catdynamics | September 18, 2008Hot and humid friday as we seek clear crisp coolness.
So we skip to the mighty iPod and ask: will we get us some decent near infra red imaging from space again in the near future?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Tom the Peeper - Act 1.1
The Crossing: Kings of the Wild Frontier - Adam and the Ants
The Crown: Ræningjasöngur
The Root: Reason to Believe - Aimee Mann and Michael Penn
The Past: Christmas in Dixie - Alabama
The Future: Sur Le Pont d'Avignon
The Questioner: Animal Alphabet Song
The House: School's Out - Alice Cooper
The Inside: Falling - Alison Moyet
The Outcome…
catdynamics | September 18, 2008National Science Foundation has announced this years awards for the Physics Frontier Centers
The full list is here
The '08 winners, some of which are renewals are:
Center for Magnetic Self-Organization - Wisconsin
Center for Physics of Living Cells - Illinois
Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics - Indiana
Center for Theoretical Biological Physics - California (San Diego)
Joint Quantum Institute - Maryland
Congratulations.
Bummernickels!
h/t Quantum Pontiff
catdynamics | September 18, 2008Is this how some people felt about the LHC being turned on?
Three month treasury bills are being sold at negative interest rate this morning.
Krugman, professionally, is fascinated
I am also terrified.
At least with the LHC I knew, professionally, that the doomsday scenarios were impossible.
Economists think liquidity traps ought to not happen, nowadays, so it must be professionally fascinating to see what looks like one developing before your eyes.
Be like seeing the apparent development of an event horizon or vacuum phase transition.
In person.
catdynamics | September 17, 2008There is a certain morbid fascination in watching the financial storm unwind
Calculated Risk remains one of the best econ blogs, but the volume on it now is so large that it is impossible to read or even more than glance at.
Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal is more concise and always interesting.
Steve at Information Processing also has an interesting physics based perspective.
But, I have been pondering the AIG "rescue" - or rather orderly slow bankruptcy with federal control during the unwinding and disposing of assets.
Why?
Why could Lehman with 613 billion, or whatever, in debt,…
catdynamics | September 17, 2008Collection of before and after comparison pictures of local areas near Galveston Bay
Mostly areal and recent satellite photos, done by locals to try to estimate what happened to their houses and their neighbours and favourite locales, far as I can tell.
The devastation in some places is astonishing
I hope the evacuation in these areas was selective - that is to say that the evacuation was more complete in the more vulnerable areas than the media reported evacuation statistics. Else we are in for some very bad news dribbling in over the next days and weeks as the local authorities get their…
catdynamics | September 17, 2008The refrigerator on the infrared camera on Hubble is broken and the camera is shut down, for now.
Better hope servicing mission 4 goes off on the revised schedule and is successful.
Currently functioning instruments on Hubble are just the old Wide Field Camera (2), which has one bad chip, and the Fine Guidance Sensors.
From stsci.edu:
"[doing software upgrade]...After the software was installed we attempted to restart the NCS, but it went into safemode before reaching a stable cooling situation. A project tiger-team, including the engineers who designed and built the NCS, has since made…
catdynamics | September 16, 2008i am transiting a large city in the south of the us and in the recent past had two surreal conversations take place around me
one involved a couple of people I am reasonably certain are prominent college football players, boasting to their buds about looking up this other guy (over a girl I gather) and "wham, wanna fight, wham" (impressive ability to deliver high speed sucker punches, with sound effects, I do admit)
ok, whatever, except for the slightly fascinated and somewhat amused off-duty policeman sitting not a million micrometers from them...
this might have repercussions
the other…
catdynamics | September 16, 2008Mary Voytek takes over Astrobiology Senior Scientist position at NASA HQ - she's a USGS microbiologist. Extremeophile looks like.
John Rummel has moved to East Carolina as Head CoachDirector of Institute for Coastal Science and Policy.
Is this why the CAN-5 selection is delayed?
Is this Change We Can Believe In?
h/t NASAwatch
catdynamics | September 15, 2008it is accountancy that makes the world go round
"the cold antiseptic sting of the Swiss Frank..."
catdynamics | September 15, 2008The Milky Way has a roughly 3 million solar mass black hole at its center.
