The Blob

Jupiter by Cassini-Huygens

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5177

A Low Mass for Mars from Jupiter’s Early Gas-driven migration, Kevin J. Walsh, Alessando Morbidelli, Sean N. Raymond, David P. O’Brien and Avi M. Mandell, Published in Nature

Jupiter and Saturn formed in a few million years (Haisch et al. 2001) from a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk, and were susceptible to gas-driven migration of their orbits on timescales of only ~100,000 years (Armitage 2007). Hydrodynamic simulations show that these giant planets can undergo a two-stage, inward-then-outward, migration (Masset & Snellgrove 2001, Morbidelli & Crida 2007, Pierens & Nelson 2008). The terrestrial planets finished accreting much later (Klein et al. 2009), and their characteristics, including Mars’ small mass, are best reproduced by starting from a planetesimal disk with an outer edge at about one astronomical unit from the Sun (Wetherill 1978, Hansen 2009) (1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance). Here we report simulations of the early Solar System that show how the inward migration of Jupiter to 1.5 AU, and its subsequent outward migration, lead to a planetesimal disk truncated at 1 AU; the terrestrial planets then form from this disk over the next 30-50 million years, with an Earth/Mars mass ratio consistent with observations. Scattering by Jupiter initially empties but then repopulates the asteroid belt, with inner-belt bodies originating between 1 and 3 AU and outer-belt bodies originating between and beyond the giant planets. This explains the significant compositional differences across the asteroid belt. The key aspect missing from previous models of terrestrial planet formation is the substantial radial migration of the giant planets, which suggests that their behaviour is more similar to that inferred for extrasolar planets than previously thought.

See also : http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3622

http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0007

Verner Suomi NPP - NPOESS - Blue Marble Earth 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verner_E._Suomi

http://library.ssec.wisc.edu/SuomiWebsite/index.html

Hugh Mann, being a sensitive and compassionate post Sputnik guy living and studying in the sixties and seventies in a progressive metropolitan city state containing a world class research university, remembers Verner E. Suomi quite well, and fondly recalls the early days in the tall Engineering Research Building on the University of Wisconsin engineering campus in sunny frigid downtown Madison, Wisconsin in the United States of America!

Tiros First Full Earth Mosaic

Dr. Frankenstein Meets Hugh Mann - Wolf Man

This is Hugh Mann, Wolf Man, reporting live from der Rathskeller at the Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, in sunny, frigid downtown Madison, Wisconsin, where world renowned space architect Dr. Herman Frankenstein Munster has gathered with the various ragtag members of his unemployed working group and their numerous and very lovely and buxom Bavarian space groupies, in order to smoke and drink and discuss their newest crackpot idea to revive the dead, conquer the undead and create an army of robotic zombie monsters to suck the blood of the Moon and otherwise stumble around randomly in search of any other kindred spirits and bypassing asteroids in order to further their nefarious schemes of global submission and total world domination. Pretty cool, huh? Totally far out!

You can read all about it HERE.

http://webpages.charter.net/tsiolkovsky/Architecture.pdf

Oh no … a tremendous argument has just broken out between Dr. Frankenstein and some of his assistants over the best way to enslave the zombie satellites so that they can calmly direct the mad ramblings of the giant Frankenstein spaceships. Waiter! Excuse me, Miss!

More beer here! And cigars all around! Thank you! Thank you!

Mars From Hubble Space Telescope

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/

Dr. Leonard McCoy - Star Trek Starship Enterprise Physician

Phobos Grunt has died. Oh … the Machinery!

Planetary Society Meeting

Oh … The Humanity!

Now that we have a firm understanding of the energy scales of relevance to the pairing glue problem in the cuprate high temperature superconductors, we can proceed to the literature without the hassle and embarrassment of … ahem … excess baggage. One is immediately led to the PhD thesis of a one David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Electronic Excitations in Lanthanum Cuprates Measured by Resonant Inelastic X-ray
Scattering, Phd Thesis of David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto.

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/24344/6/Ellis_David_S_201003_PhD_thesis.pdf

Also published as an Arxiv paper :

http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3044

Electronic Structure of Doped Lanthanum Cuprates Studied with Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering, D. S. Ellis, Jungho Kim, Harry Zhang, J. P. Hill, Genda Gu, Seiki Komiya, Yoichi Ando, D. Casa, T. Gog and Young-June Kim

And don’t forget those crazy Chinese! Never missing an opportunity to demonstrate their clear technical and intellectual superiority, they’re already on it!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0342

Visualizing the atomic scale electronic structure of the Ca₂CuO₂Cl₂ Mott insulator, Cun Ye, Peng Cai, Runze Yu, Xiaodong Zhou, Wei Ruan, Qingqing Liu, Changqing Jin and Yayu Wang

And a group in France has already explored a simple model of such a scenario.

