Holy Schrödinger’s Cat!
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 31, 2012 Schrödinger’s Qu’ran – a 2012 thought experiment – in The Conversation, Matthew Bailes updates a classic paradox… “…a physicist could extend this thought experiment to write a php script that would randomly download one of the Bible, Qur’an or even a classical quantum mechanics textbook to the iPad…” On the Dispositive Null in the Literature…
To Do:
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 17, 2012 Given ηEarth=1 Find more terrestrial exoplanets. Find habitable terrestrial exoplanets. Find inhabited terrestrial exoplanets. Go visit. Consider the following snippets: Kepler discover 5 planets orbiting inside 0.1 AU Kepler: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System Terrestrial mass planet discovered around α Cen B Kepler exoplanet survey jeopardized Kepler has lost one of…
Hello neighbour
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 16, 2012 α Centauri B, a mere 4 lightyears away has a terrestrial planet orbiting it. α Cen B b The most interesting aspect of the discovery may be the inferences we can make rather than the planet itself. The discovery by the Geneva Observatory team using the HARPS spectrograph is a wonderful example of precision high…
New Frontiers: Big Questions Conference IV
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 13, 2012 Continued slow liveblog of the New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology Conference at the Franklin Institute. Lunch is almost over and we are headed into the final session of research presentations, clearly saving the best for last… I am also reminded why we have these meetings, in person, the chats during break and back and…
New Frontiers: Big Questions Conference III
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 13, 2012 Continued slow liveblog of the New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology Conference at the Franklin Institute. We have had coffee and we are rested and ready after yesterdays 14 hour marathon session (graduate students please note – though it did include breakfast, lunch, dinner and two coffee breaks (“working breaks” natch, apart from the hour+…
New Frontiers: Big Questions Conference II
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 13, 2012 The second session of the New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology conference was friday afternoon. The plan was to do a leisurely liveblog of the talks. However, during lunch, there were some interesting developments, which I can hopefully tell you about next week some time, and in the middle of the discussion I was told…
New Frontiers: Big Questions Conference I
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 12, 2012 A slow liveblog of the conference. The New Frontiers in Astronomy and Comsology is having its awards conference at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The 20 odd winning researchers and research groups are presenting summaries of their proposed research, to be followed in a couple of years with another conference in Chicago where they will,…
On Maximizing the Productivity of Your Graduate Students
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 11, 2012 Or, how may hours should graduate students work? Well, depends… However Many You Like As Many As They Can As Many As Are Needed All Of Them The answer may sometimes lie in the above range, sometimes may be somewhat less, and occasionally even more. We’ve all been there, and all suffer from survivor bias,…
New Frontiers in Astronomy: Cosmic Abundance of Kardashevs
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 5, 2012 In which we win an award from the New Frontiers in Astronomy Program. The New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology program announced its research grant award winners yesterday. The last, but not least of the Big Questions solicited in the Call for Proposals, was: Are we alone in the universe? Or, are there other life…
linkedy links VII
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on October 5, 2012 another selection of random snippets from the intertoobz We are Number One! – and 8! Wait, didn’t I blog this one already? Ah well, truth can never be told too often… Forget PowerPoint: It turns out the secret to improving productivity at your job might be puppieskittens! Win friends and influence people to boost research…