♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

♪♫ no worries I understand and forgive u ♪♫

i think some reasonably well respected authorities had isolated a number similar-to-but-not-necessarily-exactly 7 fundamental universal constants that result in the stability we currently enjoy

can something be "against the run of play" when it happens 1 minute into kick off?

― adorable cheese inscription (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 9 December 2009 20:51 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sounds like a question for ♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 20:53 (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

*shrug*

which commentator made this point?

x-posts :D

fwiw science has already hit a brick wall, physics hasn't really advanced at all since the middle of the 20th century, for ex.

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also Dawkins is a deluded, irritable jerk he's not converting anybody as far as I can tell

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

damn cant believe a whole 50 years have gone by without our understanding of the universe changing, thats never happened before

― max, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

physics has not advanced *at all*?!

― harbl, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm telling caek

― harbl, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't have a question but I just wanted to say I always assumed caek was a woman until reading this thread.

u should start wearing dockers caek

lollll

fwiw science has already hit a brick wall, physics hasn't really advanced at all since the middle of the 20th century, for ex.

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, if you change this to "since 1990" and "physics" to "the one bit of theoretical physics that had a really good 50 year run from 1900, and which liberal arts graduates thing is cool, but the rest of physics ignores", then sure.

p.s. i do wear dockers, no homo!

is ur name pronounced cake or kike?

don't think i've ever heard it said out loud, but cake i guess. it's etymology is kind of pathetic and date's back to pre-lolcat 1998.

dear caek,

what is the big news in astronomy this week?

the news is basically RIP UK:

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/british-science.html (lol at "left disatisfied")

http://andyxl.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-axeman-cometh/ (see the comments threads for some fun. "space" here means solar system exploration, as distinct from "astronomy", which is what i do.)

http://pacrowther.staff.shef.ac.uk/stfc.html (as you can see, yesterday was not a good day)

caek--how rad is this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&feature=player_embedded#

Never mind that, how cool is this proposal to send a boat to explore the seas of Titan?

Dear caek,

Clyde Tombaugh is a local hero here in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Do you have any opinions on the guy?

thanks,

Abbott in NM

max, the extent of anthropogenic radio signals is amazing. i love that.

the boat to the seas of titan seems like good show business. it's not a nasa idea though, and it sounds a bit retarded though, so who knows if it will ever happen. it would be cool though!

i had not heard of clyde tombaugh until your message abbott, so thank you for filling in that lacuna in my knowledge! he seems pretty cool. NM is still one of the world centres for astronomy: http://www.sdss.org/background/site.html.

hey, what it your jam for 2009-02-09?

great question! it's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSMDgVr3YMA

that is beautiful.

totes.

ysi: http://www.mediafire.com/?yntoytonmwz

oh thank you! is the capsoul label comp worth buying? i am q tempted to go out and see if i can find a copy.

a thousand times yes, imo : )

dear caek, iyo is this a decent example of astronomical reporting?

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1003/02comet/

will read properly tomorrow but,

a) booming last paragraph
b) ctrl-f poppage : (

hey great article louis!

:D morelike sloppy seconds amirite, and ty! ty max as well!

anyway yeah our class was offered the optional task of writing-up some press-releases and those of us who chose to do so did a pretty good job imo - the 4 or 5 above mine (i.e. posted more recently) are by classmates. my press-release was particularly fun to flesh out. the work of astronomers = srsly rad. heavens how will we photograph this comet we trepanned earlier oh hai there's trusty ol' Stardust just orbitin' like it ain't no thang

yeah pretty good, i lolled at the last paragraph tbh

*puts fingers in mouth, whistles at Stardust, who obediently trots into aligned convergence course with some darn comet*

(and ty harbl! sorry i shall stop befouling ♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫ with Lonest Ranger fanfic)

NASA's unfished business

(congrats lj)

Hahaha! I read this earlier, chuckled at the final para, thought 'that's interesting stuff', didn't spot the author's name - and thought no more of it 'til now. I can think of no higher praise.

XD you've made my evening! well, you and the HOOM thread.

This may sound like faint praise to others, but as you presumably know by now, it's not: although I don't know the mission in detail, there are no errors in the article as far as I can tell, and I actually learnt a bunch of stuff!

