It is a matter of great delight that with the tools of our mathematical minds we may come to grasp the ineffable workings of the cosmos.
I therefore know that you will join me in rejoicing: that most alarming of non-Euclidean geometries, described (and rendered!), thanks to an assidious worker in general relativity. 
Possible Bubbles of Spacetime ( Read more... )

So the Denisovans get more and more interesting.

A shortish Ars Technica piece leads off: a new, improved sequencing technique has allowed the Denisovan genome to be sequenced at up to 20x that of the Neandertal genome, making them our new best-known cousin.
And then John Hawks, whom I particularly trust as speaker-for-geneticists in this area, gives ( Read more... )

So, as might be expected given my workplace, there was a live feed set up on a big screen for the MSL landing and we all came to watch, since it was the middle of the afternoon. And there was the worry, and heart-in-mouth tension, and hope, watching where all that can be hoped is that the right thing was done, by a lot of people trying to be very ( Read more... )

There are rosellas chuckling right outside my window, and the day is soft, grey and cool.

My poem 'Orpheus in Orbit', a homage to Cassini, has been accepted by Ideomancer. 55 flybys of Titan and counting; may there be many more yet. Have a photo from the protagonist. (and enjoyably readable journal ref to poem).


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Five whole days without internets; update later. I got past the backlog of email and -

Margaret Mahy has died.
Sally Ride has died.

The world is a little less full of wonder and joy and delight in exploration and creativity.

I never met Ride. She was one of the early generation of astronauts, and more recent people like Eileen Collins meant more to me ( Read more... )

Happy Matariki for all for whom the Pleiades are rising; happy New Year and harvest-moon coming out of the sliver-darkness of today.


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I definitely anticipate all kinds of things being done with this.

Oldest Cave Paintings May Be Creations of Neandertals, Not Modern Humans

And I can't wait to see the results of this new dating method for the other cave paintings worldwide, particularly in Australia. Every so often something here like a hearth gets dated at close to 100k years; it ( Read more... )

My poem 'Anvil-Mistress' is now online at Ideomancer. This one was sparked by the work of colleagues who play with diamond anvils: the diamond layers in the ice-giant planets are predicted from their internal pressures. The beach of jewel-green sand can be most easily visited in Hawaii, though there are others around the world.

...that concludes ( Read more... )

My lengthily-titled poem 'The First Flute, Played in Enceladus's Light: Five Voices' is now up at the newly reborn Jabberwocky. The heat flow measurements are from Cassini, the cribbing is from The Waste Land, and the inspiration from sovay's soirée here.

I learned today that Gerard Manley Hopkins published a number of letters in Nature on the skies seen ( Read more... )

There is a hardcopy book of poems with an utterly gorgeous cover that has been brought into the world by the inspired rose_lemberg. It is chock-ful of wonderful writers. My spacesuit poem 'Seamstress' also happens to be in there. I understand Amazon have it for $10. Those who have its just-shipped paperyness in-hand declare it to be 94 pages of beauty.


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