catdynamics | April 13, 2010The RNA committee of the Icelandic Alþingi has, finally, issued its Black Report, into the collapse of the Icelandic economy and the events leading up to it.
The entire report, all 2000 pages or so, are being read aloud by a series of actors at the City Theater.
Initial reactions range from the weasel "mistakes were made", through blunt assertions of robbery and treason.
It can be done...
I remember, as an idealistic teenager, being outraged as I became conscious of the ongoing political corruption in Iceland.
Yet, there was some reassurance in noting its pettiness.
It was a bottle, or a…
catdynamics | April 9, 2010Been a while since I done one of these...
The single best predictor of academic success; the most fascinating astronomical object you never knew; and so much more...
"Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment,...
This is a large effect, both absolutely and in comparison with other influences on education,"
"....survey participants (a total of more than 73,000 people) were asked to estimate the number of books in their parents' home when they were 14 years old. The scholars compared that figure with other factors influencing educational achievement, including…
catdynamics | April 8, 2010The volcanic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull continues, but, for now at least, is a "tourist eruption", as nice as they get, with a huge flood of tourists to the mountain on clear days and a boom industry in getting sightseers out to the mountain.
From rainbowgirl on flickr via fiveprime - click through to source and full size photos
The original fissure that erupted has closed after building up a nice cinder cone, but the second fissure mostly consolidated into a single crater which continues strong.
The mountain is still rumbling and swelling, suggesting magma continues to flow under the…
catdynamics | April 2, 2010Final day of the Exoplanet Rising workshop.
Start off with migration theory, then scattering and collisions.
Finish with tidal destruction and future observational prospects.
Lubow and Malhotra.
Then Thommes and Armitage.
Followed by Ogilvie and Traub.
Then we are done.
This is a public service announcement: Extreme Solar Systems II - Sep. 2011
Announcement went out a few days ago and pre-registration for the meeting is nearing capacity. If you are contemplating attending, then pre-register ASAP, please.
Lubow is up first.
Migration is still an issue, even if most planets maybe don't…
catdynamics | April 1, 2010Exoplanets Rising continues theoretical rumination, as we contemplate formation, migration, water delivery and evolution
Johansen and Lissauer on oligarchic models before lunch.
Then Mayer on collapse of Too Big Too Fail blobs before Chambers and Raymond return to rocks bashing into each other.
Finish with Mardling looking at the subtleties of tidal evolution.
Ok, Showman and Dobbs-Dixon did the whole giant circulation thing early this morning, but I wasn't here for that. It is all online if you like that sort of thing.
Good review by Anders on dust bunnies and the irritation dust causes.…
catdynamics | April 1, 2010Surprise discovery announcement at the Exoplanet UpRising workshop!
In a dramatic change in schedule, Fieffe Menteur, a junior researcher at the French Academy for Keplerian Exoplanets broke embargo and revealed the first discovery of a habitable exoplanet!
Dateline 2010-04-01:
The object, tentatively named Matsya seems to be a warm Super-Ganymede, orbiting a Warm Giant Planet, tentatively named Navistan in the habitable zone of a K3VIz star HD234789 - to be announced as CoRoT-26bc, aka KOI-13bc (according to NASA anyway) in a pair of joint papers to appear in a journal of Science today.…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010Second fissure has opened up northwest of the original on Fimmvörðuháls, east of Eyjafjallajökull.
This is NOT towards Katla.
Geologists on site saw the fissure open as it happened. As of this evening it is still growing, with 7 centers of eruption.
Þórsmörk has been closed, lave should flow north towards it.
Hikers on the northside were evacuated by helicopter.
RUV initial report with webcam photo (icelandic)
webcam link
you can see it even in the dark.
Better live view from the south
both from mila.is
double your pleasure
Original fissure has a spectacular lava fall, currently there is…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010Finding and characterizing habitable exoplanets.
Enric Palle on Earth as an exoplanet.
Drake Deming on using JWST to find exoplanets
Then Lisa Kaltenegger on biosignatures
Jim Kasting on habitability and 3D GCMs.
Missed Palle's talk. It is online...
Talked about transmission spectra, reflectance, variability, polarization, red edge.
Caught the discussion, some interesting banter.
On the "red edge" - there will be something like it on any efficient biosphere because plants must absorb efficiently near the peak transmission spectrum of the star, and there must be some heat rejection at some…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010
Workshop turns more to theory: planetary structure, crusts and atmospheres; cooling and heating. Well, it is an Institute of Theoretical Physics...
Adamses Burrows and Burgasser start the morning.
We're promised things will be stirred up a bit more.
Diana Valencia on super-earth structure and composition,
then Chris Sotin on water worlds.
Burrows: interesting figure on estimated core mass of hot giant planets (detected through transits) vs host star metallicity.
Inferred core mass has apparent correlation with stellar metallicity. Higher the stellar metallicity the more massive the…
catdynamics | March 30, 2010Next we review microlensing surveys for planets and then direct imaging surveys.
Scott Gaudi up first on microlensing.
Interesting statistics on preponderance of solar like planetary systems.
Hints of free floating planets seen.
Paul Kalas on direct detections.
Also Graham and Kadsin.
Plus bonus "structure of giant planets" review at the end.
