Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
September 30, 2011
For 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!
September 30, 2011
Fateful 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…
September 29, 2011
Ok, 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…
September 29, 2011
New 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…
September 28, 2011
On 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,…
September 24, 2011
If 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…
September 16, 2011
Final 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…
September 16, 2011
Final 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…
September 15, 2011
curious 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…
September 15, 2011
Planets 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,…
September 15, 2011
Ethan 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
September 15, 2011
We'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…
September 13, 2011
I 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…
September 13, 2011
And 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…
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:…
September 12, 2011
and 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…
September 12, 2011
JWST has called for a townhall meeting (webinar) on Mon 19th Sep
http://www.stsci.edu/jwst/meetings/webinar2011 (registration required)
to discuss the technical and funding situation.
Should be interesting
Bring popcorn.
September 12, 2011
The 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:…
September 9, 2011
A 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.…
September 2, 2011
at long last it is friday and before we rest, we ask
How now? oh Mighty iPod One?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: Time - Pink Floyd
The Crossing: Louie, Louie - Toot and the Mayalls
The Crown: Vísur Skógarmúsar Ömmu - Thorbjorn Egner
The Root: Dammit Janet - Rocky Horror Picture…
August 31, 2011
The class I'm teaching right now is "writing intensive" - so the homework is biased towards short essays and written discourse.
One of my standard assignments is to have the students pick a NASA mission: a past mission, and a current mission, and a future mission, and write a summary of the mission…
August 30, 2011
bunch of little things that I really ought to say more about,
but I'll be doing some paperwork instead
Cosmic Horizons - new astro blog from down under by one of the very best kick ass distinguished senior astrophysicists on the planet - and it is a good read
Did the Earth seed the Solar System…
August 26, 2011
A calm cool friday, as await the storm
So, oh Mighty iPod One: Irene - a fizzle or da bomb?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon
The Crossing: The Price I Pay - Billy Bragg
The Crown: Mountains O'Things - Tracy Chapman
The Root: Dr Gradus…
August 25, 2011
A new Pulsar Planet has been discovered, and it is a beaut.
In a paper published in Science, Matthew Bailes and collaborators announce the discovery of the third pulsar planet, and this one is a wonder.
Very nice video summary bu Matthew hisself
The first exoplanets discovered, were found…
August 19, 2011
stormy friday as portends gather and it is move-in day!
Yes, They Are Back.
So, we probe a puzzle dujour: the Definitely Not NASA ponderings on Scenarios for SETI Success - aka Alien Ecoterrorists Attack!!!.
So, oh mighty iPod One: any Thennanin out There Threatening to Thwart Us?
Whoosh goes the…
August 13, 2011
This week, a WTF pair of plots were published on some economic data, namely US retail sales and consumer confidence.
I have a theory about that...
Here is the Consumer Confidence plot at Calculated Risk
and here is the Retail Sales chart also from CR
Note that consumer confidence, which is…
August 12, 2011
Ah, cool and crisp friday and we stroll over to the mighty iPod to divine
yes, it is the iPod iChing, where the mighty randomizer reveals the truth, of questions carefully posed, with just enough ambiguity, using the terrific Tarot layout taught to us by the Timelord himself, although sometimes,…
August 12, 2011
Not infrequently, I get asked what it is I do, anyway, as a scientisty sort of person.
I blogged it, of course, but that was a "typical day" - during term time and filled with paperwork and class prep and general rushing about.
This morning I woke up and found the Sb Overlords had frontpaged this…