pissed off - he is a pretty good orator also
Another link, because linking is an inherent good.
Here is a source for the text files
h/t emptywheel
and…
June 4, 2008
I am currently in one of my favourite physics hostels...
Aspen Center for Physics
My office is just behind the trees, kinda diagonally through on the other side of the building.
I'm here for a "gravitational radiation astronomy" workshop, which is being run in parallel with a "complexity"…
June 3, 2008
"In the beginning...
...was the command line!"
Now, there is Goosh!
The unofficial google shell.
All the power of google with the cuddly familiarity of the csh interface.
Sweet.
h/t y-ranter
Oh, yeah, and it works.