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Here is another off the wall blog. You won't find any physics in here... Is GenY lost? In a recent NYT article, Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz, argue “sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes and Americans—particularly young Americans—have become risk-aversive and sedentary. University of New Hampshire management professor Paul Harvey says, GenY has a “very inflated sense of self” that leads to “unrealistic expectations” and “chronic disappointment.” If you want more silly expressions from old farts, read this article: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140713132101-1011572-is-gen-y-becoming-the-new-lost-generation?trk=tod-home-art-list-small_1 As for me, I identify very strongly with GenX; the previous 'loser' generation. In fact, generation X invented 'loser.'... read more ❯

Members of the GPI team recently attended the biennial SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference. This time it was in Montreal at the end of June, and you can check out #SPIEastro to find out more about the general topics covered at the conference. After the conference, the presenters write manuscripts on their work and these are published in the Proceedings of SPIE. Last night we had a GPI "paper splash" of SPIE pre-prints at the Astro-ph ArXiv. There are 18 of them -- that's a lot of work from the GPI team!... read more ❯

I've been thinking about how to make a powerful weapon based on a relatively weak light transmitter which can be tuned in frequency. This could be the basis of what, in Star Trek, they call photon torpedos. The physics principle behind this kind of weapon is called "dispersion." We commonly talk about oil "dispersing" on the surface of water, or pollen dispersing in the wind, but in physics we use this word to mean something very special and also very interesting. Try this thought experiment. Take everyone on Earth (7 billion) and have them all stand side by side on a... read more ❯

You've probably heard the word "photon" before, as in "photon torpedoes" popularized in the original Star Trek. "Photons" are what physicists call "light" or electromagnetic radiation, when it displays it's particle-like behavior. Think of the light from the Sun. The Sun (~6000 K) and emits light over a large range of frequencies. In space, satellites measure x-ray emissions, on Earth our eyes are sensitive to optical radiation and a radio-telescope like SETI Institute's ATA see's the Sun as an extremely bright object -- the Sun emits radio waves too. We don't often think about radio waves or x-rays as being made of... read more ❯

A piece of Mars: Never mind the 4 m (13 ft) boulders that have fallen downslope, or the rippled sandy surfaces here. Look at those bright swirls in the ground. Those are the former interiors of sand dunes, which were trapped and incorporated into the bedrock (like dinosaur bones, but without so much rawr). The wind has been blowing sand around on Mars for a long, long time. (HiRISE ESP_036436_2645, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

This is part 3 and final installment in the Your Opinion Doesn't Matter blog. Please read parts 1 and 2 for context. In part 2 I divided spurious opinions regarding topics in SETI into 3 categories: science-free, anti-scientific, and convicted statements of the "self evident." Here we exemplify the last category. Convicted Opinions that are not so Self-Evident Steven Hawking is the epitome of scientific hero. He overcame dramatic life challenges to become a peerless leader in the progress of general relativity theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. When it comes to theoretical gravitation, I'm not fit to tie his bootlaces. But he... read more ❯

This blog extends part 1 of a blog with the same title, and is followed by part 3. Albeit imperfect, the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) tests a scientific question (hypothesis), "Did intelligent life get started anywhere else in the universe?" This a scientific question (not a matter of opinion), because it has a definitive answer (yes or no) that can be tested by observing nature (i.e. with our telescope). "Is there a God?" also has a definitive answer, but it is not scientific because we have no hope that observations of nature can answer this question. The God question... read more ❯

Ha ha! The title should garner angry crowds bearing sharpened spoons*, chanting before my office window in Mountain View. *Because spoons are the only tools their caretakers will allow. Not so seriously, a hilarious article in the tabloid, Daily Mail, is illustrative, and reminds me of the famous "heavy boots[1]" questionnaire: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2622311/Were-not-ready-meet-aliens-Humans-stupid-religious-cope-extra-terrestrial-life-claims-expert.html. Even the link is funny! An apparently reputable journal recently published results of interviews with 116 college undergraduates describing their scientific "opinions" about SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). We leave aside the societal relevance of opinions from 18-23 year olds who've never worked a day in their life! (Uh oh, I hear... read more ❯

Consider this post, which firmly states that proto-Earth Kepler 186-f has a 50% chance of harboring technologically equipped intelligent life: http://www.science20.com/quantum_gravity/blog/a_better_than_5050_chance_kepler186f_has_technological_life-134555 Although about science, this blog is primarily lacking in real science. By my reckoning, even the most optimistic assumptions indicate a probability of << 1/1000. But that is the topic of another blog. Here I'm exposing greater detail about a secret experiment conducted at the SETI Institute in March and April of... read more ❯

A piece of Mars: This shows the location of the rover Opportunity as of late March, 2014. It's been trolling around the rim of Endeavour crater. Just inside the crater, there are some large ripples (the biggest is ~10 m wide) that have formed from erosional scours in dark sediments on the crater interior walls. The rover won't ever go over there, but maybe it will climb to the other side of the rim and take some nice images of them. (HiRISE ESP_035909_1775, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