Science
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WMAP results due soon!
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After a couple of years of waiting, the team behind the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite seem ready to release some new results. WMAP measures fluctuations in the CMB (which I’ve already written about a lot), and in 2003 they released high-resolution, high-sensitivity maps of the CMB over the whole sky. (New results have…
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King of Some Media
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Print: I was interviewed yesterday by the Daily Express, about a recent Gamma-Ray Burst that occurred when the universe was under a billion years old (less than a tenth its present age). GRBs are thought to be from “Collapsars”, the explosions of massive, rapidly rotating stars. This observation, originally by the Swift Satellite, then followed…
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NASA Science Decimated
The Bush administration has cut $3 billion from NASA’s science budget over the next five years, “postponing” (until who knows when) important science in favor of getting back to the moon (in more than twice the time it took to develop the program in the 60s) and then to Mars. This comes on the heels…
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Dark Matter: Warm or Cold?
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This morning I woke to find that most of the UK media outlets (like the Guardian and the BBC) were carrying a story that astronomers, in particular a team lead by Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, had unlocked some of the secrets of Dark Matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up, we think,…
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You already know what I think
There’s no need to comment on: NASA says — and forces all of its public statements to say — that The Big Bang is just a “theory”. (But there’s no lack of opinion out there, at Cosmic Variance, Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, Balloon Juice, Stranger Fruit, Gary Farber, and Mark Kleiman…) The closure of the London…
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What enlightenment?
While I was out last night planning the overthrow of religion with my fellow amoral atheists, the BBC was broadcasting a documentary in which it presented a poll showing that nearly 40% of Britons thought Intelligent Design or Creationism is the best explanation of life on earth. So it appears that Britain, too, is being…
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Science Salaries
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Jupiter research has collated the salaries of scientists in the US. The median salary for “experienced astronomers” is $87K, and for “experienced physicists” it’s the whopping $106k. It would have been nice to see the differences between academic scientists and those working in industry within different fields (although I can’t imagine that there are too…
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Management, Money, Media
Wednesday was a busy day of politicking and schmoozing (as opposed to research and teaching, which is what I actually get paid to do). I spent the morning at a meeting reviewing the current status of developments for the Planck Surveyor satellite here in the UK (Planck will measure the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave…
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One Million Dollars
Remember the news a few weeks ago about “The Million Dollar Homepage” — brainchild of Alex Tew, a student in Nottingham? He sold tiny ads at $1 per pixel and filled a million pixels, and therefore his wallet. The bandwagon-jumping has started: The Homepage4Science has hundreds of thousands of pixels available for “Science Products and…
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Science this week
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Start of a new term this past week, too busy to post much! So, a quick summary: A new collection of Science Blogs, sponsored by the revamped Science-as-lifestyle magazine Seed has gone live. In addition to PZ Myers’ wonderful and oft-cited evolution blog, Pharyngula, the site hosts blogs by cognitive scientists, physicists and science writers…
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