Now do you believe in elves?
Santa Claus in Orion.
Got a long way to go still.
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Happy Winter Solstice!
Gleðileg Jól!
Festive Yule.
I just wrote "Merry Christmas" in elvish.
You see, we found ourselves in a position where we have folded four separate winter solstice festival traditions into the season, much the the delight of the munchkins.
However, the Big Kid is definitely…
IXO and LISA are dead and disbanded as NASA missions.
We are looking at a very thin pipeline and few new missions for a while, unless there is drastic new direction from above and strong guidance on funding.
NASA is a mission oriented agency.
This is especially true of Astrophysics.
At any given…
Dave Ng over at the World's Fair is at it again, asking what sort of science background Santa Claus has:
So the premise is that Santa is at least several hundred years old, and you've got to assume that somewhere along the line, he spent some time in academia and probably got a degree or two. Now,…
"Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova…
uhh, that's supposed to look like Santa? i'm not seeing it.
pretty desperate, ESA, pretty desperate....
Hrmph. Coal for you, me lad.
You kinda have to squint. And be six.
Anyway, er, he's still just taking form, as it were...
Ha! That's great!
Any news (or speculation) on a CoRoT press release? The rumor was for a December 10th press briefing in Paris, but, apparently, that didn't happen. Just as one can predict things about the US armed forces from carrier deployments, can one predict a CoRoT press briefing from conferences or journal deployments? Any predictions?
I have no definite knowledge on this, and those who know ain't talking.
That people are not talking, and they haven't been for a while now, is the biggest clue that they got something interesting.
The rumoured specs for Corot are good enough for a few sigma detection of an Earth mass planet around an interesting star, don't know how they'd confirm it though...
There are three likely places for Corot papers, if they have serious new results - Nature, Science or A & A letters (the latter has made a big push to be the place for hot planet results from European teams).
A&A news/press release web page has no data, nor has their "upcoming papers".
A monday press release is incompatible with Nature or Science, both of which have strict embargo rules.
If I were a Corot PI, and the results are good, I'd have negotiated a "special issue" in Science or Nature (I'd personally have tried Science, they have been actively wanting extrasolar planet stuff, while Nature has been more cosmo/high energy inclined).
There is nothing in Science Express and no pre-press of a Science special issue. If it is Science, the press release would be late thursday French time, I'd think.
Nature is a day earlier - so they'd be wednesday.
It could be there was a hiccup with referees or typesetting and everything is delayed. Or the whole thing could be taking more time than planned and we'll be waiting a while.
Or maybe they got nuthin'.... maybe the whole thing was a science sociological experiment in rumour propagation ;-)
Well, we know they've found something. It wouldn't hurt if they told us only about the less Earth-shattering discoveries. If only they give us something, the silence is deafening...