astro
catdynamics | April 15, 2007Well, I got out of DC ahead of the latest Weather Channel paroxysm.
Since I am now apparently a minor agent of chaos with deistic powers, I confidently predict snow in Happy Valley tonight.
Pasadena is as lovely as ever; the traffic through downtown still sucks, and they still haven't done anything about the tunnel ramp to the I-5 on the Pasadena Freeway. Not even California drivers seem to be able to handle the merge and backup.
Exciting times ahead scientifically.
Is it just me, or is most of "big physical science" in the US looking at 10-15 year dead time?
Was catching up on APS news and…
catdynamics | April 14, 2007Gravity Probe B reports its first results at the APS meeting...
...and the winner is: Albert Einstein.
General Relativity is consistent at the 1% level, at least for geodetic precession...
Phew, that was worth the wait.
Frame dragging measurements are still not confirmed due to unexpected systematics, they hope to be able to say something by christmas. 2007.
The GPB home pages have some nasty frame based sub-pages. But the info is there if you just keep clicking.
catdynamics | April 12, 2007I confidently predict when the next galactic supernova will take place...
Late 2008 or early 2009.
Supernovae occur on average once or twice per century in the Milky Way.
But we have not seen one for over 300 years now.
Not counting SN1987a - that was in the Large Magellanic Clouds.
It is quite possible that there were supernovae within the Milky Way that we missed in the 18th and 19th centuries, most likely on the far side of the Milky Way, obscured by the galactic center. It is tempting to think there might have been some in the galactic center, but I think we would have seen the…
catdynamics | April 11, 2007So far, in the 100 days of 2007, there have been 118 papers submitted to arXiv with the words dark, energy, model in the abstract.
This is across all of physics, most are in or cross-posted to astro-ph.
There are 154 papers with dark, matter, model in the abstract
We are only on day 100 of the year.
Limiting ourselves to just the title, there are 78 papers with "dark energy" in the title.
64 of which were on or cross-posted to astro-ph.
Too much? Or not enough?
Anyone actually reading them all?
In the last four years there have been 1000 over papers on arXiv with dark energy in the title, so…
catdynamics | April 10, 2007In the autumn of 1859, the Earth was hit by a massive coronal ejection from the Sun.
Aurora flared worldwide, compasses went wild and the telegraph system crashed.
This is the pivoting event in Stuart Clark's book "The Sun Kings" - Princeton University Press, ISBN-13:978-0-691-12660-9
The book is centered around the life and work of Richard Carrington, amateur astronomer and member of the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society.
There are flashbacks and side trips, covering mainly English astronomy, Hershcel through to Maunder, with some discussion of events in Germany and the US.
The…
catdynamics | April 7, 2007über, duper;
hyper, super!
Astronomy has always reveled in superlatives; what with supernovae, hypernovae, ultraluminous this and thats and other Extremes of Nature.
I have reason to believe that, despite the best efforts of our few classically educated faculty, we are about to run out of descriptors!
This crisis of nomenclature is fast approaching, and we need to start planning now.
What other prepends of overenthusiasm can we use to pitch our favourite outliers?
Extra bonus points for pure neologisms.
catdynamics | April 4, 2007The National Research Council's Assessment Committee for the Beyond Einstein program had a townhall meeting here in the Windy City.
Much to my surprise, I was there also.
The Beyond Einstein program at NASA is in trouble. With cuts and squeezing by the Exploration Development effort, the original plan for two major missions (Con-X and LISA) and three medium missions (JDEM, BHFP and CIP) combined with an integrated effort in research and EPO is out the door.
At the request of the DoE, the NRC is doing a priority ranking, a funding wedge is opening in 2009, one mission can get a startup, the…
catdynamics | April 3, 2007John Mather is head of the Office of the Chief Scientist at NASA
That is an interesting move by Stern.
And Paul Hertz directs Science Policy, Process and Ethics Office!
Which puts him in charge of solicitation, review and awards! Yay Paul!
Mather remains JWST senior project scientist. So, I'm guessing JWST is safe from cuts ;-)
This will be very interesting: Stern and Mather are both experienced scientists in charge of ongoing missions.
They ought to have a lot of disgression within the Science Mission Directorate, but things could still get very painful if the SMD budget is squeezed out by…
catdynamics | April 2, 2007It seems likely astronomers are the most arrogant of academia!
Yay us!
See there is this weird discussion in the current American Physical Society News about an out of context quote about the arrogance of scientists.
The whole thing is a misreading of what some journalists said, but the essence of it is that if you google phrases like "arrogant biologists" (73) and "modest biologists" (19) you get a measure of public perception of the attitude scientists present [the numbers are different from those mentioned in the letters, I used the "repeat search for similar results omitted"]
That's…
catdynamics | April 2, 2007In honour of the occasion, Sean decided to poke the string theory pile
It is an interesting thread, including the comments.
