Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
January 31, 2008
The domestic cat has a range of up to 10 km per day
this is significantly shorter than human which are excellent migrants, can sustain maybe 30 km per day.
At 10 km/day it would take a cat about 11 billion years to walk to alpha Centauri.
Which unfortunately would have burned out by then.
But…
January 30, 2008
Cute
and tasty - them's good eatin'!
Lightly boiled breast of Lundi, with sweet mashed potatos, mushy green peas and rhubarb jam. (From Höska Búa - food and poetry).
Yum.
Ok, so you need to boil them a lot to get the fish oil taste down.
Not of course puffin season, it it Þorri, the winter month…
January 30, 2008
A part of the typical graduate school application is the "essay" or personal statement
I also did this, when I were a wee lad.
I came from Europe, but for obscure historical reasons was mostly applying to universities in the US.
Upon reading the application forms, I found a small box which said…
January 28, 2008
Which is a better metric of faculty research performance, H or G?
I already pontificated about the Hirsch index - where you rank your published papers by citation rank, and the H-index is the largest number such that you have k papers with the number of cites greater than or equal to k.
It is an…
January 28, 2008
Physics bloggers are quite taken with the recent financial market turmoil.
Hsu considers propagator effects and asymmetries of time averaged risk, while the Incoherent Ponderer seizes upon my comment about the root cause between the Superconducting SuperCollider cancellation and current financial…
January 28, 2008
bo gi ru sa
af er og um
There are about 250 legal two word combinations in the english language, looking just at the basic vowels - a,e,i,o,u,y and the remaining 20 consonants. I'm allowing y to be a pseudo-consonant for some extra combinations.
There are apparently 101 legal two letters words in…
January 25, 2008
Two unrelated threads came together in my mind on the issue of physics, careers issues and the world.
Did you know that there is an not half-bad science fiction story that as backplot notes that physicists take over the hard drug trade in the US and Europe in the early 21st century - only way to…
January 25, 2008
Frosty friday, but no snow! We can has snow?
Oh, mighty iPod, we approach thee - is the key insight retrograde asymmetry on long time scales?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: Don't Look Back in Anger (live) - Oasis
The Crossing: Land of Confusion - Genesis
The Crown: American Music…
January 24, 2008
Jason Jones' quest for a Modern Valkyrie ends
Comedy Show's great two part visit to Iceland reaches its dramatic conclusions
For your viewing pleasure.
The similarty to a committee meeting I just attended is eerie... somethings are just universal.
It is funny. when Jason went to her apartment, he…
January 23, 2008
Did I mention space is big
Really big...
Did you know that the typical separation between stars in the neighbourhood is many millions of time the typical size of a star and about ten thousand times larger than the typical size of the planetary systems.
January 23, 2008
Finally, the Comedy Show starts airing the sequence shot in Iceland last autumn.
and who says scandihoovians have no sense of humour
It is worth seeing, if you missed the show - guess this is one benefit of the writer's strike.
Part II tonight, worth staying up for.
Hey, just remember You heard it…
January 23, 2008
Keck gives Caltech $24 million to fund a new space studies institute.
$3 million per year for 8 years from Keck -
"...Caltech has received an eight-year, $24-million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to establish a space studies institute dedicated to developing a new generation of space…
January 18, 2008
I need photos of cats.
Cute, quirky or feline. Whichever.
As long as they are cat only or cat dominated, they are your pictures (you took them and own copyright) and you're willing to let me use them online lightly photoshopped for text and trimming. I'll provide link, acknowledgement or anonymity…
January 18, 2008
Snowy sunny friday, and the big chill is moving in, finally.
So, we ask the tres cool iPod - whence the Frontier?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Floreat Inertia - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Crossing: Við Gróttu - Stríð Og Friður
The Crown:Accident Waiting to Happen -…
January 17, 2008
Love and Sex with Robots
Colbert just had David Levy, author of "Love and Sex with Robots" on
Quite amusing, quite good and quite likely predictive, although reality will no doubt surprise us.
And, most of it was covered at some point by 70s science fiction writers.
But, a significant fraction of…
January 16, 2008
So, how much do faculty make.
The Incoherent Ponderer Pseudonymously Reveals All
The US system seems very byzantine on occasion to Us Europeans, lot of gamesmanship.
The IP discusses the situation well, the top private universities - Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech crowd definitely pay top dollar -…
January 16, 2008
There are principles in cosmology
We discuss cosmogony and principles...
It could be argued that Ginnungagap is a remarkable metaphor for the modern view of quantum cosmology, I personally think that the detailed description of the spontaneous appearance of a temperature gradient followed by non-…
January 14, 2008
Therese at "Random Thoughts of an Astro Major" scores a short interview with AAS President Craig Wheeler
January 14, 2008
The universe is very big.
It is also cold, old and empty.
On a cold monday morning it also feels capricious, as it did to most of our ancestors most of the time.
Yet, one of the most amazing things about the universe is that it actually appears to be amenable to reason.
If we knew why that is, we…
January 14, 2008
ScienceDebate 2008 is a an idea whose time has come.
But, it may not happen.
So, maybe we can make our own debate.
via NASAwatch
There is a pair of primary debates coming up - Jan 30/31 for the republicans and democrats respectively.
It is sponsored by CNN, politico.com and the LA Times.
Politico…
January 11, 2008
Penn State Professor: "...an academic who blogs is contributing to the demise of Western culture"
Darn tootin'.
Er, any Deans reading this...?
Just remember that man is a most Dangeral Professor.
January 11, 2008
Cold rainy friday, as winter returns.
So, we ask the iPod - what is in store for us this spring semester?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Are We The Waiting - Green Day
The Crossing: Old Dan Tucker - Bruce Springsteen
The Crown: Ch'Ella Mi Creda - Pavarotti
The Root: Peter &…
January 9, 2008
As the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society powers on in Texas, us homebodies bring you the 36th Carnival of Space, for your reading pleasure...
Fraser, at Universe Today is streaming a steady flow of space and astro related news from the AAS meeting, as is Therese at Random Thoughts…
January 9, 2008
Mars Gets Women, but he does not get the New Improved Process for Recommendation Letters for Students
...and, may I say, to the graduate program administrators around the country; the commercial on-line application services universally suck
my current experience is that one of the online service…
January 9, 2008
Chad speaks out on the upcoming, devastating, cuts in science and takes on Gordon over where the blame lies.
You may be surprised. Either way you ought to read it.
Here is my take on the issue, when the news came out last month...
The root cause of these cuts is with the White House - the budget…