"The American Astronomical Society announced" ... but the AAS is basicaly just a professional organization (pensions, academic politics, outreach, etc.) They aren't running the mission. Would it be more accurate/give credit where due to say NASA announced it?

I have some comments on the prose, but I'm no more qualified than anyone else to give them (less qualified if you ask max). They basically boil down to: try to write more clearly, don't say "thus", no need to use the passive voice, etc. If you can get hold of a copy of "The Complete Plain Words" then it is a dope British English version of Strunk and White that I highly recommend.

if i leave astronomy then the first thing i will do is write a crazy DFW-style feature about the politics of international observational astronomy, and particularly how the U.S. and Europe chose where to put their forthcoming giant telescopes.

p.s. you picked a really really interesting topic by the way

haha that's true, i didn't know if it was just me. it is a bit wordy in places but a lot less wordy than a normal lj post so i saw it as already a giant improvement ; )
xposts

i love the way LJ has to adjust his style in pretty much the opposite direction of everyone else when he writes for print rather than ilx

tried to read that article, fell asleep three times. and i'm at work. rubbish.

tips for again- include more zings, references to the work of ocean colour scene 1995-7, and ws pics.

yeah I also noticed the wordiness but it was a booming article overall

guys this dude will never learn with all of this unrequited positivity. our man is definitely a 'tough love' responder, see how SB worked for him?

if i leave astronomy then the first thing i will do is write a crazy DFW-style feature about the politics of international observational astronomy, and particularly how the U.S. and Europe chose where to put their forthcoming giant telescopes.

― caek, Wednesday, 3 March 2010 11:24 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this is really interesting! i read something about europe's latest launch to stash a telescope at the second Langoustine* Point on the far side of the Earth to the Sun - geostationary and thus glareless

*the precise name may have slipped my mind

lagrange, methinks. (i always have trouble with the idea of the lagrange points anywhere other than between the two objects.)

lagrangian, yeah

the telescopes i'm talking about (the european extremely large telescope and the u.s.-led thirty metre telescope) are ground telescopes. the choice of site (morocco vs. china vs. chile vs. spain vs. hawaii vs. etc.) is worth billions (and is a billion-dimensional optimization problem) which no one will go on the record about until it's finished.

they are massive btw, e.g. ELT

http://www.roe.ac.uk/elt/graphics/elt-telescope.jpg

why are not all telescopes space telescopes? they plainly kick so much more ass. but perhaps they are too expensive, and/or the astronomers get a kick out of actually looking down the telescopes. or are they all telescopes which deal in non-visible wavelengths these days :(

there are two reasons to work in space:

1) the atmosphere is strongly absorpant at a number of important wavelengths (gamma, X, UV, etc.)

2) the atmosphere blurs images

point 1) is a showstopper. if you want to detect x-rays you need to work in space. there are a bunch of instruments like these. they don't make v. photogenic images, so they don't get a lot of press, but they do great science.

if you're working at optical wavelengths (i.e. you could in principle observe from the ground) point 2) can these days be worked around from the ground with adaptive optics, which involves laser beams and shit. you can't quite get the high resolutions you get in space, but you can get pretty close. and you can do it for a _tiny_ fraction of the price. and you can build telescopes with _preposterously_ big mirrors, which is of course not an option in space. e.g. the elt has a 42m mirror. hubble has a 2m mirror. that means the elt will collect light at ~400 times faster than hubble, so it can observe fainter objects in less time. so in many circumstances, the ground is preferable.

the hubble has obviously been great, and it's put dinner on a lot of people's tables, but if you had $10bn or whatever it cost, and your goal was to make as many great discoveries as possible, you would not build a space telescope. of course that was not nasa's goal, which is fine.

ahh ok, I knew the atmosphere was a hindrance to many wavelengths but yeah they can adjust image resolution on their fancy computers and whatnot. don't you need space telescopes to pick up the most distant non-pulsar objects? generally the most jawdropping photos of space (as on that other thread) come from space telescopes too. what things tend to emanate x-rays?

will they be capable of firing an ELT into space, do you think, within our lifetimes? i appreciate that hubble was a PR thing to some extent, and also a political statement

also I would like to know more about dark matter :) because if 75% of the universe is made of it then it's pretty important right

dark matter is basically just a best guess because iconic minds of astrophysics got their sums wrong but can't admit it.