You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
15 December 2008
Blogging from the Bottom of the World
Did you know that most of the meteorites ever found come from Antarctica? It’s the perfect place to look for them because it’s dry and cold, so they are well preserved. Plus, when you’re out on a kilometers-thick ice sheet, all the rocks are meteorites! Just drive around and pick up anything that isn’t ice! Anyway, I bring this up because there is now a blog chronicling the adventures of …
Carnival of Space #83 – The Antipodean Edition
While I work on getting my AGU notes into some semblance of coherency, you should go check out the Carnival of Space over at Astroblog.
AGU Impressions
Attending a conference this large (15,000 abstracts) is an interesting experience. Boarding the plane last night, I saw a few dozen poster tubes, a clear sign of a scientist on the way to a meeting. The person in the seat in front of me was working on a table of atmospheric isotope ratios in a tattered notebook, and next to me was a friend from Cornell (now at Brown) who …
14 December 2008
Facebook Blogs
Hello readers! I just logged in to Facebook and discovered that they have a new “blogs” feature that allows people to rank blogs and join blog networks so you can see who else likes to read what you do. If you have a facebook account (and anyone can get one if you don’t) then I’d love to “meet” you! Also, you can vouch for me as actually being the author …
Blogging from the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
Tomorrow I’m heading to San Francisco along with 15,000 other scientists to participate in the 2008 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Yes, you read that right: fifteen thousand scientists in one place. This will be my first AGU and my first time in San Francisco so I’m excited. There’s tons of planetary science stuff scheduled, and I will be taking notes and blogging as much as possible …
11 December 2008
Mars in 3D
Apparently the folks on the HiRISE team decided that spectacular images weren’t enough. They have now released hundreds of 3D HiRISE images on their website, including the one above of layered rocks and sand dunes in Arabia Terra. (you may recognize this scene from my Mars Art post a few weeks ago) Grab your 3D glasses and enjoy!
8 December 2008
Mars Art: Rhythmic Layers
This week’s Mars Art image also happens to be the subject of an interesting new finding. A new paper in Science details the discovery of a set of layered deposits in Arabia Terra that appear to match the Martian Climate cycle. Mars’ tilt wobbles around and causes the climate to change with it. It follows the general pattern of ten smaller wobbles in between larger wobbles. The layers shown in …
7 December 2008
The Year-in-Review Meme
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month. (I cheated a little…) February: The mantra of Mars exploration is “follow the water,” and my research is no exception. March: Check. This. Out. The HiRISE camera caught avalanches in action near the north pole of Mars. April: Big news! Google has teamed up with Virgin to form Project Virgle: the first human colony on Mars. May: …
4 December 2008
MSL Press Conference Notes I
Mike Griffin started the press conference, and got right down to business announcing the launch delay and indicating that the actuators as well as other technical problems are responsible. He said that aiming for 2009 would involve too much risk, and so the launch had to be slipped two years. Ideally, it would only slip a few months, but the way that travel between Earth and Mars works means that …
MSL Launch Delayed by Two Years
As I post this, NASA is holding a press conference in which they are announcing that the Mars Science Laboratory’s launch date will be slipped by two years, a delay which will cost about $200 million. MSL has been getting a lot of unpleasant attention lately due to some very bad cost overruns, and a few months ago, NASA made the decision to press on and attempt a launch in …
