Exo-itement! What’s in an exoplanet name?
I’ve now added it to one of my life goals: name an exoplanet! If you could name a planet, what would you call it? Read More …
Category: space
Of Course I Still Love You!
(featured image credit: SpaceX Instagram) I’ll be on the Space Coast for the rest of the week covering the CRS7 Launch, set to go off this coming Sunday June 28, 10:21EDT*. Follow me on twitter for more regular updates. I can also always recommend watching the streaming feeds of the launch, which are available via SpaceX‘s Read More …
Finding earth like planets from the comfort of our own planet
Gravitational lensing results from the fact that General Relativity describes our universe: mass bends light and can function in effect like a lens, bending light in ways that can be used to infer the mass distribution itself. Gravitational microlensing is due to this same effect, but refers to the detection of objects which are of Read More …
Cold dark matter heats up – a review of a review
This is a review of the recent paper, to be published in Nature, by Andrew Potzen and Fabio Governato Cold dark matter heats up. The paper is itself a review, containing information published in previous studies. I gave a presentation about it at our weekly Astrophysics journal club. The figure in the header is M82, Read More …
NASA Space Apps Challenge 2013
As in 2012, I participated in the NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon, this time as a participant rather than an organizer. Read More …
Packing for Mars
I recently read an excellent book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, a Christmas gift from my brother. Read More …
Humans vs. Robots: Showdown in Space
Some months ago, I reviewed a paper about the efficiency of human space exploration versus robotic space exploration. The question isn’t as simple as you might think. Read More …
NASA Space Apps Challenge
Directly after coming back from Doha to Zürich, I got a quick 6hrs of sleep and took the train to Lausanne where I was a co-organizer of the NASA Space Apps Challenge sponsored by the Swiss Space Center, among others. We had over 30 people at the event, and 3 distinguished guest speakers and judges (including Dr. Prasenjit Saha from my institute, on crowd sourcing gravitational lensing measurements), and an action packed weekend. Read More …
NASA now accepting applications to the Astronaut candidate class of 2013
NASA is now accepting applications to the Astronaut candidate class of 2013.
I’m absolutely applying. Although hoping to venture to space in any case via the private sphere, I still think NASA will best SpaceX to the first mission to Mars and as far as riding the wave into the future goes, that is the place to be. Read More …
Human vs. Vacuum
While Neil Stephenson laments that we have lost our space faring capabilities and sees it as a harbinger of societal decay as a whole, I am getting waves of future shock just from SpaceX’s vaporware. So I’m more optimistic; the basic conflict human vs. vacuum may yet be won as private companies rightly take interest in the final frontier. Also if the powers that be are listening: sign me up for the first trip to Mars. Read More …