astro
catdynamics | March 17, 2007Interesting article in Science on the challenge facing Dr Stern in taking over NASA's Science Mission Directorate
Bottom line is that he is stuck with a zero-sum game and that except for some innovative cost cutting it is a game of trade-offs. Something will be cut.
An accompanying article on science and the Moon is even more brutal - there is none.
The focus is on exploration, not science, and the Lunar program will not contribute to science done on the Moon or based on the Moon - which is a pretty nasty surprise for the lunar science community who were rather happy about the return to the…
catdynamics | March 15, 2007MC Hawking raps
How can you compete with that...
Hrynyshyn did it first, I figured some sciblogger had to have seen it, but I heard about it over coffee...
catdynamics | March 14, 2007note to self: check who else is giving talks in town that day before picking dates...
so my talk at Berkeley (LBL) was relatively lightly attended, turns out some other vaguely astro like person was speaking on campus later that day, some Brit called Stephen something, talking about cosmology, of course
the amusing thing is that the senior people tended to come to my talk, the students apparently went to Hawking's talk - I'd have done the same... and it is hard to go to two talks, especially during proposal season.
And in California it is always proposal season!
catdynamics | March 12, 2007The NASA ROSES-2007 is out.
This is the omnibus announcement of opportunity/request for proposals for most of th in-house activities for the science mission directorate - everything from evolutionary biolology through test of relativity via the moon and mars - but it doesn't include the great observatory proposals - Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra have their own solicitations and support structure.
One of the few surviving fundamental science categories, as distinct from mission oriented proposals, is the Astrophysics Theory Program - which basically covers theoretical research which is not mission…
catdynamics | March 11, 2007Bee asks: "when you write: but we missed on the deep guiding principle which tells us how to select the true theory (such as it is) and where the exact theory came from and leads to. Do you have anything specific in mind? "
Uh, yeah, sure...
er, well, I did, but the boxes of this 'ere blog were too narrow to fit it...
(I should note that one of Backreaction's recent blog entries is on an apparently non-existent topic
Bother that.
I don't know, honestly, obviously I have some ideas, but if they were even half-baked I'd write them up for GRF or something. So, here is the half-assed bloggy…
catdynamics | March 7, 2007Talking of which, last week I put together the whackiest research proposal I have ever done.
and also one of the most fun and intellectually stimulating.
This is actually saying something, I have co-authored proposals with the phrase "high risk" in the abstract (ooooo!), and got them funded!
It will be very very interesting to see how this one does.
Hey, if it works out I might blog it in 1-3 years...
catdynamics | March 6, 2007Yarn theory seems like a good way to go...
I have been plowing through the comments and thought I'd do a meta-response, especially since no one is likely to be reading that far down any more.
I should note that my comments on apples and physics hirings has in some ways been taken the wrong way, in particular, I am not advocating the hiring of people who are beyond the scientific fringe and pushing theories that are "not even wrong", but I do genuinely worry that physics in particular, and academia in general is too "faddish" - there is too much chasing after the latest greatest flash in the…
catdynamics | February 27, 2007Poetic lot those ancients.
There is a total lunar eclipse this weekend, saturday at midnight in western Europe, right at sunset on the east coast of the US.
Click for full sizeFrom NASA Headline News Feb '07
To see it in the US, hope for clear skies, and find high ground with unobstructed view to the east and look for the moon rising right at sunset.
Here are the technical details
One hour and 14 minute duration.
Total eclipse becomes visible right at the Iran-Afghan border, ironically enough, and is just visible on the east coast of the US right at sunset. Europe, Middle East and Africa…
catdynamics | February 25, 2007David Weintraub has written a really delightful little book on the Pluto controversy.
The book is written as a historical overview, starting with pre-historic observations running through classical astronomy to modern times, discussing the classification schemes and discoveries in chronological order.
The level is that of an introductory astronomy class, this book would do wonders for a first year student taking an introductory (non-mathematical) astronomy class, covering topics a typical class might spend a few weeks on at the beginning of the class.
