Posted by barb on Feb 1, 2005 in
Science Musings January was a busy month for astronomy!
- The biggest news, of course, is the Huygens probe. For those of you living in a bubble, Huygens is the probe that was carried to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, on the Cassini spacecraft. It was released on January 14 and decended through Titan’s atmosphere to land with a splat in Titan “mud”.
The reason scientists are so interested in Titan is that next to the Earth, it is the only other body with a significant atmosphere in our solar system. Huygens has already shown that there is a significant amount of methane in the atomosphere, which is a surprise because methane gets destroyed by ultraviolet radiation. Since our sun emits an abundance of UV radiation, this methane on Titan must be renewed somehow, or it would all be gone by now. The main source of methane on Earth is life; however the methane on Titan is not from life. This leaves the scientists with a puzzle to work on.
You can keep up with the latest news on the Cassini-Huygens mission at Space.com.
- On January 17, Swift detected and imaged it’s first gamma-ray burst. Swift has been going through it’s testing phase, and has observed other gamma-ray bursts, but this is the first one that Swift detected and autonomously slewed to observe. It is the first time that a burst has been observed in X-rays while the burst was still going on.
- Deep Impact successfully launched on January 12. This is a mission that will rendezvous with comet Temple I and send an impactor to the comet. This will give astronomers a first look at what’s beneath a comet’s surface. The rendezvous should occur on July 4th.
- Hipparchus’ star chart found in plain site. Hipparchus was the greatest astronomer of antiquity and produced the first star chart around 129 B.C., which has been lost. Only a few bits of his work remain. The Farnese Atlas sculpture, dating from the late Roman period, sports a globe with constellations etched into it. Bradley E. Schaefer of Louisiana State University was able to deduce, from precession calculations, that the positions of the constellations coincide with the time of Hipparchus, and are likely based on his star catalog.
- SOHO is having a contest to see who can predict when it will discover it’s 1000th comet. SOHO was not built as a comet detector — it’s a mission to monitor the Sun. However, it has now detected over 900 comets, and is the most prolific comet-finder in history. You can enter here, and the prizes for guessing correctly include SolarMax DVD, a SOHO T-shirt, and solar viewing glasses.
- Just for fun, Mr. Potatohead hss turned to the dark side.
Tags: linkalicious, science
Posted by barb on Jan 29, 2005 in
Thesis/Grad Life For the last year and a half I have known, without a doubt, that I don’t like doing science. I love astronomy, but I don’t love doing astronomy. This means that every time I sit down to work on my thesis, I wonder to myself why I’m doing it? Why am I wasting my time? Why don’t I just quit?
I know the reasons I’ve kept going: I’ve wanted a PhD for as long as I can remember, I know that I can do it, and I’m already this far along, so I might as well finish. They might not be good reasons, but there they are. Frankly, they haven’t been enough. And along with the messages of “Why am I doing this?” that I’ve been feeding myself, I’ve found it very difficult to muster any enthusiasm for my work. This means that I’ve been getting very little done, and subsequently is going to prolong my grad work.
In addition, I’ve been finding that I don’t take myself seriously at all. I feel like I’m “just a grad student”, and at 33 that makes me a nothing. At least that’s how I’ve been feeling. It’s not good, it’s not true, but it’s going through my head continuously.
Enter my epiphany.
Read more…
Tags: grad life, science
Posted by barb on Jan 28, 2005 in
Pictures,
Science Musings Tonight, at the grocery store, I picked up a box of the store brand cereal. Before I could get it into the cart, Andrew pointed out that it had constellations on the back, so we looked a bit closer. There was a star chart with a few constellations, a couple “facts” about the night sky, and a game matching the constellations to information about the constellation. Cool, right?
Well, Andrew noticed a small typo immediately:
Don’t see it? Sagittarius is spelled with two ‘t’s. Okay, no big deal — it’s just a small typo. Oh, and they repeated this typo in the answers to the constellation matching game!
But then there was another one:
“A great way to learn about the night sky is to get a start chart”…hum, I think they meant star chart, not start chart. Well, okay. This was the store brand, afterall. They’re entitled to a couple typos for the greatly reduced price, right?
Maybe, but this mistake is just too big to excuse:
That’s right, the naked eye can see a whole galaxy that’s closer than the nearest star!
Clearly this was just the omission of the word “million” (2.5 million light years away), but even discount cereal boxes need to have some level of accountablility.
You can check out the back of the box
Tags: oddness, science
Posted by barb on Jan 28, 2005 in
Science Musings Someone sent me the link to Alan Alda’s commencement speech at Caltech in 2002 [PDF]. He was asked to give the commencement speech because of his work on a play about Feynman, who was at Caltech when he won his Nobel prize in 1965 (one of my professors was attending Caltech when Feynman won the Nobel — apparently it was the only day he ever wore a tie).
I’m assuming you’re here at Caltech because you love science, and I’m assuming you’ve learned a great deal here about how to do science. I’m asking you today to devote some significant part of your life to figuring out how to share your love of science with the rest of us.
But not just because explaining to us what you do will get you more funding for what you do . . . although it surely will . . . but just because you love what you do.
And while you’re explaining it, remember that dazzling us with jargon might make us sit in awe of your work, but it won’t make us love it.
Tell us frankly how you got there. If you got there by many twists and turns and blind alleys, don’t leave that out. We love a detective story. If you enjoyed the adventure of getting there, so will we.
