Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
May 2, 2007
I was watching Olbermann's Countdown tuesday night, and a minor point has been irritating me all day.
He was discussing the infamous "Mission Accomplished" stunt four years ago, and his guest, who I think was a radio show person, made some sarcastic comment about the receiving line for Bush being…
May 2, 2007
The "pet food poison' has clearly entered the human food chain.
Definitely through animal feed for chickens and pigs raised for human consumption, and quite likely through direct contamination of food additives - gluten and grain/vegetable protein additives
The acute symptoms in cats and dogs are…
May 2, 2007
New Scientist has a teaser article(sub) about Corot...
Sounds like Corot is exceeding specs and will exceed specifications - if I translate it correctly they will get to under 100 ppm, compared to specs of 700 ppm for photometry of their brighter sources.
That is pushing close to Kepler sensitivity…
May 2, 2007
The question is: who gets to choose my null hypothesis?
Chad asks whether there are "reasons" for being an atheist.
This is an axiomatically incorrect question: the bigger question is what is the null hypothesis?
Do we assume that there is a God and that she has some attributes, until evidence to…
May 2, 2007
Pay more to unknowingly feed congealed urine to your loved ones.
So large corporations can make fractionally more money.
It is one of these framing issues, see.
More problems with pet food.
Recall expanded and clear that contaminated "protein" made it into the human food chain.
To cut a long story…
May 2, 2007
One One Zero Two
Instant cult classic
9D 74 E3 5B D8
41 56 C5 63 56
It is almost as if Information Itself wants To Be Free
Eight Eight Cee One
Take away One
and then you are Done
Someone quick and smart already got the t-shirt
May 2, 2007
There is a new head of Research and Analysis in NASA's science directorate
Dr Yvonne Pendleton out of NASA Ames astrobio takes over SARA at HQ
She wants to hear from people about R&A issues, general concerns, the specific issues still go to program officers. Non-responsive program officers…
May 2, 2007
The Astrophysical Journal is on the move!
Word.
The Astrophysical Journal, a primary reasearch publication outlet of the American Astronomical Society is moving. Publication will apparently be done by the Institute of Physics, UK!
And the Editor's office is moving to Canada, we hear (anyone care…
May 2, 2007
ACS or STIS asks the Astro Dyke
You vote.
Good question, says the Space Telescope Users Committee, in an e-mail.
Which would you rather have back?
The Advanced Camera for Surveys or Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
The former produced some of the most fantastic pictures ever taken, the latter…
May 2, 2007
I see Mathematica has announced a new release
I went through a period, pre release 1.0, when I used Mathematica's precursor rather heavily, in conjuntion with Maple (basically if the two produced the same results I used it, after sanity checks, if they didn't I sent in a bug report to Mathematica…
May 1, 2007
Wired has a slightly breathless short about the Terrestrial Planet Finder... to be launched in 2016!
I guess they didn't get the memo
TPF is off the table.
Downgraded to small scale lab feasibility demos, the engineering team disbanded.
Even if they change their minds, again, there is no…
May 1, 2007
Corot is a very nifty little satellite.
It is a french space agency small satellite, designed to measure convection, rotation and to find planets.
It started off as an astroseismology mission, in the Proteus class of standardised mini-satellite buses (hey! now there's a concept, standardized…
April 30, 2007
Neil de Grasse Tyson on the Colbert Report tonight. Third time.
Talking Gliese 581 and "Night at the Planetarium" - the sequel.
Excellent.
April 29, 2007
What is a fair non-science criterion for changing proposal funding priorities?
Below I ranted on possible political reprioritization of NASA funding
but I decided I wasn't clear in what I was worried about.
Consider a hypothetical (NASA) proposal I send in.
It is of course a very good proposal,…
April 29, 2007
is it just me, or is it becoming genuinely hard to find a finite priced trans-atlantic flight this summer?
to anywhere over the pond. I've done a fair bit of travel on these routes over the years and I don't ever remember prices this high or schedules this constrained
April 29, 2007
IAU sighs in relief as everyone finally stops talking about that Pluto thing last year...
Clerical error catastrophe at the ISR
And remember to wear your Margaret block.
April 27, 2007
Russia has suspended its compliance with the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe over the issue of US forward based missile defence systems
This is brilliant!
US foreign policy is an incoherent mess.
But, now it has been reduced to a "previously known problem"!
I expect an analytic solution…
April 26, 2007
Finanicial Times story on Wolfowitz aide trying to take out references to climate change in World Bank report
via Brad deLong
Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, got passed up to be World Bank President
I wonder why family planning and climate change got "edited" by his deputy...…
April 26, 2007
Early stormy friday, and we ask the Omniscient iPod to prognosticate
What will we hear from the early COROT discovery announcement due any day now?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Aids - Yellowman
The Crossing: Louie, Louie - Toots & The Maytals
The Crown: Peaches -…
April 26, 2007
Philosophia Naturalis #9 is up at Science and Reason
Lots of good stuff.
April 26, 2007
Was NASA science funding redirected for party political purposes leading up to the 2004 or 2006 elections?
There is a slowly growing flap over White House political operatives giving briefings to government agencies on election vulnerabilities and how to move funding to boost some local candidates…
April 26, 2007
Shelley at Retrospectacle ran into a corporate tangle of moronicity
to cut a long story short, she used a figure from a paper in discussing the article, which seems to be clear "fair use", and got a lawyer letter from the publishers (Wiley).
Here is the original - with figure recreated from the…
April 25, 2007
In 2005, Jon Stewart, who, may I say, is a comic genius and one of the top two or three deliverers of media news to the US populace, was paid $1.5 million for his work.
In 2006, Mather and Smoot shared the physics Nobel Prize: 10 million SEK
At the current exchange rate that is almost exactly $1.5…
April 25, 2007
if you want to help find planets, in the comfort of your home (as opposed to staying up all night on cold clear winter evenings), there is a place that you can go...
systemic is a web-site/blog run by Prof Greg Laughlin at UCSC to play with planet data
they do a lot of stuff, testing stability,…
April 25, 2007
earlier this year I was a co-author on a paper which, among other things, attempted to "predict" which of the currently known planetary systems we might expect to find future planets in the habitable zones - specifically terrestrial or "super Earth" planets.
Gliese 581 was on our list (p. 33)
I…
April 25, 2007
2nd Battalion, 14th Regiment, 10th (Light) Infantry Division
Busy folks.
April 24, 2007
The Swiss-French planet hunter team have a new interesting discovery.
A low mass "super Earth" in a potential habitable zone.
Nature news story
UPDATE: Details are up on the Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia
and Udry's web page
and here is the actual preprint (PDF)
Hm, interesting, the full solution…
April 23, 2007
do minor errors ruin good books?
I feel very churlish being annoyed that Spin's author got
M41 mixed up with
M31
There were other errors, but this one was jarring.
Good book though, fun read.
April 23, 2007
One hundred billion.
One hundred thousand million.
That is a lot, in most contexts. Astronomical even.
Apparently, if you ask nicely, know the right people, you can have it, in cash.
US dollars. Off budget, no questions asked, no supervision, no audits.
What could you do with that?
It is both a…
April 23, 2007
it may be immodest, but there are a small number of things a hotel should do to achieve perfection...
Free broadband internet connection. Preferably Wi-Fi and Ethernet, but if only one can be done, then provide Wi-Fi. Suck the cost up in the room charge, don't split it out. Federal grants don't…