this is not a journal title

Okay, here's the skinny on Kepler-62e and f, the latest potential "Earth-like" planets. I'm numbering my points in case you want to refer to them elsewhere.

( Enough detail for a science fan, more detail than most news sources will have, not enough detail for an astronomer. )

So that's my summary. If you want to read other articles, here's the Nature layperson's article which does a good job of not overhyping things. And here's the peer-reviewed journal article in Science (really prestigious!, though my dept has a running gag that 50% of Science and Nature articles turn out to be wrong). I believe the Science article is behind a paywall if you're not at a university, so if you want to read it and can't access it, let me know and I can email it to you.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Am I the only one who is severely bothered by the seasons in "A Game of Thrones"? A big premise of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series is that seasons last multiple years. But, at least in the first book, there isn't any explanation of this given, not even a supernatural/fantasy one.

( Cut for people who don't care about why this bothers me. )

In the end, I think I have to conclude that Martin doesn't know jack about astronomy, even what they teach you about the seasons in elementary school, and just move on and try my best to stop gritting my teeth every time he refers to multi-year seasons.

And I'll leave you with this.

In case you haven't seen it, I've compiled a list of time wasters and flash games for anyone who wants to waste some time. Just added GalaxyZoo to the section of Science things.

Anybody here had to get past an institutional ethics review board for an experiment? I'm writing a sci-fi/fantasy short story that involves human subject research and I'd like to see some documents people have to produce to get past ethics review boards. It doesn't have to be humans, experimenting on mice is fine too. I'm looking for things like forms that you fill out for the board, forms that you create for the subjects to give informed consent, and justification papers that you submit to accompany the paperwork. It doesn't have to have been successful.

If you're willing to show me such things but don't want it public, you can email me at zandperl-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

Thanks!

The Large Hadron Collidor goes online today! This is as exciting as the day Hubble opened its shutters May 20 1990.

Even a lot of sciencey people I know have been asking about what the LHC is, and why the doomsayers are wrong, so here's a little summary of it. Particle accelerators (as is the LHC) are devices that smash things together to find out what's inside them. It's somewhat like if we wanted to learn how cars work, so we did head-on crash tests. While the analogy isn't perfect (no analogy ever is), there are some similarities. For example, while head-on crashes in real life are dangerous, crash tests are completely controlled and are entirely safe. Particle accelerators let us learn about what's going on inside small particles. Older lower energy ones smashed together "normal" particles like electrons and protons and helped us to learn that those are made of quarks. The LHC is a high energy one and we'll be smashing together another type of particle called a hadron, and it will help us learn how the entire universe works, for example gravity and dark matter.

The woo-hoos (aka tinfoil hat wearers) have been saying doom and gloom about the LHC, claiming that the high energy levels will either rip a hole in the entire universe, or else create a black hole that will swallow the Earth. Well, there's really no reason to worry at all. First off, we only call the LHC "high energy" by comparison - it's higher energy than anything people have been able to do before now. However, much higher energy collisions take place every second as cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere. The main difference is that in the LHC these collisions are controlled. As I said to a biologist in another community, being afraid of that is kinda like if people were afraid of scientists culturing e.coli - it happens in the wild, after all, and that's not scary at all.

After a week of heated argument (and "boos") with other countries in Bali, US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky finally agreed to an amended compromise statement. According to the NY Times,

The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required." Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution.

CNN:

The EU wanted an agreement to require developed countries to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. The United States opposes those targets, along with Japan and Canada. The latest draft of the agreement removes the specific figures and instead, in a footnote, references the scientific study that supports them.

BBC:

The US and the EU earlier agreed that industrialised countries would not set firm emissions targets at this stage. The "Bali roadmap" initiates a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol.
...
The document coming out of the meeting, the "Bali roadmap", contains text on emissions cuts, the transfer of clean technology to developing countries, halting deforestation and helping poorer nations protect their economies and societies against impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels and falling crop yields. The roadmap sets the parameters and aims for a further set of negotiations to be finalised by the 2009 UN climate conference, to be held in Denmark.

So as far as I can tell, this is again an agreement with no teeth. The US has agreed to no tangible results whatsoever. It's progress in that we've agreed that Something Needs To Be Done and therefore are acknowledging that global warming is taking place, but all we've agreed to so far is to continue talking. Well, better that than nothing.