The Female Man, Joanna Russ

Over the next five months, I’m reading and reviewing ten pioneering works of science fiction written by women. This is my first pick. Stay tuned for more. The Female Man is a science fiction novel about the interaction of four women from parallel universes, each with different gender roles. These women travel between their respective Read More …

What Makes a Good Science Fiction Story (in my humble mathematical opinion)

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (Edited By Rich Horton) was the ideal selection to quantitatively examine factors which contributed to my having a high opinion of a science fiction or fantasy short story and the range and frequency of these factors considered appropriate for the short fiction market. I read all the Read More …

Back at Caltech: Supermassive Excitement

I’m delighted to be back doing numerical relativity research at Caltech after taking a year leave to deploy to the South Pole with the South Pole Telescope collaboration. I will continue to be involved with the South Pole Telescope data analysis in parallel with my work at Caltech to simulate formation pathways for supermassive black Read More …

Octobrrrrrr

October was dominated by my preparation to leave early at the end of the month to interview to be an Astronaut with NASA. Spoiler alert: I ended up not being able to make it in person and staying instead to mid-November at the South Pole. But I’ll tell this story from the perspective of someone Read More …

A September to Remember!

Postcards have been sent. Final count: US 236 postcards, International 84 postcards. Whew! Please tweet a photo of you with the postcard to @corbett when you receive your postcard, hopefully within the next month. The post office doesn’t have any more opening hours while I’m here, so I’m unable to take any additional requests for Read More …

August August

Do you want a postcard from the South Pole? Reply to this message with your address in the next 5 days and expect one in the mail! We’re about 800 subscribers now, and my goal was 1,000 by the end of my long stay, so feel free to forward to others interested in reading more Read More …

The Ides of July

Last we spoke we were in the middle of a medevac, which was highly successful.  The plane was parket on slats to prevent it from freezing to the ice: Here are a few collected articles on the medevac: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/south-pole-rescue-pilots-it-was-dark-cold-and-no-big-deal/2016/07/05/313c76c4-42ff-11e6-a76d-3550dba926ac_story.html http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/south-pole-rescue-all-in-a-day-s-work-for-kenn-borek-air-crew-1.2974034 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/emergency-rescue-launched-ill-worker-south-pole https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138914 In addition to the patients making it out safely (primary mission), we got Read More …