The Blob

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!

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).

Mars Surface

Long Live Mars

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.

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

Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide Crystal Structure

Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide Discovered on January 29, 1987

http://www.newswise.com/articles/scientist-recounts-superconductivity-discovery

http://www.al.com/42/index.ssf/2012/01/historical_plaque_recognizes_2.html

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/01/uah_jim_ashburn_celebrate_silv.html

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!

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?

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

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

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!

Mars From Hubble Space Telescope

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/

Dr. Leonard McCoy - Star Trek Starship Enterprise Physician

Phobos Grunt has died. Oh … the Machinery!

Planetary Society Meeting

Oh … The Humanity!

Now that we have a firm understanding of the energy scales of relevance to the pairing glue problem in the cuprate high temperature superconductors, we can proceed to the literature without the hassle and embarrassment of … ahem … excess baggage. One is immediately led to the PhD thesis of a one David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Electronic Excitations in Lanthanum Cuprates Measured by Resonant Inelastic X-ray
Scattering, Phd Thesis of David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto.

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/24344/6/Ellis_David_S_201003_PhD_thesis.pdf

Also published as an Arxiv paper :

http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3044

Electronic Structure of Doped Lanthanum Cuprates Studied with Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering, D. S. Ellis, Jungho Kim, Harry Zhang, J. P. Hill, Genda Gu, Seiki Komiya, Yoichi Ando, D. Casa, T. Gog and Young-June Kim

And don’t forget those crazy Chinese! Never missing an opportunity to demonstrate their clear technical and intellectual superiority, they’re already on it!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0342

Visualizing the atomic scale electronic structure of the Ca₂CuO₂Cl₂ Mott insulator, Cun Ye, Peng Cai, Runze Yu, Xiaodong Zhou, Wei Ruan, Qingqing Liu, Changqing Jin and Yayu Wang

And a group in France has already explored a simple model of such a scenario.

Real-Space Pairing through Charge Transfer Excitons in High-Tc Cuprates, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc and Antoine Villesuzanne, Inorg. Chem., 2008, 47 (24), pp 11958–11964

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic801266q

Solid state chemistry for connecting the pieces of the high-Tc superconducting puzzle?, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc NS Antoine Villesuzanne, Solid State Sciences, Volume 12, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 691-698, International Symposium on Structure-Property Relationships in Solid-State Materials

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1293255809002246