Microlensing:
Rapid fire overview and list of surveys.
If you want a summary of what it is and who is doing it, read the opening slides.
Get statistics of planets in otherwise inaccessible mass-orbit parameter space, but no or limited followup for most…
catdynamics | March 30, 2010Status of CoRoT and Kepler missions is reviewed at the "Exoplanets Rising" workshop at the Kavli Institute, we'll see if there are any news.
CoRoT is up first. Magali Deleuil presenting.
Kepler next with Bill Borucki.
CoRoT nominal mission ends tomorrow!
Extended missions to end of March 2013.
Some camera trouble on CoRoT - done 13 observing runs.
75,000 light curves from long (60 d) stares, 50,000 light curves from short (25 d) stares.
Lots of fun stars doing their funky stuff.
There will be a lot of CoRoT primary science, not just planet detections.
The astroseismologists are really having…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Dave Charbonneau: why transits are cool
Kicking off afternoon session is Josh Winn on transit uses and abuses.
Then Gaspar Bakos on ground based transits.
you get masses, and planetary radii.
Can go to low masses and close in planets, and working to earth masses in habitable zone - Real Soon Now
as Dave says, it will be a current or near future graduate student who gets the first peek at a true Earth
also, transiting planets offer quick opportunity for spectra through differential transiting spectra of the host star.
Should work for Neptunes, then waterworld Super-Earths.
Dave beats up…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Debra Fischer talking about correlations between metallicity and mass of stars and planets
Two samples: Coralie data from Santos et al and Lick/Keck data
need to get uniform sampled subsets, looking at giant mass planets
known (cf Santos et al 2004, Fischer & Valenti 2005, Udry & Santos 2007)
trend to N ~ Z2
for short orbital period giant planets over -0.5 < Z < +0.5
everyone is redoing their analysis, remeasuring Z and making use of bigger samples, longer observing stretches and higher velocity sensitivity (and hence lower mass planets)
surface gravity, g, confounds Teff…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Marcy next, talking about the ηEarth survey with the Keck.
simulations, under certain assumptions, predict a "planet desert"
roughly for mass range 1-10 MEarth and 0.1-1 AU or so
can populate the desert with some fine tuning of migration parameters etc
but still noticeable deficiency of moderate mass planets
very assumption dependent
best tested through observations
cf Lin & Ida, and Mordasini et al.
But, as Mayor just said, there are loads of planets in that mass range in that orbital range...
Keck sample of 238 G/K/M main sequence stars, looking for 3-30 MEarth stars. Quiet, nearby…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Well, I'm back at the Kavli Institute attending the Exoplanets Rising workshop.
We have a full schedule of talks over the week, and I'll be intermittently blogging the events as we amble along.
Bunch of interesting sounding talk on the schedule, and hopefully some interesting news and discoveries that we will hear about.
We kick-off this morning with Mayor and Marcy, and the Fischer and Charbonneau after the break, looking forward to it.
Not seen planets around M dwarfs with mass less than 0.3 solar masses, but that is likely a bias - lower mass dwarfs are fainter, duh.
Talks will be online…
catdynamics | March 28, 2010
we had the dynamic kids on a neighbourhood easter egg hunt, with a twist,
it was a math hunt
I wish I could say I had thought of this, but I didn't...
So usual stash of eggs was, er, stashed, but rather than sweeties, the eggs contained small slips of paper - each with a simple arithmetic problem (K-3 crowd).
The kids had to solve all the problems, and when they had done so they got to pick a couple of small easter candies from a bowl.
And they liked it.
catdynamics | March 24, 2010Blogs, that is.
Sometime in the next 10 days I need to clean my blogroll and add new links.
I have a bunch in the pipeline, but suspect I must be missing many good new blogs.
Obviously any good astro/physics related stuff, but am also on lookout for quirky good stuff on other topics: stuff comparable to Calculated Risk, Iceland Weather Report or Yorkshire Ranter.
Not looking for any pure political stuff. Quite enough of those already, thanks.
Feel free to self-promote, but do not cross the line into spamming. Please.
catdynamics | March 22, 2010So we were chatting, over coffee, as one does,
and we were talking about the nuisance it is when you have Monte Carlo simulations with qualitatively different output branches, and how you can trace outcomes and divergent branches leading to different, and same, outcomes.
The specific examples were binary population synthesis, where you can get a lot of different qualitative intermediate steps depending on contact and time scales. But this should work for anything where there are qualitative state changes or branching physical processes.
Most simulations handle such by setting flags and…
catdynamics | March 22, 2010In six words.
Like this:
"Observe extragalactic Cepheids pulsate.
Measure H0."
h/t David Brin with a special thanks to PZ.
No, not that PZ, the real PZ.
catdynamics | March 20, 2010Eyjafjallajökull erupted tonight.
Small so far, we'll see how it develops, first eruption in 187 years.
Eruptions tracked the microquaking leading up to the eruption - fascinating and very long comment conversation and liveblogging of the precursors to the eruption. Tremendous use of blogging.
Farms south of the mountain are being evacuated, they'll see what it is like in the morning.
Should be a jökulhlaup underway (glacial flash flood).
Ashplume is headed north, airports are closed.
EUMETSAT images here
PS: according to ruv.is early sunday morning, the geoscientists driving up to the…