Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
August 11, 2011
Last year, Brad deLong did a most excellent dissection of the lecture, how it came to be, and why universities need to rethink the whole approach to learning concept before they get eaten by technology development providing even cheaper content delivery.
I've been meaning to editorialize on this…
August 11, 2011
Summary of results on Higgs particle on LHC workshop at KITP
I wasn't here for it, but last week John Conway presented theLHC Higgs Searches (slides, audio, video)
summary talk at the LHC11 workshop.
I had, of course, kept half an eye on the flurry of conference announcement on the preliminary LHC…
August 11, 2011
hangin' out at KITP sneaking into the LHC workshop talks,
sort of liveblog of the constraints on supersymmetry from preliminary LHC results.
today's seminar is Reece: on Assessing SUSY After 1 fb-1 (blackboard talk, but audio/video will be up on the website soon) on constraints on supersymmetry…
August 5, 2011
Last month Dimitri Veras and collaborators wrote a nice, and very thorough paper on what happens to planets when their parent stars die...
"The Great Escape: How Exoplanets and Smaller Bodies Desert Dying Stars",
Dimitri Veras, Mark C. Wyatt, Alexander J. Mustill, Amy Bonsor, John J. Eldridge
(…
July 28, 2011
Jinx: NASA x-mission posters at a federal research center near you...
click to embiggen
July 26, 2011
Sometimes correlation is causation:
"Laurie Leshin, deputy associate administrator of exploration systems for NASA, will join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as dean of the School of Science. " (RPI news)
Coincidentally:
"...Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics…
July 22, 2011
Large explosion in the center of Oslo, Norway.
Near government buildings and VG newspaper, at central square.
Multiple injuries. Early reports suggest it was a car bomb.
P3S: NRK now reporting at least 80 kids killed on the island.
Guy must have been a true psychopath to be able to shoot that…
July 22, 2011
steamy sultry friday, and the randomizer puts the Grandmaster on to remind me that it is iPod iChing time!
So, Mighty iPod One: the whole debt ceiling chatter - kabuki or crisis?
The Covering: The Message - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
The Crossing: Telegraph Road (Live Remix) - Dire…
July 18, 2011
You better watch out
You better beware
Albert said that E=mc2
Landscape: From the Tea Rooms of Mars to the Hell-holes of Uranus
Lest we forget...
July 14, 2011
Mystery flashflood reveals new hydrothermal system and probable small subglacial eruption this week, or two, or three...
Who the f#@k named a volcano Loki anyway...
The other night there were some gentle rumblings on the west side of Vatnajökull
Literally: small earthquakes and low frequency…
July 14, 2011
House appropriations committee reported out the Science etc bill.
JWST remains deleted; armchair quantum wires are in...
Here we go.
Next step.
House appropriations committee approved the report of the subcommittee on Science etc for 2012 appropriations.
Bill was essentially unchanged, with…
July 12, 2011
back to the science subcommittee appropriations
In case I haven't gone on about it enough, I think the James Webb Space Telescope has been tossed under the bus.
It is deleted, after being isolated and hung out to dry.
It is possible that funding will be restored in the Senate or in conference, but…
July 12, 2011
House subcommittee on Science etc has reported out and full committee is scheduled to vote on the 13th.
JWST cut is formally in as are various other interesting snippets.
The subcommittee report (pdf large) - ie the appropriations by agency recommended to the full committee
Summary Table (pdf) -…
July 9, 2011
Cratering of ice sheet and possible small eruption under ice.
click to embiggen
Crater in ice over one of sites of the 1918 eruption - four of these formed overnight.
Lot of shallow quakes still in a line across the caldera - some might be ice-surface cracking, others are several km deep. Could…
July 8, 2011
A jökulhlaup has started in Múlakvísl, the glacial river that comes off Mýrdalsjökull, that is the glacier that Katla is under.
No eruption at this point though.
RUV has a webcam on it (32 bit wmv) - not much to see at midnight EST
Lots of
small earthquakes in a line across the caldera though.…
July 8, 2011
Friday. Raining.
Interesting week.
So, what does the mighty iPod One have to say about our clouded future?
Whence hence and what changes may we expect?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh!
The Covering: Identify the Beat - Marc Smith vs Safe n' Sound
The Crossing: Mrs McGrath - Bruce Springsteen
The…
July 7, 2011
Name a concrete, new international facility class science project that the US is going to be leading in near future.
Seriously: and you can either keep it to Astronomy, or any natural science.
Used to be that you could rattle off several upcoming major science projects which were US initiatives,…
July 6, 2011
As everybody knows, there is one thing you must never do before launch, and that is name it.
Total jinx.
Not of course that we are superstitious, that'd be silly.
Some of us just cringed when the Next Generation Space Telescope was given a proper name by an over keen administrator while still in…
July 6, 2011
Well, it was a good four centuries or so, but after a good run, one of the older watches on the Rhine is coming to an end.
Word came in mid-June that the Dutch government cuts were going to lead to some "consolidation" in astronomy, and that Utrecht would be cut.
We were asked not to kick up a…
July 5, 2011
News reports in Iceland of magma movements in Hekla.
Nope, not Katla, this is the prototype Northern European volcano - Hekla
No, that doesn't mean we have given up on Katla, or Hengill, or Askja, or Krýsucík, or any of the other hot spots on the mid-Atlantic ridge that have been rumbling recently…
June 19, 2011
So, since I have been, like, actually organizeering black hole stuff over the last couple of weeks, one might wonder what is up with black holes?
Well, I can't really talk about the really cool stuff, yet, but there were some interesting news:
NGC 3758 has two black holes about 10,000 light years…
June 17, 2011
It is a damp friday with ominous rumbles on the horizon.
So we go and tremulously ask the Mighty iPod One: will she burst?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Sally MacLennane- Pogues
The Crossing: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - Pogues
The Crown: Kick Out the Jams - MC5
The Root:…
June 17, 2011
Ruh-roh.
Katla is rumbling a bit.
Historically, Katla tends to erupt 1-2 years after any eruption in Eyjafjallajökull.
Katla eruptions are also, historically, very nasty, very dangerous and likely to have wide (continental scale) impacts.
But not always.
Katla is the primary motivator for Iceland'…
June 16, 2011
I'm at wee bit behind on this here blogging thingie,
but there has been a flurry of physics results which are worth a quick peek:
CoGENT claims CDM result - claim marginal detection of annual modulation, consistent with light CDM particle.See resonaances for detail
Fermi confirms Pamela - say no…
June 6, 2011
There has been a lot of effort to try to figure out how to teach physics better, at the university level, in the US.
Of course, we know perfectly well how to do that.
To teach physics well, you provide an intensive, mathematically rigorous in-sequence series of classes.
You need at least two…
June 5, 2011
So LISA is moving ahead with a possible all European mission to look for low frequency gravitational radiation
Next Steps for LISA
..."As announced by ESA in March 2011, due to a modified international cooperation scenario, it is now necessary to study a European-only mission that offers a…