Blog Profile / Systemic

The Frozen Earth

More than a decade ago, Fred Adams and I wrote a paper that wallowed into the slow motion disasters that can potentially unfold if another star or stars passes through the solar system. Here’s the abstract: Planetary systems that encounter passing stars can experience severe orbital disruption, and the efficiency of this process is enhanced [...]

The Tau Ceti Six

Tau Ceti has street cred. Lying only 11.9 light years away, it is the second-closest single G-type star. It’s older than the Sun, and photometrically quiet. It’s naked-eye visible from both hemispheres, ensuring VIP seating at any SETI fundraiser. And so what about planets? It’s been clear for a few years that Tau Ceti has [...]

The MMEN

Galileo’s unveiling of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto is unarguably shortlisted for the most important astronomical discovery of all time. The Galilean satellites constitute a planetary system in miniature, and their clockwork presence is a centerpiece of Newton’s De mundi systemate. Show More Summary

The Crescent Neptune

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a reporter related to a story that will feature favorite space photos: We’re hoping some space-themed photo comes to mind, either a picture taken by a space telescope, or by yourself from your own backyard, or anything else that relates to space. We’d also welcome any [...]

Alpha Centauri B b

Image Credit: ESO. I had the good fortune of being asked to sit in as an external commentator for the ESO’s media briefing on the Geneva Team’s discovery of Alpha Centauri B b. It was startling to see the amount of interest on the line. All of the familiar names from the science journalism community [...]

The Pythagorean Problem

Image source: Drew Detweiler The Pythagorean version of the gravitational three-body problem is very simple to state. Assume that Newtonian Gravity is correct. Place three point bodies of masses 3, 4, and 5 at the vertices of a 3-4-5 right triangle, with each body at rest opposite the side of its respective length. What happens? [...]

The latest anomalies

The announcement of new transiting hot-Jupiter type planets, such as WASP 79b or HAT-P-38b, by the ground-based surveys no longer generates press releases, but the march of discovery does give us an ever-clearer view of the planetary census. Yesterday, Matteo Crismani turned in his UCSC Senior Thesis. In addition to the results that we published [...]

11 December, 2117

Full-size (1536×2048).gif images: one, two. We went up to Mount Hamilton yesterday afternoon, and, as was the case for everyone who saw the transit, it was a unique conjunction of time, place, and circumstance. The Lick Observatory staff deployed the historic 36-inch refractor to extraordinary advantage. Rather than project the image, which has the [...]

once in a lifetime

Headed out to Pluto

Time slips by. It’s now been more than six years since launch and more than five years since the New Horizons probe got its gravitational assist from Jupiter. I looked back through the oklo.org archives and found a post covering the event. One day, one hour, and nine minutes ago, the New Horizons spacecraft sailed [...]

line of sight

The ring of geosynchronous satellites and the global web of submarine cables constitute two of planet Earth’s most remarkable physical features. The moment that I press Publish on this web log post, the diagram just below will be sent — encoded in modulated light — on a profusion of undersea journeys from the Bluehost servers [...]

multiple transits

Enceladus, Dione, Titan, Mimas and Saturn. On Tuesday, Venus reaches its maximum elongation of 46 degrees from the Sun. Thereafter, its angular separation from the Sun steadily decreases until June 6th, when it undergoes transit. Transits of Venus are newsworthy because they are rare. Venus’ orbit is inclined by 3.4 degrees relative to the ecliptic, [...]

some real alpha

Kraftwerk will be playing eight shows in April at the MOMA, but all eight sold out well before I even found out about it. Getting clued in at this late date is a bit like finding out about a new hot Jupiter orbiting a 14th magnitude star — given that its already March 2012, it’s [...]

lights in the sky

It’s hard to miss Jupiter and Venus in the early evening sky right now, and later this week, on March 15th at 10:37 UT, they will reach an impressive conjunction, with Venus near maximum elongation (separated by 46 degrees from the Sun) and Jupiter only 3.3 degrees from Venus. At the time of conjunction, Venus [...]

Data Graphics

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Brewster Kahle’s archiving efforts. In addition to founding the Wayback Machine to catalog historical snapshots of the near-complete Internet, Kahle is also Noah’s Arking print books in forty-foot shipping containers. Show More Summary

Get the money

It’s likely that everyone who reads this site has already seen the new Kepler candidates paper. Drawing on 16 months of photometric data, and importantly, on significant improvements to the reduction pipeline, it gives details on 2,323 planet candidates. The cumulative planet candidate table, in particular, makes for interesting reading. In true Gordon Gekko style, [...]

Planets orbiting Barnard’s Star

Hey! Did you see the New York Times article about the discovery of two gas giant planets orbiting Barnard’s Star? The subtly out-of-date fonts are really the only indication that the above article, which was printed on April 19th, 1963, is nearly a half century old. Certainly, the blandly uninformative expert commentary and the worn-smooth [...]

Regular systems of satellites

Following the 1846 discovery of Neptune by Urbain J. J. LeVerrier of France and Johann Galle of Germany, the British astronomical establishment — the Rev. James Challis, the Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy, and Sir John Herschel — found themselves in rather hot water. Diffidence, seeming indifference and miscommunications had deprived Britain of a very [...]

Concordance?

In a logarithmic sense, the largest gap in mass among the planets in our solar system lies between the Earth (which has, unsurprisingly, one Earth mass) and Uranus, which is 14.536 times more massive than Earth. One of the most interesting facets of the ongoing detection of extrasolar planets is that we’re now getting real [...]

An upcoming event

Image Source. Sometimes, you just get these serendipitous moments. Yesterday, in the parking lot of the grocery store, there was a U-haul rental truck sporting a remarkably sophisticated graphic that explains the Manson impact structure in Iowa. When I got home, I went to the U-haul website, and discovered that they have a clear and [...]