archives

Topic Overview

RSS feed for this section
This category contains 17 posts

2012: My Favorite Doomsday Scenarios

By ⋅ December 18, 2012 ⋅ 3 comments

Let’s be serious for a moment: nothing dire is going to happen on December 21st. Rest easy. But in celebration I’ve decided to count down my top five favorite astronomical doomsday scenarios, ordered from most to least plausible.

Gravitational Lensing in the Canary Islands

By ⋅ November 25, 2012 ⋅ One comment

I recently attended a two-week crash course in the “Astrophysical Applications of Gravitational Lensing”. In this post, I overview a few of the ways astronomers employ lensing to study the Universe, from extrasolar planets to distant quasars and large-scale structure.

Stuff Hitting Jupiter: A Retrospective

By ⋅ September 22, 2012 ⋅ One comment

Fact: Jupiter is the best planet. What’s not to like? Big, beautifully stripey, four exciting moons, hurricane three times the size of the Earth, lots of fascinating hydrodynamics…I could go on. But Jupiter isn’t just awesome on its own. It was also the site of the first observed extraterrestrial impact event, and is routinely struck [...]

The verbal GRE: dirty secrets on its role in grad school admission

By ⋅ September 18, 2012 ⋅ 7 comments

For many of you, this September may be a time when, in addition to enjoying the autumnal crunch of leaves underfoot, you begin seriously to consider graduate school in astronomy.  Most application deadlines are in late December or early January, so perhaps the more enterprising folks have even begun to draft essays that tread the [...]

Let’s Lasso Us Some Space Rocks: Asteroid Mining And You

By ⋅ April 29, 2012 ⋅ 5 comments

A coalition of willing billionaires, spaceflight professionals, and scientific advisors under the banner of Planetary Resources have announced their intention to go out there and mine themselves some asteroids. Are they serious? What’s going to happen? What does it mean for astronomers and planetary scientists? What contributions will the scientific community make, and what data do we stand to gain?

The WISE way to deal with 2.7 million images: a public data release

By ⋅ March 19, 2012 ⋅ 3 comments

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data release promises many new and exciting discoveries!

6 Real Planets That Put Science Fiction (And Cracked) To Shame

By ⋅ March 5, 2012 ⋅ 7 comments

I like Cracked. You probably do too. But like that old adage that every newspaper story is true except for the ones for which you happen to have firsthand knowledge, I found their recent article on 6 Real Planets That Put Science Fiction To Shame to be . . . lacking. Not lacking in funny, or facts, but lacking in my favorite planets, and some of the weirdest specimens the universe has yet to offer up. So, without further ado, here are 6 more real planets (plus a bonus) that any sci-fi editor would have rejected as “too out there” just a few decades ago.

Kepler on Trial

By ⋅ February 28, 2012 ⋅ 7 comments

If Kepler does not obtain additional financial support, it will “close its eyes forever.” – Natalie Batalha.

Blasts from the Past: How Astronomers Measure Echoes in Space

By ⋅ December 22, 2011 ⋅ One comment

An overview of how astronomers identify and interpret light echoes.

Toothpaste Comes From Neutrinos: The Origin of Stuff

By ⋅ December 11, 2011 ⋅ 3 comments

You’ve probably heard the old quote from Cosmos that “we are all made of stardust.” But that’s not the whole story. How that dust gets made is an intricate tale that spans a wide range of stellar processes and masses. This is the field of nucleosynthesis, the making of the chemical elements, and it is what allows us to make the simple statement: toothpaste comes from neutrinos.

«Previous —

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to receive updates from Astrobites


Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook

Archives

Our sister site

More Astronomy