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25 June 2008
Eureka! Science News: Google News for Science
A Canadian scientist has recently launched a news aggregator for basic science. A news aggregator is a service that automatically collects headlines and blurbs from other sites, without creating any original content – like Google News, AOL News, and Yahoo News. Eureka! Science News provides science news in several categories, including astronomy! So far, I’m pretty impressed with the site, especially the Astronomy/Space section, which provides news as well as …
21 June 2008
The Great Canadian Adventure – Part 2: Gypsumville and Salt Springs
After our trip to the mine tailings, we headed to the remains of an ancient 40 km impact crater. The crater is totally invisible, but the rocks tell the story plain as day. Our first stop was just outside the town of Gypsumville. We drove through swampy, bumpy back roads into the middle of nowhere and stopped next to an unassuming patch of rock and gravel. At first it didn’t …
20 June 2008
The Great Canadian Adventure: Part 1 – The Price of Gold
After our trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where we compared dunes on Earth to those on Mars, we flew up north to Winnipeg, Canada. There we met up with a bunch of geologists and spent three days exploring a bunch of interesting sites in Manitoba. The first site was an old mine tailings dump from a gold mine in the area. When mining for gold, the rocks are …
13 June 2008
Sand Dunes!
Greetings folks! I’ve been silent for a few days because I am in the midst of a lot of traveling. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week I was at a team meeting for the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and Context Camera (CTX). Rather than spend a lot of time explaining what that means, I will do what I always do and link to the planetary society blog. My adviser …
6 June 2008
The Big Picture
This news is a few days old, but it’s so cool I had to share it. At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference this week, astronomers have unveiled a 55 meter long infrared image of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The image is a mosiac of more than 800,000 images from the Spitzer space telescope. Forget the “Megapixels” you’re used to hearing about for your digital camera. This bad boy …
2 June 2008
Space-Based Solar Power
Have I ever mentioned how much I love the idea of space based solar power? It’s totally awesome: you launch solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, where they are always illuminated by the sun, and they beam the energy down to receiving stations on the Earth. Sure, it costs a lot to set up, but the result is essentially unlimited free power, beamed anywhere you want it. Apparently China and India …
29 May 2008
Ancient Flying Reptiles Hunted on Foot
This azhdarchid doesn’t need to be flying to eat you. I know, I know. This has nothing to do with Mars. But it’s my blog, and I never really grew out of the “dinosaurs are awesome! I want to be a paleontologist!” phase that many kids go through. So, that said, check this out. The Daily Mail has an article about new research that shows that at least one type …
23 May 2008
Facebook for Scientists Launched
Check it out, facebook for scientists: http://www.researchgate.net/ This site just launched today, and it looks like it could be a really sweet tool for “early career scientists” – if it catches on. You can make a profile for yourself, a research vitae with descriptions of current research projects, upload publications, connect with other researchers, and probably much more. There are some hilarious facebook-ish aspects to this site, though: there’s a …
22 May 2008
What do Teachers Make?
It never ceases to amaze me how many smart people in academia don’t care about teaching, or worse, look down upon those who do care about it. I think they need to watch this video.
21 May 2008
Dangerous Sunrise
Image credit: Inga Nielsen Ok, apparently I am a sucker for artist’s renditions of active red dwarfs. Today’s picture is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, and shows a concept of what the surface of Gliese876d might look like. This planet is heftier than Earth and orbits closer to its star than Mercury does the sun. However, it orbits a dim red dwarf, which means that even though it is …