But, especially in view of some of the stuff there and here and over on Uncertain Principles and Backreaction on general issues in physics and science, it is worth remembering that string theory in particular, and the theoretical particle physics and quantum gravity in general are a small part of the physical sciences, and even a small part of theoretical physics.
Really. Most of physicists, even cosmologists, don't have continual existential angst about the meaning of…
catdynamics | March 30, 2007In my field, mean success rates for grant proposals range from a surprisingly generous 30% or so for a rare few opportunities, to a more typical 6-10%
As the number of proposals submitted go to infinity, most all researchers must have near average success rate.
I was prodded by this in noting that I was on a fair number of Hubble proposals, and my hit rate was exactly the average.
In the limit of random funding, this is of course exactly what happens, the average researcher will have a long term success rate for funding which approaches the mean success rate as the number of proposals goes…
catdynamics | March 30, 2007STSCI just announced cycle 16 selections...
1/5 - can't grumble too much
oversubscription was in fact almost exactly 5:1
one other proposal was top quartile but didn't make the cut. Curses.
I like that one. Plus it'd have meant even more trips to Italy.
Both my theory proposals were bottom rated.
The Fools! Bwa ha ha!
But since I got one last year I can't really complain, too much.
"Cycle 16 will have a duration of approximately 15 months, beginning in July 2007.
For your information, 583 GO proposals requested over 17,000 orbits in Cycle 16,
compared to the 3100 orbits available. A total…
catdynamics | March 28, 2007Ouch.
Julianne treads where few dare...
Know what she means though...
Bwa, ha, ha!
catdynamics | March 28, 2007"...invisible clouds of something that seem to swaddle the galaxies, and to provide the scaffolding for the structure and evolution of the visible universe."
"It's about power, in a way."
NYT reports on the hot independent movie "Dark Matter".
Intrigue, back stabbing and murder.
Life is exciting as an astrophysicist.
Sadly, loosely based on real life...
It is a good read, recommended.
I expect the movie is worth seeing also.
catdynamics | March 23, 2007wikisky?
Oh, Wiki Sky!
Cool. Not much there yet, and it is a bit buggy, but if you have, like real data, pile on and share.
(h/t Steve)
catdynamics | March 20, 2007IF we grant the perception that researchers are being held back from doing some of the "really interesting research", then why do we do it, especially if people are aware of it as an issue?
Well, it is a problem that has many levels.
First of all, the committments I allude to are real: a lot of grants are contractual, and must the work as described must be carried out, or a good faith effort made to do so (or the recipient is unlikely to get any more grants). Some grants have flexibility, and a lot of grants officers are approachable for variances, but to invoke such things is both an…
catdynamics | March 20, 2007When, in the course of an academic career, should you work on your own ideas: you know, the stuff that deep down you think is really interesting, potentially breakthrough stuff.
Because, most scientists, most of the time, don't.
as Bee puts it:
every postdoc I know or have met and with whom I have discussed the question, agrees that the current system encourages working on established projects rather than investigating own ideas (which might possibly fail and/or not result in publications with well known top researchers on high-impact topics), and they agree that this is not optimal to…
catdynamics | March 19, 2007Bee follows up the legendary Science and Democracy and Science and Democracy II: the Hierarchy Problem with
...Science and Democracy III in which we find that there are actually types Ia, and Ib and Ic which are really part of type II before natural selection is applied to the whole process for part III
It is interesting stuff, and should provoke a lot of comment.
catdynamics | March 19, 2007via NASAwatch we have the promised March 15 statement
on how the new budget request impact NASA actuals
read 'em and weep
Highlights: 15% cut in Research and Analysis continues
GLAST and Kepler launches slipped
SIM demoted to tech development for foreseeable future
Astrobio 50% cut continued
Explorer opportunities deferred
Earth Science also gets hammered.
This is not the final word - Congress may do something, although NASA is not likely to be a high priority, and the new Science Mission director should have some discretion to shuffle priorities, but it is a very painful budget.
Why is…
catdynamics | March 18, 2007The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a billion++ $ experiment designed to look at cosmic rays (and to have the absolutely worst set of project web pages yet discovered).
In particular it will look at the anti-matter content of cosmic rays, and angle to see if it can detect some signature of dark matter.
It is almost ready to be delivered, and will almost certainly never fly...
as reported in Science
...see, it turns out that the remaining Shuttle schedule, which is dedicated to deliveries to the International Space Station, except for the one Hubble refurbishment flight, does not actually…