catdynamics | September 30, 2011For all the Old Techers
Snotty Scotty and the Hankies, live at the Loch Ness
You had to be there...
Yes! Found their legendary rendition of Mony Mony!
catdynamics | September 30, 2011Fateful day, as the fed fiscal year closes and a new year begins...
As so often before, we skip and jump to the Mighty iPod One, and ask, what prospects for the new Fiscal Year?
Woosh goes the randomier.
Woosh.
The Covering: Rudi, A Message to You - Specials
The Crossing: God Bless Africa - Alpha Blondy
The Crown: Dog Days Are Over - Florence and the Machine
The Root: Toy Symphony 3 - Mozart
The Past: Fearless - Pink Flo
The Future: Silent Legacy - Melissa Etheridge
The Questioner: Reggae on the Move - Yellowman
The House: Lost in the Supermarket - Clash
The Inside: Woodstock - Joni…
catdynamics | September 29, 2011Ok, peeps, the NASA Explorer AO outcomes are out, and you know what they are: so, who lost, and more importantly, who won?
PS: and the winners are...
NASA Selects Science Investigations For Concept Studies
Five Explorer Mission proposals were selected from 22 submitted in February. Each team will receive $1 million to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. Mission costs are capped at $200 million each, excluding the launch vehicle.
In addition, one Explorer Mission proposal was selected for technology development and will receive $600,000.
Five Mission of Opportunity proposals were…
catdynamics | September 29, 2011New high resolution near infra-red spectrograph, designed to find earth like planets in the habitable zone around low mass cool stars, is funded by the National Science Foundation
Penn State Awarded $3.3 Million to Build Instrument for Finding Planets in Habitable Zones Around Nearby Stars
University Park, PA -- A new state-of-the-art instrument -- a precision spectrograph for finding planets in habitable zones around cool, nearby stars -- is being developed at Penn State with support from a new $3.3-million grant from the National Science Foundation. "This new Habitable Zone Planet Finder…
catdynamics | September 28, 2011On saturday Alþingi, the Icelandic Parliament, reconvenes.
Protests are planned on the square outside, and there are suggestions that a new wave of protests may build up, similar to the "Household Revolution" back in the winter of 2008.
But there will be some missing from the demos.
On Wednesday, at informal meetings, a number of Icelandic Police, both from departments in the south west, where Reykjavík is, and in the north, declared that they would not be serving on the Riot Police squad.
As I understand, call up to riot squad duty, is essentially, non-mandatory overtime shift work, beyond…
catdynamics | September 24, 2011If 3σ results are wrong half the time, does that mean 6σ results are wrong all the time?
The social networks are a-buzz over the claim of a significant detection by the OPERA experiment of a neutrino pulse propagating superluminally over a 750 km baseline from CERN to the Gran Sasso lab.
arXiv paper here (submitted)
You heard the claim - neutrino pulse generated 400 GeV protons fro the old Super Proton Synchrotron.
Every 6 secs a kicker magnet bumps two 10.5μs wide proton pulses, separated by 10ms.
These crash into a 2m graphite target (that is 7 ns travel time through target);
the mesons (…
catdynamics | September 16, 2011Final session of ExSSII on Earths, Super-Earths and Habitability
liveblogging:
Dimitar Sasselov - high density exoplanets
HAT-P-20b - 14 gm/cc - hot 7 M_J giant planet, no prob modeling as degenerate H/He core
Kepler-10b - 9 gm/cc - rocky
Earth's central density 13 gm/cc
Super-Earths expected to have central densities > 20 gm/cc
update on model progress for moderately high densities, but not degenerate,
reviewed at Extreme Solar Systems I in Santorini in 2007.
Experiments at Z-machine - pulsed 10 TW/cm^2 laser compression toy
zap rocks.
mmm, toblerone diagram
Diana Valencia -…
catdynamics | September 16, 2011Final day of Extreme Solar Systems II here at Jackson Lake, and what a beautiful day it is..
And we are live for session 8 of day 5.
Thursday night there was, again, an after dinner informal discussion, with the topic being "planets in binary systems" - the panel highlighted the theoretical difficulties with forming and retaining planets in binary systems, and there then followed a very lievely discussion.
Doug Lin, as it happens, with a collaborator, had used the generous 2 hour break for dinner to come up with and run a model for Kepler-16b formation, and a number of people had great fund…
catdynamics | September 15, 2011curious rumour about JWST and the Senate: supposedly major testing of JWST integration is being moved to Johnson Space Center and Marshall is also pickingup some significant system integration action
don't know enough history to know if this is an actual change in plans, nor can I confirm it at this stage
interesting bit of politicking if true, now we have to see if it does the trick
PS: haven't seen full Senate appropriations bill - think they only released the summary, but, $500M is cut from NASA and the Senate Launch System is funded - so what was cut?
Also NSF and NIST are cut to get…
catdynamics | September 15, 2011Planets in binaries and star clusters: session 7 of Extreme Solar Systems II
planets around binaries? in clusters? crazy stuff...
and we are live...
