Enough Said

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the Earth yet?

NO.

(props to the wife for the linky)

How two post-docs built an A-bomb

Fascinating story in the Guardian about two physics postdocs who in 1964, designed from scratch an atomic bomb. They'd been hired by the US Government to see whether a few smart people with no expertise could take a nation nuclear. The answer: yes, in two years.

Up to 17 Hubble Fellows per year?

"We anticipate offering up to seventeen Hubble fellowships this year, with selection by peer review by experts from areas of research spanning the full range of the Cosmic Origins theme." I suppose that's only 2 more than the old system(10 Hubble Fellows + 5 Spitzer Fellows).

Likewise, the Chandra & GLAST fellowships have been concatenated into the "Einstein Fellowships", with "up to 10 fellows in 2009".

What does this bode for fellowship-seeking astronomers?

The right to make a different choice

Regarding Senator McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

• My nonagenarian aunt asked what I thought of "The Eskimo Governor". (Which answers the question of whether she's still mentally sharp.)
  
• It's a personal decision for a woman, when prenatal screening reveals a serious health issue like Downs Syndrome, whether to abort. While I would have made a different choice, I strongly support the right of women to make their own reproductive choices.
  
• What's scary is that Ms. Palin believes women should NOT have those choices.
• The NYT is reporting that McCain hoped to nominate Joe Lieberman instead, or maybe Tom Ridge. Because both men support reproductive rights, religious conservatives apparently threatened a floor flight if either was nominated.
  
• Worth reading: this BBC article, which explains the story of Palin's pregnant daughter in the context of the US's sky-high teen pregnancy rate (compared to the developed world), and does its best to explain "abstinence-only" indoctrination to a European audience.
• I can't help thinking back to age 17 -- my own immaturity, that of my classmates, and how terribly equipped any of us were for parenthood at that age. My classmates who gave birth in high school -- hmm, their kids are in high school now. Wow.
  

Pop Quiz!

Quickly, off the cuff: How many of the 100 US Senators are women?

Write down your best guess in the comments. (Then you may check the wikipedia.)
Remember, if you copy off your neighbor, you're only hurting yourself.

New book from the Female Science Professor

Yesterday while my CPUs churned, I downloaded the new e-book "Academeology: Random Musings, Strong Opinions & Somewhat Bizarre Anecdotes From An Academic Life" by the blogger Female Science Professor. 286 pages, $5.75 to buy the PDF download.

After a quick read, it looks great -- there are sections on the academic job search, time management, grad school admissions, interpersonal research relations, grant-writing, scientific talks, and more. And a few "Oh no he didn't" war stories that we women-in-science sometimes swap to keep ourselves sane in a sometimes-hostile environment. Sprinked throughout are amusing mini-rants, as you'd expect from an edited, sorted compilation of blog posts.

Result: I've added "Academeology" to my academic career advice bookshelf, next to Richard Reis's "Tomorrow's Professor" and a few others.

Don't miss the Perseid meteor shower tonight!

Advice on how to see the Perseids can be found at Sky and Telescope.

Slackers: the shower lasts several days (I saw some great Perseids last week), so if you miss Monday night, try Tuesday.

Cool astro videos?

Can anyone recommend favorite astronomy videos? So far I've got this one below, from RXTE (via youtube), which beautifully illustrates how the X-ray sky changes from night to night.



What other videos are out there? Of course "Powers of 10" and "Cosmos" are famous, but what undiscovered viral treasures are out there? All you have to do is beat the video of the inside of a TSA X-ray machine.

On Hubble and late-season baseball trades

Astronauts are scheduled to visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 to perform "Servicing Mission 4" (SM4). They'll replace the gyroscopes and batteries, swap out the fine guidance sensor, install the WFC3 camera and the COS spectrograph, and try to fix the broken instruments ACS and STIS.

Since this is All-Star game week, let's rephrase in terms of baseball:

At the moment, Hubble is a pro baseball team whose two star pitchers (ACS and STIS) have been on the disabled list for years -- they may never play again. The Hubble All-Stars still shows up for games, but rely on just two aging nuckleball pitchers (WFPC2 and NICMOS). The team has announced a huge trade for two brilliant prospects, WFC3 and COS, who throw pitches nobody's ever seen. (WPC3 even pitches ambidexterously!*) At the same time, the team has scheduled risky surgeries to bring its two disabled pitchers, ACS and STIS, back to work.

So, Hubble fans around the world are waiting for the big trade (Servicing Mission 4), scheduled for October. If it happens, for the next several years the team will be the best in history. If it fails, the team will fall apart. Tense.


* ambidexterious: uses both UV/blue and IR/red detectors. Kinda like throwing with either arm.

Hubble Kaleidoscope finds Evidence of Space Looking All Crazy

BALTIMORE—Astronomers analyzing the first images captured by the new Hubble Space Kaleidoscope, which went online Tuesday, announced that they've acquired the first concrete evidence that the universe is in a constant state of total weirdness. [full article here.]

Thank you, The Onion, and Andy for the link.