Most scientists do leave that out. By the time we hear about their great discoveries, a lot of the doubt is gone. The mistakes and wrong turns are left out . . . and it doesn’t sound like a human thing they’ve done. It separates us from the process.
Whatever you do, help us love science the way you do.
It seems that we have gotten so bogged down in our world of science that we’ve forgotten to share it with the rest of the world. One of the largest problems facing the science community today is that people don’t understand what the scientific process is. They don’t understand that scientists develop theories only after compiling data and observations. They don’t understand that theories are well-developed explanations of those data and observations, not merely “hunches” or “guesses” at what might explain those data. They don’t understand that just because a new observation challenges one part of a theory, the theory is not immediately defeated. Instead, the theory is examined closer and altered to explain not only the new data point, but to cover the entire collection of data and observations. Above all, they don’t understand that “dead-ends” are very much a part of science, and unanswered questions are not a mark that we don’t know what we’re doing, but a path leading us to work that needs to be done.
Tags: science
Posted by barb on Jan 27, 2005 in
Random Thoughts,
Science Musings Over the past couple years I have discovered that I don’t really like doing science. In fact, the only thing that I really felt excited working on was re-writing the Swift public pages (all of the linked pages except “What’s in a name”), which has brought me to the conclusion that I should look for a career in Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) when/if I finish my Ph.D. E/PO seems to be the best way that I can use my knowledge of astronomy and my writing/creative abilities in concert with each other.
Currently Constellation-X, one of the missions that I’m working for, doesn’t have an official E/PO program. However, as the web curator (and the person who will be revising the public pages), I’m in a position to start some kind of E/PO for Con-X even without any specific money for it.
Since I’m the only person doing Con-X E/PO (or, the only person in a position close to doing Con-X E/PO), and because I started attending E/PO meetings for the Lab, I’m going to helping the E/PO lead in his next effort to put out an educational package related to the Beyond Einstein program (of which Con-X is a part). The real challenge here, though, is that the materials covered by Beyond Einstein are fairly esoteric, at least as far as high school physics is concerned. The big question is what science can we present that intersects the high school science cirriculum.
The E/PO lead is putting together a focus group of teachers, and he and I got together today to discuss what questions we could ask the focus group to get an idea of what science we can highlight. I think it was a good brainstorming session, and I hope the E/PO lead feels the same way. I’m looking forward to my further involvement in the project.
Tags: work
Posted by barb on Jan 25, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This movie is a spoof of B-movies. Betty and Paul (a scientist) travel to a remote cabin in the woods to track down a meteorite which is sure to be rich in atmospherium. The cabin happens to be near a cave which, legend has it, is home to the lost skeleton of Cadavra (whatever that is). Dr. Roger Flemming is seeking out the skeleton as part of a plan to take over the world (cue maniacal laughter). On top of all that, a spaceship crashs in the woods nearby, and the pet mutant gets lose. This is all a recipe for a great B-movie!
The movie was a lot of fun. The acting was, well, B-movie, but B-movie on purpose. The dialog usually stayed just shy of being too over-the-top, although occasionally a gag was held for just a smidge too long.
A couple of my favorite lines:
- Dr. Paul Armstrong: Betty, you know what this meteor could mean to science. It could mean actual advances in the field of science.
- Dr. Paul Armstrong: Ranger Brad, I’m a scientist, I don’t believe in anything.
- Dr. Paul Armstrong: I don’t understand. Why does she need an Amish terrarium?
Betty Armstrong: Don’t the Amish live in open air, like us?
Dr. Paul Armstrong: Of course, Betty, it’s absurd. Putting the Amish in glass cases would be inhumane.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Jan 24, 2005 in
Movies 2/5 stars
Bad News Bears grow up and play dodgeball. The humor grew up (or became a bit raunchier), too, but not much else. Not bad, not great, just a so-so diversion.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Jan 24, 2005 in
Pictures,
Technical Details The picture in my new banner is one that I took of a leafy sea dragon at the National Aquarium in Baltimore in July 2003 at the Seahorses: Beyond Imagination exhibit (which has since moved on to the Tennessee Aquarium). Obviously I Photoshopped it a bit — I didn’t want to use a flash in the dimly-lit exhibit hall, so the original picture is rather dim, but recognizable.
Tags: admin
Posted by barb on Jan 23, 2005 in
Technical Details I’m going to be remodeling this site this afternoon, so bear with me if things look goofy for a while.
UPDATE: I think I’m done for now. Later I’m going to tweak a few things, but the major overhaul is done. I looked at it on Mozilla, Camino and Safari for the Mac, and it looks good. It doesn’t look exactly right on IE for the Mac, but if you’re on a Mac and you’re using IE, you have bigger problems than my website looking right. If you find any issues under Windows or Linux, let me know.
Tags: admin
Posted by barb on Jan 22, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This was a great spoof on horror movies! Sean decided to win back his girlfriend by acting as hero when zombies start to take over London. Sean and his deadbeat flatmate, Ed, set out to pick up Sean’s mother and his ex-girlfriend, and bring them to safety at his favorite pub, The Winchester.
Excellent, highly recommended hilarious movie.
Cool DVD feature: I don’t normally go on about DVD features, but this one had the best feature I’ve ever seen — Plot Holes. This feature had three sections explaining a few plot holes involving three different characters. Comic-book-like graphics showed what happened while the involved character narrated their story.
Tags: reviews