It should also make good reading for…
catdynamics | February 22, 2007in which I triangulate on string theory and quantum gravity and ponder the "Trouble with Physics"...
which is that physicists are hired the same way we pick apples at the supermarket.
Look! Shiny! Big! Red!
Finally, I finished Smolin's "Trouble with Physics". Hopefully in time for the paperback coming out...
It is very good, in parts. Well worth reading, and will amuse some, interest others and infuriate the occasional technician.
Fortunately I am not the first to review the book and I will lay no claim to being comprehensive nor unbiased.
I had a brief and early fling with string theory…
catdynamics | February 22, 2007Brutally blunt ScienceCareers article on this year's NASA funding
Article summarises the current situation well, focusing on a couple of hard hit fields like astrobio and Earth observations.
If you want to see the future, go admire the new ROSES call for proposals - as promised, Long Term Space Astrophysics is gone, but so has the Beyond Einstein Foundation Science program and the Terrestrial Planet Finder Foundation Science.
BEFS was subsumed in the Astrophysics Theory Program, but the total budget for that is much less than the combined budget of the two programs used to be - classic "…
catdynamics | February 22, 2007Rob of Galactic Interactions has finally joined the SciBling collective
All shall be assimilated.
catdynamics | February 16, 2007Apparently Standard Model cosmology is some sort of a Pharisee conspiracy.
Dearie me.
So, of course, they say, is evolution.
And given this astonishing revelation, the person in question feels it better no cosmology or evolution be taught.
Just to be safe.
This would certainly simplify life for some of us teaching in the sciences, but it might violate the spirit of the American Competitiveness Initiative...
"Indisputable evidence -- long hidden but now available to everyone -- demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate '…
catdynamics | February 15, 2007Cats in Spaaaceee!!!
Someone took a cat up on a "vomit comet" - one of the planes used for long parabolic dives to provide many seconds of free fall.
Then they let it go...
Then someone YouTube'd it.
It is funny in a cruelly interesting sort of way.
All I can think is that if you gave the cat 20 mins rather than 20 secs they'd probably adapt just fine, unless there is something seriously funky with their inner ears.
Then the guy in the blue jump suit would be sorry. Real sorry...
Shamelessly cribbed from NASAwatch's hilarious "NASA YouTube'd series"
Promoted from comments:
Dogs really are…
catdynamics | February 13, 2007The Very Large Array has been doing a survey of HI - atomic hydrogen emission - in nearby galaxies.
The resulting data is pretty amazing.
Collage of the HI images from NRAO newsletter page 3 (pdf)
Note the range in morphology, and the range in scale - the images have been scales to match the best estimated physical sizes of the galaxies. Dwarf galaxies really are little!
Combining multiwavelength observations reveals more info, like infrared images from Spitzer and ultra-violet images from GALEX.
Further, the radio data has high precision velocity information - high spatial and velocity…
catdynamics | February 13, 2007Damm.
I knew some of the AAS presentations had been podcast, I just couldn't find the link...
Finally:
AAS podcasts - right now it is a dozen or so from the 2007 Jan meeting in Seattle.
I liked Brown's talk on hypervelocity stars.
I missed Brown's talk on Kuiper belt objects, but heard good things about it.
Julianne from CosmicVariance is also there, as is the COSMOS press conference.
Haven't browsed the archive, probably full of good stuff.
catdynamics | February 13, 2007Hogg is testing Planetarium software for the OLPC
Looks nice. I want.
For the children, of course...
I know the purpose of the OLPC project, but ya'know, I bet you could get a few million early adopters in the US and Europer.
Subsidise the early production until economy of scale is achieved.
catdynamics | February 12, 2007Good blog by John Spencer on the Planetary Society blog on rescheduling HST observations during a Jupiter flyby
They had ACS observations scheduled to coincide with pictures taken by the New Horizons Pluto Express probe.
They can use WFPC2 instead, lucky sods, but needed to put in a modified proposal fast.
Then they got 20 extra orbits, since the end of ACS really does leave the current HST observing queue rather sparse.
Always a silver lining...
Now if they'd only go back to the very highly rated NICMOS proposals that were cut last year to make way for the large proposals using ACS they'd…