Carter - from Kepler on transiting circumbinary planets
Obviuous Star Wars quip
Some eclipse timing variations in 3 eclipsing stellar binaries, hint at possible circumbinary planets.
Kepler-16b - transiting circumbinary planet
Doyle et al Science 16th Sept 2011
Planet as reported above, sub-Jovian, coplanar orbit with K+M star binary (l[Z] = -0.3)
41d stellar orbital period, 229d planet orbital period,
stellar binary e=0.15, planet orbit e=0.…
catdynamics | September 15, 2011Ethan reports Senate Appropriations committee reinserted JWST funding in its bill, at some cost.
Issue will now move to conference committee, where we'll find out how serious the House republicans are about making an example of JWST
catdynamics | September 15, 2011We're back, we're tanned, we're rested, we're ready: 4th day, session 7,
in which Kepler annouces the discovery of the second circumbinary exoplanet...
Ok, we're not going yet, but the press release came out at noon:
Kepler-16b
- 41d orbital period binary star, KV primary (bit less massive than the Sun).
Secondary is an M star.
Sub-solar metallicity, low eccentricity stellar orbit (e1=0.15)
about 60 pc away.
Planet is transiting, natch, 0.33 MJM
in a 229d near circular circumbinary orbit.
This is the second circumbinary planet discovered, after 1620-26b and the first orbiting two main…
catdynamics | September 13, 2011I think we need more time for coffee - doesn't all the actual work get done over coffee?
Anyway, it is Giant Planet Formation time...
Nope, we still don't understand it, in detail
like wtf is the deal with HR 8799?
And, yes, the sessions have been reshuffled,
this is to co-ordinate with the super secret mystery announcement from Kepler on thursday afternoon...
read about it here, or some boring NASA press release...
Liveblogging:
Bromley on formation models, for giants natch
we're getting there, just not quite there yet...
can make loads of planets, in theory, just not always quite the…
catdynamics | September 13, 2011And we're off again with session 4 and direct imaging of exoplanets
I think we had about 100 total new exoplanets announced yesterday:
55 from CORALIE/HARPS, 23 from WASP, 12 from Kepler, 10 from PSU-Torun
and assorted others.
I zonked out on the evening debate on ηEarth last night, chaired by Andrew Howard.
The interesting thing is that when I were a lad, oh so many years ago, the debate would have been about the LOG(η).
Optimists might have argued for 10-1, and pessimists for 10-6 or less for fraction of stars with Earth like planets.
Now the argument is pretty much focused on whether it…
catdynamics | September 13, 2011 Earlier, Matthew Bailes and collaborators discovered a planet mass, carbon rich crystalline object orbiting a pulsar.
It was a very nice discovery, published in Science, and received a lot of attention, mostly all positive.
Matthew has now written a very interesting OpEd at The Conversation:
Diamond planets, climate change and the scientific method
It is a very perceptive piece and make some very important points.
Please read it and join The Conversation.
"The scientific method is universal. If we selectively ignore it in certain disciplines, we do so at our peril."
catdynamics | September 12, 2011and we're back, and I'm late, more Kepler stuff
hundreds of new multi-planet system (candidates) from Kepler!
Liveblogging:
v. good talk from Eric Ford - missed beginning
Transit Timing Variations (TTV) in Kepler data
confirmed, model constraints for 2 planet systems
12 more candidates in the works, in preparation in several separate papers
get independent mass estimates, expand parameter space, confirm planets
for stars which are too faint or mass too low for RV confirmation
Pull out lots of extra physics with TTV measurements, get to info not otherwise
accessibility, some model dependence…
catdynamics | September 12, 2011JWST has called for a townhall meeting (webinar) on Mon 19th Sephttp://www.stsci.edu/jwst/meetings/webinar2011 (registration required)
to discuss the technical and funding situation.
Should be interesting
Bring popcorn.
catdynamics | September 12, 2011The Extreme Solar Systems II conference is now underway at Jackson Lake with lots of hot new results
Liveblogging: first session is underway, with reviews of discoveries and status of the field from different teams and discovery techniques.
PS: continued for afternoon session in ExSSII: II
PPS: and the second day of the meetins
Kepler - 1781 candiate planets, up to 27 now confirmed.
Accelerated data release plan with next release on Sep 23.
Some very interesting new individual systems.
123 candidates have estimated radii less than 1.25 REarth
121 are in the nominal Habitable Zone,…
catdynamics | September 9, 2011A House Divided Can Not Stand...
As the American Astronomical Society tries to rally support for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which was deleted from the budget, with extreme prejudice, by the House Appropriations Committee, other players chime in, and they are not quite as enthusiastic.
Spaceref published a copy of a letter from David Alexander of Rice University, Chair of the AAS Solar Physics Division.
"...However, the cost of the JWST threatens to swamp us all and the AAS should be careful, as a multi-disciplinary organization, to balance the various concerns of each of its…