Astrobiology Future The NASA online discussion session on the Astrobiology Roadmap continues this week. This morning there was a web chat on "Early Evolution of Life and the Biosphere", which is being followed up by an ongoing online discussion on the questions posed and soliciting ideas for priorities in research direction. The questions being discussed are: How has the exponential growth in our discovery and understanding of exoplanets impacted the kinds of questions and information we extract from the early Earth record? Are there problems you think are vital to understanding the early…
I come to praise Kepler, not to bury it... Kepler! The Kepler Mission is one of the little NASA spacecraft that so frequently comes along, exceeds all expectations and changes our perspective of the universe. There is a good Quick History of the transit method and Kepler Mission concept on the website. Otto Struve noted in his seminal 1952 note that planetary "eclipses" of their parent stars ought to be detectable by photoelectric methods, a proposal that some two decades later was quantified by Rosenblatt, and then explored in detail (including development research) by Borucki and…
The future of Astrobiology research within NASA is being set now. Next week there are further opportunities for community input.The online discussion for Solar System Exploration wraps up today! If you are an active researcher, a student planning on getting into astrobiology, or an interested member of the community, this is your chance to provide input on the direction of research. This is your future. Be there, or we will choose for you. The NASA Astrobiology Roadmap exercise is under way, and will continue over the next two weeks. NASA Astrobiology The next two topics will kick off…
What are Origami Nanosat Telescopes? How about Kinetic Inductance Detectors? More importantly, what should we do with them? NASA's Astrophysics is doing a Roadmap exercise, with the stated intent to look at science goals, technology and capabilities up to 30 years out! White papers were solicited a few weeks ago, and about 100 were received and are archived online, about 3/4 on science and 1/4 on technology. There was originally supposed to be a workshop for presentation of selected white papers, but in the world of sequestration that was not feasible, so instead there was a two day online…
It is critically important that the community participate in the current ongoing discussion for the NASA roadmaps. Particularly if you are an early career researcher. This is your opportunity to make the case for what you think is interesting and important. NASA Astrobiology NASA is going through a series of Roadmap exercises by the different directorates, trying to set medium and long term policy for science goals, technology development and capabilities. The NASA Astrobiology Program is doing a rolling series of Roadmap input sessions for four themes for Astrobiology. Each theme kicks…
They were amateurish videos, often black and white, sometimes just a disembodied hand writing simple equations on a blackboard as a quirky voice from off screen gave well practiced short lectures highlighting the essential learning elements. The pedagogy was revolutionary, university level material freely accessible by vast, unimaginable numbers - set to revolutionize education. Yes, The Open University was a revelation when I discovered their late night television broadcasts as a callow teen, bored with O-level chemistry. Here was real learning, advanced material presented much better than…
Just read a series of interesting articles on inquiry based science: Inquiry Science rocks: Or does it - David Klahr tries to test the efficacy of discovery learning (APS News 12. 2012). Direct Instruction rocks: Or does it - Richard Hake takes issue with Klahr's inferences. To be contrasted with: The Efficacy of Student-Centered Instruction in Supporting Science Learning - Granger et al Science 338 105 (2012) [sub] The amount of data on the efficacy of the different teaching methods is still pathetically small. I am inclined to believe that student center instruction or inquiry science is…
Knock. Knock. Hello? Is this thing still working? Anyone there? Ok, it is end of semester and I am out of excuses. Time to clear out some backlog of stuff to read. Am I Wrong? - Bruce Alberts, Editor in Chief of Science, worries about the future. He is rarely wrong. Time Crystals - interesting article from the increasingly pro-active Simons Foundation on Frank Wilczek's provocative idea on multi-stable ground state configurations that may cycle through different but energetically equivalent configurations. Berkeley group is trying an experimental test of the concept. Won't be definitive, but…
"I came with all my books, lived in dorms, followed directions. I worked, I studied hard, met lots of folks who had connections. I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say not in a fair way. But more, much more than this, I did it their way." Many years ago, I heard this, I Did It Their Way, on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion", originally by Bob Blue. I still have that rendition on a cassette tape somewhere. But now, finally, there is an excellent youtube rendition: "And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor, Where once I was oppressed, I've now become…
The department of Astronomy & Astrophysics is proud to announce a special colloquium by a distinguished visitor: TITLE: Emission Lines Accompanying Gamma-Ray Flares from the Tidal Disruption of Dyson Spheres by Binary Intermediate-Mass Black Holes at z ~ 10. Special Lunch Talk, Monday, April 1, 2013 by Professor Rajesh Koothrappali, Circumference Institute [Host: Hofstadter] ABSTRACT: "I will begin this talk in medias res by assuming that Dyson spheres can exist as early as z~10. I will describe general relativistic electromagenetohydrodynamic simulations of the disruption of a Dyson…
