5/02/2012

Surfer Dude Physics
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i4/e043001
Creating and Transporting Trojan Wave Packets, B. Wyker, S. Ye, F. B. Dunning, S. Yoshida, C. O. Reinhold and Burgdörfer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 043001 (2012)
It’s almost, like, the universe is one big atom, dude!
Totally Loco!
4/02/2012

Medieval Warm Period - Little Ice Age - Global Warming
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050168.shtml
Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks, Gifford H. Miller et al., Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 39, L02708 (2012).
4/02/2012

Bashar Assad - Muammar Gaddafi
How’d that Phobos thing work out, Vlad!
3/02/2012

Verner Suomi Earth - Africa - Indian Ocean
NASA scientists today were stunned to discover that the planet Earth has a previously unseen dark side, with a large intervening continent and ocean, which will make the newly hypothesized around the world sea routes to the east and west coasts of what used to be called the world problematic. In fact, the whole concept of ‘the world’ has now been totally revolutionized by a single image from this newly launched earth orbiting robotic mini moon.
Unfazed by these stunning new developments, NASA is already planning to have astronauts visit this newly discovered world, but since they possess no human rated space vehicles capable of reaching this distant realm, it will require the entirely new and as yet untested techniques of long duration nautical navigation across great ocean voids, where food and fuel and supplies must be stored indefinitely in depots and cached in small terrestrial mini worlds that are predicted to lie scattered across the uncharted waters. The Nautinauts are planning to depart for the new world just as soon as NASA assess the safety of traveling and living in these distant lands – with its possible foreign alien inhabitants and lifeforms, and which may require great care and expense. Already the public is clamoring that NASA astronauts walk or swim or simply row to the dark side of the world, but NASA managers insist that such brash actions could be dangerous, and would be insufficient to reach the new lands. Nevertheless, a record number of people have applied to become Nautinauts and appear to be eager and anxious to visit the new realms no matter how dangerous they are, and many enthusiastic nautinauts are already speculating that the new world may contain steamy jungles filled with alien dinosaurs and populated by a society of beautiful voluptuous vixens with whom trade contracts can be negotiated for valuable aromatic herbs and spices.
This is Hugh Mann, Sailor Boy, reporting live from the control center for the robotic probe.
2/02/2012

Murray Springs Black Mat
Framboidal Iron Oxide: Chondrite Like Material from the Black Mat, Murray Springs, Arizona, Mostafa Fayek, Lawrence M. Anovitz, Lawrence F. Allard and Sharon Hull, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 319-320, February 2012, Pages 251-258.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1100690X
1/02/2012

Whirlpool Galaxy
http://io9.com/5880786/biochemist-publishes-a-unified-theory-of-life-but-no-one-understands-it
http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/2/1/1/
Oh great, yet another theory of theories on the nature of nature itself. First it was quantum gravity. Then it’s the combinatorial hierarchy. Then came the theory of indistinguishables! Then it was string theory, and who could forget insane in the M-Brane! Personally I prefer new topological theories like the macroscopic physics of spirally wound three wire cable bundles. Talk about practical applications of string theory! Have you ever tried to transport thousand foot rolls of quadruple ought four inch cable – miles through the tangled bush and into and out of boats all by yourself? Without string theory you would be totally screwed!
Hugh Mann himself worked this all out way back in 1985 in an undergraduate term paper in a systems biology class at the University of Wisconsin titled The Geometry of Information, complete with numbers and symbols and tables and equations and lots of other cool stuff.
This is already a done deal. QED and all that. You’ll just have to trust me on that.
It’s not rocket science, folks.
It’s arithmetry!
28/01/2012

Mitt Romney - Ferengi Ambassador
Maybe by first firing them all he was able to hire back less of them and then pay them less, thus increasing his profits!
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Federation ambassadors, Lori and I, continue to direct space policy from an undisclosed location under the white house lawn, for the current Federation administrator – a human Vulcan hybrid offspring from the planet Statusquo.
This is Hugh Mann, reporting live, from an undisclosed location under the white house lawn.
Hey Prez, the phone is ringing again!
Should I answer it?
26/01/2012

Jupiter by Cassini-Huygens
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5177
A Low Mass for Mars from Jupiter’s Early Gas-driven migration, Kevin J. Walsh, Alessando Morbidelli, Sean N. Raymond, David P. O’Brien and Avi M. Mandell, Published in Nature
Jupiter and Saturn formed in a few million years (Haisch et al. 2001) from a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk, and were susceptible to gas-driven migration of their orbits on timescales of only ~100,000 years (Armitage 2007). Hydrodynamic simulations show that these giant planets can undergo a two-stage, inward-then-outward, migration (Masset & Snellgrove 2001, Morbidelli & Crida 2007, Pierens & Nelson 2008). The terrestrial planets finished accreting much later (Klein et al. 2009), and their characteristics, including Mars’ small mass, are best reproduced by starting from a planetesimal disk with an outer edge at about one astronomical unit from the Sun (Wetherill 1978, Hansen 2009) (1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance). Here we report simulations of the early Solar System that show how the inward migration of Jupiter to 1.5 AU, and its subsequent outward migration, lead to a planetesimal disk truncated at 1 AU; the terrestrial planets then form from this disk over the next 30-50 million years, with an Earth/Mars mass ratio consistent with observations. Scattering by Jupiter initially empties but then repopulates the asteroid belt, with inner-belt bodies originating between 1 and 3 AU and outer-belt bodies originating between and beyond the giant planets. This explains the significant compositional differences across the asteroid belt. The key aspect missing from previous models of terrestrial planet formation is the substantial radial migration of the giant planets, which suggests that their behaviour is more similar to that inferred for extrasolar planets than previously thought.
See also : http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3622
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0007
25/01/2012

Verner Suomi NPP - NPOESS - Blue Marble Earth 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verner_E._Suomi
http://library.ssec.wisc.edu/SuomiWebsite/index.html
Hugh Mann, being a sensitive and compassionate post Sputnik guy living and studying in the sixties and seventies in a progressive metropolitan city state containing a world class research university, remembers Verner E. Suomi quite well, and fondly recalls the early days in the tall Engineering Research Building on the University of Wisconsin engineering campus in sunny frigid downtown Madison, Wisconsin in the United States of America!

Tiros First Full Earth Mosaic
21/01/2012

Dr. Frankenstein Meets Hugh Mann - Wolf Man
This is Hugh Mann, Wolf Man, reporting live from der Rathskeller at the Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, in sunny, frigid downtown Madison, Wisconsin, where world renowned space architect Dr. Herman Frankenstein Munster has gathered with the various ragtag members of his unemployed working group and their numerous and very lovely and buxom Bavarian space groupies, in order to smoke and drink and discuss their newest crackpot idea to revive the dead, conquer the undead and create an army of robotic zombie monsters to suck the blood of the Moon and otherwise stumble around randomly in search of any other kindred spirits and bypassing asteroids in order to further their nefarious schemes of global submission and total world domination. Pretty cool, huh? Totally far out!
You can read all about it HERE.
http://webpages.charter.net/tsiolkovsky/Architecture.pdf
Oh no … a tremendous argument has just broken out between Dr. Frankenstein and some of his assistants over the best way to enslave the zombie satellites so that they can calmly direct the mad ramblings of the giant Frankenstein spaceships. Waiter! Excuse me, Miss!
More beer here! And cigars all around! Thank you! Thank you!
17/01/2012

Mars From Hubble Space Telescope
http://astrobob.areavoices.com/
15/01/2012

Dr. Leonard McCoy - Star Trek Starship Enterprise Physician
Phobos Grunt has died. Oh … the Machinery!