catdynamics | January 23, 2009Carnival of Space #87
yes, it is carnival time again - the science carnivals have been fading recently, good to see something is still going
catdynamics | January 22, 2009it is raining, might as well liveblog the morning session...
runaway mergers of colliding stars - the quick and dirty intro...
stars are, in fact extended bodies.
This is mostly irrelevant to astronomers, since typical stellar separations are very large.
But, in dense stellar clusters, the density of stars can be a billion times higher than in the field - and hence separations thousand times smaller - and then the finite size can be really important.
Especially if stars also happen to be in binaries, but that is a different story...
So... to make a long story short, sometimes stars go "…
catdynamics | January 21, 2009Downtown DC shortly before noon, 20th January 2009
click to embiggen (big - 8kx8k ~ 10Mb)>A
h/t Jessica
catdynamics | January 21, 2009Iceland shows the world the way.
the revolution will be twittered
The Heat is On - Eiríkur Bergmann's grauniad article on civil unrest in Iceland.
Newsfrettir has more - interesting sequence of pictures...
Hey, I think that is my cousin storming the "United Left" meeting at the National Theater.
Heard they missed the torching of the christmas tree at the east square by Alþingi...
The head of the National Bank was carried out of her office; the Prime Minister's car stormed; the police are in riot gear and being taunted; and flash mobs are gathering.
Very sloppy
Right now it is torches (well…
catdynamics | January 21, 2009Multiple stellar populations in globular clusters (overview).
like this in NGC2808 (paper)
or even good old M4, and and NGC1851, and of course Omega Cen.
the original view of globular clusters is that they are the quintessential coeval sets of stellar populations - that all the stars in any given cluster ought to have formed more or less simultaneously, with an age spread of no more than a few million years or so
but, now that we have very good colour-magnitude data from wide field Hubble images, with proper-motion selected field decontamination, it turns out that many, maybe most,…
catdynamics | January 21, 2009it is cloudy and cold...
some random links to ponder:
FSP is on form as she asks "How hard should graduate students work?"
Mike Tobis studies blog error propagation
The Glorious Fool
"And I? Ah, would that I might these
Rude stanzas shape to worth and rule;
But like you, I may not please
Half-hearted men, Oh, glorious fool!"
The Blog
The President's Blog
US flattened by self-administered denial-of-service attack
Obama is clearly having issues with NASA, to the extent it is even on his radar - but at least some fairly high level Obama assistant is having trouble deciding on NASA - too many…
catdynamics | January 21, 2009Change is good, right?
Nice of Sean to take the blame, just in case someone is feeling curmudgeonly about it.
Not that they should, since the option of continuing the old way by default is still there...
That is change we can live with.
catdynamics | January 20, 2009getting organized
- unlike the totally laid back string theorists, the astrophysics program has daily morning meetings to discuss progress
except today
today we get to meet after lunch, everybody was kinda busy this morning for some reason...
then we get informal short talk presentations once a week on thursdays, on top of the seminars, colloquia and lunch talks - the thursday talks will be recorded and podcast and video feeds made available online
ooh, first monday seminar will be:
""Emergent phenomena in negative heat capacity systems: fundamental physics from dense star clusters"
by, er…
catdynamics | January 20, 2009New calculations suggest the question of whether the universe is holographic or not is testable, and recent data is consistent with the model, and consistent with the universe actually being holographic.
h/t Jake at Pure Pedantry
Prof Craig Hogan, the new director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Fermilab, has written a series of very interesting papers suggesting that space-time quantization at the Planck scale ought to show up as white noise in the transverse displacement of laser interferometers, with a power spectrum that is just √(tp/2), independent of frequency, given some…
catdynamics | January 18, 2009with the original verses put back in
ok, let's try the hispanic broadcast since HBO seems to think they own the other version
oh, and that Bruce fella ain't half bad neither
h/t kos
catdynamics | January 15, 2009The proposed economic stimulus package includes some funding for science.
Chunk for NSF, lot of facility funding.
NASA gets climate science.
DoE gets some toys.
Appropriations Stimulus 0115 (pdf)
The total package is somewhere in the $800+ billion range, as proposed.
With about 1/3 proposed as tax cuts, the rest short term supplemental funding.
$10 billion is for science, largely for facilities and refurbishment. Mostly NSF and NIH.
Looks like this is a two year (effectively 18 months since much of '08-09 fiscal year will be gone if-and-when it passes) package, and then we ramp to regular…
catdynamics | January 15, 2009D
we set D equal to the measured value from A.N. Experimenter et al (2009)
we set D = 8π3/2/3 (Stokes 1854)
we set D = 8π3/2(1 + ε)/3, where ε = 4.2*10-7 is the Me-Stokes parameter (Me 1973), correcting for second order effects.
do you mean a total derivative or a partial derivative?
well, the "D"s cancel, so we can approximate it as just δy/δx ~ y/x...
if you choose D=2 we can get an exact solution
consider the qualitative behaviour of the solution as we vary the number of dimensions
you mean ℘?
(curse html 4.0 and its lack of proper symbols...)
Ð!
catdynamics | January 15, 2009I am currently at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, hanging out at the "Formation and Evolution of Globular Clusters" workshop.
Apparently I am, for now, also the official "program blogger" program rapporteur...
cause you know everything sounds fancier in french
Who knew.
When David suggests something is a good idea, it becomes a good idea.
So, right now I am kinda busy trying to keep up with the workshop - there are some interesting new things, which I'll get to in due time. Real Soon Now.
Y'all can participate through the multimedia online presence, including video (live and…
catdynamics | January 14, 2009Hubble supplemental decisions are done, e-mails are coming out this morning.
Score!
bloomin' heck.
Now what do we do...?
So, how did y'all do?
Hold on.
Phase II is due when?
(Jan 27 in case you wondered, that is less than 2 weeks)
Aargh.
catdynamics | January 13, 2009the weather is perfect
the ambiance is ideal
the food is good
the company is stimulating
but...
California is just not designed with pedestrians in mind, to the level that it is near impossible to cross roads separating adjacent neighbourhoods, or even walk between adjacent areas of shopping and business
is it really possible a good idea to legislate that children must eat well and rest? Will this actually lead to healthy laid back adults, or a major backlash...?
why does fresh produce grown locally cost twice as much as the same item shipped 3,000 miles?
the Invitation to the Inauguration…
catdynamics | January 10, 2009my new office is probably the best office in academia
When I was in my final year as a graduate student, I had what I thought then was the best office in academia.
It had been Prof. Kip Thorne's office - on the ground floor on the north side, with french doors onto a balcony overlooking the Rose Garden on the south side.
Technically I shared the office with two other graduate students, but for technical reasons they were essentially never there, so it was my office.
On thursday afternoons caterers brought a small keg of draught beer and some snacks and left it outside the office on the…
catdynamics | January 8, 2009wtf is an impact evaluator???
apparently it is the trendy thing to be
the World Bank tries to explain
it is not convincing...
catdynamics | January 6, 2009Hera Hjartardóttir
Her version of "The Girl Who Stares at the Sea" is one of my favorites.
catdynamics | January 6, 2009random snippets from the 213th semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach
not that I am there...
Hannah - one of the co-bloggers at Women in Astronomy is liveblogging from the AAS
I hear there were some excellent talks and posters on black holes and galaxies and white dwarfs and stuff...
the Universe Today crowd are doing a good job covering the meeting
if you want to read just one snippet, the allegedly recoiling supermassive black hole is a good one
catdynamics | January 5, 2009Prof Buiter on Maverecon over at FT.
Looking at the trap that the US finds itself in, economically.
Then dash quickly over to Krugman for some light relief.