Real-Space Pairing through Charge Transfer Excitons in High-Tc Cuprates, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc and Antoine Villesuzanne, Inorg. Chem., 2008, 47 (24), pp 11958–11964

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic801266q

Solid state chemistry for connecting the pieces of the high-Tc superconducting puzzle?, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc NS Antoine Villesuzanne, Solid State Sciences, Volume 12, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 691-698, International Symposium on Structure-Property Relationships in Solid-State Materials

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1293255809002246

Dr. Lizardo

This is Hugh Mann, Internet Physicist, reporting on what has to be the most unreported physics breakthrough of 2011, the worldwide meltdown of the condensed matter physics community upon the recent announcement on the condensed matter physics Arxiv of the unambiguous experimental identification of the pairing glue in the copper oxide (cuprate) superconductors to be the multi electron volt optical charge transfer excitation (exciton) of the parent insulating compound. Physicists worldwide have suddenly been struck dumb and speechless upon the sudden realization that their pants and legs are filled and covered with their own shit, with the instantaneous recognition that the unretarded, high energy, local pairing of electronically mediated strongly coupled bosons (bipolarons) is, in fact, a reality, and that twenty years of hard work on their own theories must be flushed down the toilet. This is truly a sad day for physics, people. It’s no wonder nobody besides Hugh Mann is publicly commenting on this result.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0737

Direct observation of real-time oscillations of the Cooper-pairs condensate in a high-Tc superconductor, B. Mansart, J. Lorenzana, M. Scarongella, M. Chergui and F. Carbone

http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3028

Scaling of Tc max with the charge-transfer energy in hole-doped cuprates, Cédric Weber, Chuck-Hou Yee, Kristjan Haule and Gabriel Kotliar

http://meeting.aps.org/Meeting/MAR12/Event/159625

Pluto - The Tenth Planet

Big Black Doofus Astronomer Wannabe Picks Fight With Purple Dwarf. Dwarf Wins.

It’s not very smart to piss off a dwarf. They’ve got little friends.

Pluto – Planet of the Year, Decade and Century.

Inner Solar System Diagram

This paper has been out for a couple of days, but finally the press has picked up on it.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3781

The Population of Natural Earth Satellites, Mikael Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke, Accepted for Publication in Icarus.

We have for the first time calculated the population characteristics of the Earth’s irregular natural satellites (NES) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. The steady-state NES size frequency and residence time distributions were determined under the dynamical influence of all the massive bodies in the solar system (but mainly the Sun, Earth, and Moon) for NEOs of negligible mass. To this end, we compute the NES capture probability from the NEO population as a function of the latter’s heliocentric orbital elements and combine those results with the current best estimates for the NEO size-frequency and orbital distribution. At any given time there should be at least one NES of 1 meter diameter orbiting the Earth. The average temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO) an object that makes at least one revolution around the Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes (2.88 ± 0.82) rev around the Earth during a capture event that lasts (286 ± 18) d. We find a small preference for capture events starting in either January or July. Our results are consistent with the single known natural TCO, 2006 RH₁₂₀ , a few meter diameter object that was captured for about a year starting in June 2006. We estimate that about 0.1% of all meteors impacting the Earth were TCOs.

See also:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2427

Search Strategies for Trojan Asteroids in the Inner Solar System, M. Todd, D. M. Coward and M. G. Zadnik, Accepted for Publication in Planetary and Space Science.

Trojan asteroids are minor planets that share the orbit of a planet about the Sun and librate around the L4 or L5 Lagrangian points of stability. They are important because they carry information on early Solar System formation, when collisions between bodies were more frequent. Discovery and study of terrestrial planet Trojans will help constrain models for the distribution of bodies and interactions in the inner Solar System. We present models that constrain optimal search areas, and strategies for survey telescopes to maximize the probability of detecting inner planet Trojans. We also consider implications for detection with respect to the Gaia satellite, and limitations of Gaia’s observing geometry.

America – A Horse With No Name – Warner Brothers – 1972

Or is that America – A Nation With No Hugh Mann …

Microbial Community Living In Gypsum Crust

http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/2765/making-sense-of-mars-methane

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2011AM/finalprogram/abstract_194524.htm

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1151/

A massive gas cloud gets sucked into a black hole. And right in our back yard!

How can you beat that? No, wait, Andromeda is going to eat the Milky Way!

Check out the newspaper headlining of this story. Some funny stuff in there.

And Hugh Mann is not The Man.

Stratolaunch Launch Vehicle - Carrier Aircraft - Booster

Stratolaunch Systems – A Paul G. Allen Project

http://stratolaunch.com/

Six jumbo jet engines on a fixed structural wing built by Scaled Composites, with all of the fuel in the outboard pontoons, and a 500,000 lb. Falcon 5 booster with outboard corner and center engines installed – held by a specialized horizontal mating and integration adapter.

One also has to wonder whether they are going to try and cross feed the main rocket engines off the fuel in the pylons for roughly double the added extra thrust on liftoff, shortening up the runway length as well. That should open it up to a few more airstrips.

That’s two aluminum carbon fiber composite gooses for the price of one!

Beat that Howard Hughes!