The nearby M87 galaxy in the Virgo cluster has a roughly 3 billion solar mass black hole at its center.
How much more massive do black holes get?
Prof Priya Natarajan at Yale thinks she knows the answer: and that is that black hole mass maxes out at at measly 10 billion times the mass of the Sun, or so.
It is hard to measure the mass of a black hole. Since we can't see it, mass measurements are generally indirect and represent bounds, sometimes only upper bounds, on the mass.
The Milky Way's black hole is the nearest…
catdynamics | September 14, 2008"...Chávez last night ordered the US ambassador to leave Venezuela within 72 hours and accused Washington of fomenting a coup attempt..."
Grauniad has more
"...Chávez also ordered Venezuela's ambassador to Washington to return home and threatened to cut oil supplies, plunging relations between the countries to a new low. "Go to hell a hundred times, fucking Yankees," he told a televised rally thronged with supporters clad in red."
Heh, that crazy Chavez dude, what a wild man.
Clearly not related to the first of two Bear Reconnaissance/Bomber aircraft coming to visit from Russia…
catdynamics | September 14, 2008is, apparently, over 1000 visitors at Calculated Risk late on a weekend night
apparently there are some financial news, or something, everyone seems terribly excited about monday morning
I don't understand, don't think I have a head for big numbers
but I know linking is good
catdynamics | September 12, 2008Randy Olson is at PSU today and tomorrow
Sizzle is on tonight at 7 pm and he gives a talk on science framing tomorrow morning.
All events in 100 Thomas.
Flock of Dodos was on last night, if you weren't there, you missed it.
catdynamics | September 12, 2008NASA 3D view of Hurricane Ike
click to embiggen
ISS images of Ike friday
click for large hi-res animation
wunderground reports convection has closed around the eye region and an intensification cycle is starting, race against time whether landfall disrupts it before the inner winds go up a catergory, or two.
main issue is still width of the hurricane force wind field, and the size of the storm surge.
the oildrum has updated analysis of possible oil production and refinery impact - shutdown of much of gulf of mexico production for few weeks, mostly precautionary. possible damage to 20-30…
catdynamics | September 12, 2008you may have noticed ScienceBloggers pushing hard on the meme about the Large Hadron Collider destroying the Earth, Not!
I now reveal the true reason.
We went so far as to put
"Has the LHC Destroyed The Earth?" on the banner ad position.
Well, there's a reason for this. It was a test, a warmup exercise for the real thing.
Of course LHC was not going to destroy the Earth on wednesday, probably, it was just a warmup of the injector and bending magnets, there were no actual collisions.
Those come next month and then will be run, by the trillions, for years.
Well, ok, the collimator collisions…
catdynamics | September 12, 2008It is friday, it is raining, and I can't find my umbrella.
There ain't no justice.
So, we squelch over to the Mighty iPod, and ask: do black hole masses in the current universe really top out at 1010 solar masses?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
ul>
The Covering: The Passenger - Iggy Pop
The Crossing: Jump in the River - Sinéad O'Connor
The Crown: II Concerto No 2. (Summer) - Vivaldi
The Root: Dýrðin er Þín - Bubbi Morthens
The Past: Joy to the World - The Irish Tenors
The Future: Ég er Vinur Þinn -
The Questioner: Hm hm hm (Magic Flute) - Mozart
The House: Carnival of the Animals:…
catdynamics | September 12, 2008The Mortgage Pig strikes back
click to embiggen
Tanta at Calculated Risk is finally pushed over the edge
We sometimes link because linking is an intrinsic good.
catdynamics | September 11, 2008The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
Charles Bowen
"As soon as Dawkins stepped out from the portico, there was an enormous clap of thunder and it started to rain.
Heavily.
One might even say the heavens opened, though obviously Dawkins wouldn't.
Then I noticed that, waiting inside the foyer, there was a vicar..."
(from S. Chapman - Physics Education Sep '08)
Meanwhile, back in the USA, Ike is in the Gulf, headed for Texas.
click to embiggen
click here for animation
Ike is a curious beast, very…