astro
catdynamics | June 25, 2008Neil deGrasse Tyson, Colbert BFF, is back on The Report...
Man, he's good.
Best Friend Fyzzicist indeed.
Neil is doing a Nova Science Now series over the summer.
Dark Matter in 12 minutes, tonight.
Stephen, of course, does not see the colour of matter.
With free Phoenix Lander blurb for Mars thrown in.
catdynamics | June 19, 2008Phoenix has been digging shallow trenches on Mars, and hitting hard stuff, which is bright white - like maybe ice.
Now bits of the stuff are vanishing before our eyes...
The scoop had dislodged some ~ 1cm chunks of the white stuff which were displaced to the end of the trench.
These have now vanished.
Like sublimated.
So, probably not salt deposits, we think...
Given the ambient temperature, exposed water ice looks like a good bet.
For real. - Might worry it is dry ice, but it seems too warm for there to be dry ice there, and also it is not so hard - I'm assuming Phoenix has quantitative…
catdynamics | June 19, 2008What is your take on the philosophical, or theological, tone in some recent popular treatments of modern physics?
Mark Vernon is a journalist and author of After Atheism and other books.
Mark is looking for feedback from readers of popular books on modern physics or cosmology which touch on the philosophical issues, including theological implications, of some aspects of modern physics.
To whit:
"Mark Vernon would love to hear from any fans of popular science books written by physicists. Particularly the books of those who draw philosophical, even theological, implications in their writing…
catdynamics | June 18, 2008NASA is really getting into the blog thing...
GLAST blog is up and running, with mission performance updates and near future action items etc.
Steve Ritz himself is running it.
GLAST seem to be doing fine, some minor glitches shaken out, I'm sure they gave the people involved a nice adrenaline rush, but in retrospect, from the outside, after they've been solved, they sound like the normal sort of glitches most missions go through that are sorted out by the rather good mission people...
GAST has done some pointing observations and is now in survey mode - calibration is starting and the…
catdynamics | June 9, 2008In case you missed it, NASA announced selection of the six SMEX concept studies that will be downselected to two launch missions in 2012-2015.
And the winners are...
CPEX: Coronal Physics Explorer - NRL
Solar coronography - looking at flares and mass ejections
GEMS: Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX - GSFC
X-ray telescope looking at "highly magnetized matter" flowing into supermassive black holes.
Bonus points for a self-referential two level acronym.
IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph - LockMart
Dynamics of the Solar chromosphere and interface.
JANUS:Joint Astrophysics Nascent…
catdynamics | June 6, 2008Three times smitten by my spear he pressed the dust
The Phoenix lander
has picked up some stuff, and, yup, it is red...,
and we have microscopic images of Martian dust.
30-150 micron dust on the optical microscope - dust kicked up by the lander, probably.
The scoop picked up some white stuff - probably salts they think - hope not all the hard shiny stuff they've seen in the trenches and under the lander is salt deposits.
Getting there.
catdynamics | June 5, 2008Battery anomaly on GLAST launcher, launch now no earlier than 11 June.
Instantaneous slip rate is > day-per-day
Current launch window is good for another 8 weeks or so though.
This too shall pass.
catdynamics | June 2, 2008New planet discovery by Bennett et al, about three Earth masses, adds to the variety of exoplanets.
Prospects for lots of Earth mass planets being out there are improved.
Bennett et al report today the discovery of a 3.3 Earth mass planet at the AAS meeting in St Louis.
Discovery is through microlensing by the MOA and OGLE collaborations.
It is a very, very interesting result.
Planet is 3.3+4.9-1.6 Earth masses,
that is it could have a mass as low as 1.7 Earth masses or as high as 8.2 Earth masses.
The host star of the planet is 0.06+0.028-0.021 Solar masses - that is, it is a high mass brown…
catdynamics | June 2, 2008It is very rare at this stage of my life that I find myself unable to put a book down.
Mark Alpert has written a novel.
"Final Theory" - Touchstone Books (Simon & Schuster) ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7287-9
David is a historian of science, ex-physicist and divorced father.
His former advisor is found tortured and before dying he tells David a clue... hijinks ensue, with the FBI, very bad bad guys and a range of implausible physicists. Some good cameos in there also.
The tone is reminiscent of a Dan Brown novel, but the science is much, much more plausible, and the plot not nearly as moronic.
It…
catdynamics | June 1, 2008The Roadside Gallery in Carbondale, CO, is doing a Hubble exhibit...!
Just can't get away from the bloomin' thing:
"Stellar images
(CARBONDALE) Roadside Gallery at 320 Main St. is exhibiting "The Hubble Show" with stellar art shot by the Hubble Space Telescope, printed on large-format canvas.
The Roadside Gallery also, apparently, has a Route 66 photo exhibit, which actually sounds much more interesting right now...
catdynamics | June 1, 2008The Phoenix lander on Mars has touched the soil and is getting ready to do some digging
Images from beneath the lander show spots of what appear to be bright consolidated surfaces, possibly sub-surface ice exposed by the lander
view underneath
more on the "Snow Queen" feature
and the arm has made the first gentle scoop to see what is down there...
Not down to ice yet at this spot...
They also did a rather nice panorama composite image around the lander
catdynamics | May 31, 2008today was a beautiful day.
the sun shone, temperature was mild, the air was clear, the pool was open
I sorted, archived and deleted 2,200 e-mails.
Took me almost all day, though I did get an hour and a bit of walking in.
I had estimated I couldn't do more than a thousand per day, but at this rate
I'll be mostly done tomorrow.
Might even get to hit the pool before the rain moves in.
catdynamics | May 31, 2008Discovery launched
This is important for two reasons:
they may be able to clear the toilet on ISS; and,
it clears the pad for a GLAST launch at the end of this week, probably...
catdynamics | May 28, 2008The Kavli Prize in astrophysics, for 2008, has been won by Maarten Schmidt of Caltech and Donald Lynden-Bell of Cambridge.
This is the first time the Kavli Prize is awarded, a biannual $1 million prize awarded in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.
The nanoscience went to Brus and Iijima, and the neuro prize to Rakic, Jessell and Grillner.
Schmidt and Lynden-Bell get the prize for the discovery of quasars and the elucidation of the basic mechanism for powering quasars, namely accretion onto a supermassive black hole.
The Prizes will be awarded in September at a ceremony in Oslo.…
catdynamics | May 26, 2008Where in that world is Phoenix
JPL Phoenix news site
Animation zooming in on Phoenix landing site starting from Olympus
Large movie showing Phoenix environs - zoom over the strip image to the horizon
Planetary Society blog is your source for all things Martian