this is not a Planck post... Visalization of the Gödel Universe WMAP-9 Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays? - Astrophysicist lets you pick the priors and decide... Harvard did WHAT? "Detection of Carbon Monoxide and Water Absorption Lines in an Exoplanet Atmosphere" - Konopacky et al Science (sub) - HR8799 good S/N spectra "Direct imaging discovery of 12-14 Jupiter mass object orbiting a young binary system of very low-mass stars" - Delorme et al (arXiv) - substellar circumbinary companion to an M dwarf binary why, yes, I am procrastinating... and there is Moore: Moore's Law in Astronomy and UFOs…
Answers on a single sheet double spaced 12 pt font, by monday, please, including figures. The NASA Advisory Council, subcommittee on Astrophysics, has started a Roadmap Exercise. The roadmap exercise was called for at the February 2013 meeting. The roadmap is intended to: Articulate NASA’s astrophysics vision looking out 30 years Science-based -> identify key science investigations and challenges for the future Identify notional missions & technologies needed to enable the science Developed by a task force of the APS (AstroPhysics Subcommittee) Include community input, including Town…
Planets, planets everywhere and on some there will be drops to drink. An interesting confluence of research occurred over the last few months, leading to: "A revised estimate of the occurrence rate of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones around Kepler M-dwarfs" by Ravi kumar Kopparapu PSU (arXiv), ApJLetters in press Bottom line: about half of low mass stars in the Solar neighbourhood are estimated to have earth size planets in their habitable zone! The implications are that habitable planets may be very common and the closest one within a few light years. We'll know for sure very…
Inspired by Tim Hamilton's facebook post I played a bit with my old bit of silfurberg this weekend In particular, I was curious to test whether there was some plausibility to birefringent calcite being the "sunstone" of the Saga's. This evening, about an hour before sunset, we had nice thick rain clouds moving from Ohio, so, as I had promised the Astronomers fb group, I popped out to check what I could see. After a short time playing with rotation, looking with peripheral vision and doing some slow scans, I gave the biggest piece to my daughter (who I am reasonably sure has not read this…
There were a number of interesting results reported today, the start of what promises to be an interesting week: IR spectra of HR 8799 planets - Scharf at SciAm blogs reports on the Oppenheimer et al paper using the P1640 at the Palomar telescope. Their interpretation of the rather low signal-to-noise low resolution spectra is that the outer two planets have little methane in their upper atmosphere and the inner planets do seem to have methane and that there is evidence for ammonia in the outer planets. I suspect more data is needed. HR8799 is an interesting system, I'm still not convinced…
I think we should take some pie over, in person. Discovery of a Binary Brown Dwarf at 2 Parsecs from the Sun - Kevin Luhman, ApJLetters in press. That is just over 6 light years away, making it the third closest system from the Sun, and the closest known substellar system, only the α Cen triple system, and Barnard's Star, an old red dwarf, are closer. Detection images for our new neighbour. The WISE discovery image is middle bottom, the Gemini image at the bottom right shows the resolved pair clearly. This is a spectacular and somewhat surprising discovery, that something could be this…
When I was about 9 years old, my grandmother gave me a piece of Iceland Spar, it had belonged to my grandfather and she felt I ought to have it. Iceland Spar This is the piece, my kids have it now, somewhere along the way it broke into three pieces while in storage. She showed me the birefringence, I remember playing with it for hours. I also remember having had it impressed upon me that it was important, not just a curio, though I am also acutely aware of the possibility that I have reinterpreted my partial memories based on what I learned later. Birefringence in Iceland Spar. The…
My quasi-periodic dump of interestingee thingees off the intertoobz "The Most Precise Extra-Galactic Black-Hole Mass Measurement" A. Gould (ApJ submitted) aka the most talked about paper in astronomy this week... How to kill your audience - apparently fake Wolverine claws are essential... Time to Rethink Cosmic Inflation? - and you thought CDM vs MOND was getting out of control ;-) Will Climate Change Ever Have Its Sandy Hook Moment: Why, Yes, Yes It Will. Jolly Unpleasant It Will Be Too. Why don't more girls study physics Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught: 1,2,3,4,6,8,9 There's More to…
The Dark Matter Crisis Continues Pavel and Marcel give the back story of what happened at scilog and the social media mud flinging over MOND and other alternate conjectures for modified gravity. Also on the fb "Astronomers" group "The Dark Matter Crisis" will have a guest blog entry tomorrow on the science issue. It really is true that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and reroutes... The guest post on CMD vs MOND by Scott Dodelson is up at the Dark Matter Crisis blog (see comment below)
Sequestration begins on Friday, and this time for real... it is, ironically, Hubble Space Telescope Proposal Deadline Day, but then everyday is a Proposal Day. I'm guessing that this year the "Hubble Constant" will decrease. The Agencies are now revealing their plans to deal with sequester. As you recall the amount is $83 billion from the current fiscal year's budget. We are almost half way through the current fiscal year. There is not actually a budget yet for the current fiscal year, the US is operating on a Continuing Resolution through to late March, and if a budget is actually approved,…