Search found 617 matches

by jsmaje
Tue Mar 22, 2016 3:29 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Discussion
Topic: Third Thursday Telecons
Replies: 150
Views: 1015258

Re: Third Thursday Telecons

I started to think the computer must be smarter than I am.
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.


King Lear Act 3, scene 4, 17–22
by jsmaje
Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:38 am
Forum: Stardust@home Discussion
Topic: Third Thursday Telecons
Replies: 150
Views: 1015258

Re: Third Thursday Telecons

Dan, re your and your spell-checker's confusion: As I understand it, 'Telecon' is short for telephone conference , while 'Telecom' is short for telephone communications (here in the UK the major phone utility is called 'British Telecom' - BT). The first is more appropriate to this situation, so I su...
by jsmaje
Sat Jan 30, 2016 12:22 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Discussion
Topic: Third Thursday Telecons
Replies: 150
Views: 1015258

Re: Third Thursday Telecons

Thanks for a very interesting Telecon (surely not TelecoM as headed?!), though the Alzheimer's project seems so much more complicated and uncertain then even Stardust. Can we have more info please, from Cornell in particular? A lot is already known about capillary pathology and circulatory disturban...
by jsmaje
Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:15 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Well, looks like RIP Philae: 12 Jan: http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/12/10754190/philae-comet-lander-communication-failure-january-2016 25 Jan: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/goodbye-philae Good try though, and no doubt others will follow. Mother Rosetta has already performed brilliantly, and it se...
by jsmaje
Wed Dec 09, 2015 12:01 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

A full year on since Philae's landing on 67P, this is the latest news, including videos made to represent both first contact and its subsequent bounces across bizarre landscapes. Also an all-too-brief recording of its drilling operation once stable. Sounds pretty solid to me, utterly unlike the slus...
by jsmaje
Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:46 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Discussion
Topic: Third Thursday Telecons
Replies: 150
Views: 1015258

Re: Third Thursday Telecons

Good news about the tile and foils. But I'll have to get my eyes screwed back in (having had cataracts and lens implants, but with complications, so still not quite right). Good also to have confirmed that basic research like S@H can have applications elsewhere, like the Cornell project. As it happe...
by jsmaje
Tue Sep 15, 2015 12:46 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Indeed, Dan. Besides your NASA July link, this is the best of the latest public articles re Ceres I can find (bright spots & conical mountain) : http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/marc-rayman/20150822-dawn-journal-mapping-ceres.html (22 Aug ’15). And the very latest re Philae, last heard...
by jsmaje
Thu Sep 03, 2015 1:37 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Mike, yes, Iceland is a wonderfully crazy place, made entirely from intermittent volcanic activity due to a mantle hot-spot coincidentally located on the mid-Atlantic ridge, and home to ~9,000,000 puffins (let alone all the other sea birds), compared to just ~500,000 sheep and only ~350,000 people. ...
by jsmaje
Thu Aug 27, 2015 11:44 am
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Some of the latest at http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/: complex organic molecules, cosmic fireworks, thermal stresses etc.
by jsmaje
Sun Jul 19, 2015 11:47 am
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

I got it wrong - 67P's perihelion is much sooner than November. It's just 3 1/2 weeks away in fact, on 13th August.
I'll be in Iceland then, on a Scientific American lecture cruise actually, so hoping the news on that day reaches there.
John
by jsmaje
Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:10 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Rosetta acknowledged NASA's achievement by snapping Pluto (from a distance of five billion kilometres) on the very day - 14th July - of the 'New Horizons' probe's close flypast: Hello Pluto . Meanwhile, Philae-Rosetta-Earth communications remain erratic, but Philae does still seem at least partially...
by jsmaje
Wed Jul 08, 2015 2:08 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Some of the latest: The current communication issue. Meanwhile, 'massive sinkholes' found. And regarding those recent claims of evidence for ‘life’ on Philae, see no-alien-life , and no, the Philae probe has not discovered life on comet 67p . By the way Chandra Wickramasinghe , responsible for the i...
by jsmaje
Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:00 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

And now, multiple bright spots have started appearing on 67P, most likely water ice exposed/melting/sublimating, to my mind similar-looking to those on Ceres (which albeit 3 times further from the sun is larger and maybe has a warmer core): Water ice detected on comet surface , and Instrument maps c...
by jsmaje
Sun Jun 21, 2015 12:17 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Thanks Dr Westphal for addressing my questions posed above on the latest telecon . I'd suspected there could be no certain answers yet, particularly given your comment regarding the size-limitation of the analytic instruments, to which one can add that Rosetta/Philae were launched 10 years ago , hav...
by jsmaje
Mon Jun 15, 2015 12:39 pm
Forum: Stardust@home Community
Topic: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success
Replies: 32
Views: 82962

Re: Rosetta/Philae spacecraft success

Fantastic news, Philae awakes ! It's now getting sufficient sunlight as Comet 67P approaches the sun (as of today ~130 million miles away and nearing the earth-sun distance; live data here ). Loads of gas and dust are now spewing from the comet (observed by the accompanying Rosetta orbiter ), so Phi...