Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
January 8, 2007
From American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle:
Wheee... we have Hubble Press Release number 2 for 2007
ACS imaging of AU Microscopii showing 50-100 AU edge on debris disk.
The full story, as they say
Nifty stuff.
January 8, 2007
Unexpectedly bright and visible in the west just after sunset, for a brief time.
January 8, 2007
Raja has discovered so many stars in Andromeda's halo, extending so far (half million light years, dood) that they had to give him an entire session.
Yes, every talk in session 177 on tuesday has Raja Guhathakutra from UCSC as a co-author.
Dood.
To be fair, Vicky Kalogera acheived the same in…
January 8, 2007
The Dangeral Professor quits blogging
Man, now we're going to have to like invent a new medium to lure him back.
Bloomin' English Lit Profs.
January 8, 2007
Robert Nemiroff of apod fame, has a funky poster at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
He points out that in principle you could have energy fields with equations of state with W > 1/3
ie "stiffer than light" and that this would have interesting and amusing consequences in…
January 8, 2007
NASA Advisory Council met with AAS members in Seattle this morning.
It was an interesting meeting; some harsh things said, some nice things said and some things unsaid.
This is my personal interpretation of what I heard...
Some very harsh things were implicitly said about recent NASA management,…
January 8, 2007
From American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle:
Prof Schulze-Makuch from Washington State has a conjecture that reconciles the Viking experiments - which were generally inconsistent with life on Mars but showed some residual puzzles - with the current thinking that there might be persistent…
January 8, 2007
First Hubble press release of the year
The COSMOS project is a multi-wavelength survey of a 2 degree field, using, well, basically everything we got.
They have cool results.
Click through for zoomable image
January 8, 2007
Sir Magnús Magnússon the long time presenter of the legendary BBC programme Mastermind, author, historian and journalist, has died.
One british quiz programme I would not have minded seeing in the US.
The creator apparently based the format on his experiences being interrogated by the Gestapo.
BBC…
January 8, 2007
Most all galaxies seem to contain central supermassive black holes.
All too often, galaxies collide (the universe is surprisingly crowded on these scales).
The central black holes may then become bound and merge, which is interesting, or they may hang up in orbit for long enough that another…
January 7, 2007
National Optical Astronomy Observatory shows off some of its photography skills
The Bubble Nebula - NGC7635
January 7, 2007
It is official, Google is a partner in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
"Google's mission is to take the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The data from LSST will be an important part of the world's information, and by being involved in the project we hope to…
January 7, 2007
Rob from Galactic Interactions is here
as is Phil from Bad Asronomy
I gather Sean and Jennifer are here also, not bumped into any of them.
'Course my flight was late and I completely missed the opening reception.
Phil has a good entry on the COSMOS "structure of dark matter press release, Rob on…
January 7, 2007
NSF town hall meeting today was depressing.
The failure of the 2006 Congress to pass a budget is turning to catastrophe.
I don't blame the democrats from ducking the trap and going for a continuing resolution, am hoping the science budgets will be the pieces exempted, but am not holding my breath.…
January 7, 2007
It really does rain in Seattle, where the umpteenth mega annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society is underway...
Fun. Lots of schmoozing.
Technically I'm already done, "my" poster was up in session 10 on the first day. Yay.
Ok, I sub-let it to one of my students.
Another student gave a…
January 7, 2007
Caltech's NCAA record 207 game streak is broken
Clearly The Quantum Pontiff jinxed them, maybe in some alternate reality the streak continues unbroken...
January 5, 2007
There is a trope in classic science fiction, where humans are "special".
We get out there, into the galaxy, and there's a bunch of aliens, and they're all Really Dumb.
So the clean cut heroic square jawed human takes charge and saves the day. Fini.
What if it is true?
Ok, I've been reading too…
January 5, 2007
Friday again. And still not snowing.
We ask the iPod: what wonders can we expect from the Great Gathering of Astronomers next week?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Wari Featuring Saian Supa Crew - Alpha Blondy
The Crossing: Slá í Gegn - Stuðmenn
The Crown: Aisle of Plenty -…
January 5, 2007
Information Processing does an interesting riff on the human genome, and how to quantify variations in alleles and whether clustering in allele frequence maps to morphological typing.
This is a very "physics view" of genomics, and I suspect that there will be some interesting counterpoints.
I will…
January 5, 2007
Blue Origin has gone public with info about their first test flight which took place before christmas.
space.com has more
It is a rework of the old DC-X Delta Clipper concept. Looks kinda cool.
Currently low powered peroxide thrusters, sounds like they want to try it with cryogenic LH2/LOX…
January 4, 2007
So, there I was, an undergrad in England, and I needed to get to Caltech by september.
Flying seemed best (this is non-trivial, since a friend of mine faced with a similar dilemma went for the motorcycle to Mosow, then trans-Siberian train followed by tramp freighter to LA via Japan approach - ok…
January 4, 2007
There has been much talk of a proposed surge escalation bump in the number of US soldiers deployed to Iraq, in the near future, for the purpose of doing something vaguely quantum mechanical, I gather, since the mission seems to become more poorly defined as anyone attempts to observe it more…
January 4, 2007
Steve explains why Caltech Rules!
Undergrads... sheesh!
It may sound good, but then you have to deal with the weirdo roommates...
January 4, 2007
I finally replaced my poor laptop and discovered that although my case fits not only the poor old 12" and the antique 15" it is just too tight for the new 15.4".
Never mind if I have it in its skin.
So... turns out the campus store has a strong backpack bias for laptop bags, for some unfathomable…
January 4, 2007
CNN has a news item about a mystery object that hit a house in New Jersey
Small picture, no data, but it looks like a possible iron meterorite.
Apparently some damage, but no injuries or deaths.
Owners are being cagey, just wait until their insurance company decides to take an issue.
Show-Me…
January 3, 2007
Over a period of just over one week, just over 500 pieces of spam got through to my last spam filter, and were autodeposited in a "is this spam?" box.
My primary e-mail account is buried behind three layers of spam and virus filtering, and my mailer has a Bayesian junk mail filter.
At least five…
January 2, 2007
'Tis the season...
...to write dozens of recommendation letters.
And, may I say, to the graduate program administrators around the country; the commercial on-line application services universally suck.
Having to enter and re-enter the same information about myself, as a recommender, on poorly…
January 2, 2007
No Quarter links to the Saddam execution video
Unseemly.
People should watch it.
January 2, 2007
I missed almost all of yesterday's football due to various social obligations.
I caught the last 50 seconds of PSU's spanking of Tennessee (QB taking a knee twice) and then late last night decided to look at OU vs BSU just to see some football.
That was the best 4th quarter of football in a long…