Tag Archives: NASA

by

Space is for everyone, except if you don’t fit the gender binary

[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ]

NASA’s Embarrassing Pronouns Fumble

Employees are frustrated and mad that a pilot program meant to foster inclusivity was abruptly ended.

for Slate:

The gesture from the leadership at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland was simple: as of a few weeks ago, employees could add their pronouns to their official identification for meetings. On calls and chats, the information would appear alongside their names and internal ID number. The addition of a formal field for pronouns was a show of support to gender minorities and their allies.

But it didn’t last. On Monday of this week, representatives from NASA Headquarters called a meeting to abruptly end the new features in their system, which they said had been rolled out as part of a pilot program. Officials told Goddard employees who attended the meeting that they hadn’t determined if including pronouns was appropriate in a professional context, and needed to consider broader impacts of displaying the pronouns, an explanation that left many feeling frustrated.

Read the rest at Slate…

by

What’s the deal with Google’s quantum computer?

[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ]

Google and NASA Team Up on Quantum Computer

The next generation of computers is a few years off, but it’s pretty damn cool

For The Daily Beast:

It’s like no computer you’ve ever seen, nor are you likely to ever own. It promises speed and the ability to tackle problems ordinary computers can’t handle.

The machine is the D-Wave 2X, and the only working model outside the company is in the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. A joint project between Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association, the lab will test-drive the 2X on some sticky problems in high-powered computing.

The 2X is a type of quantum computer, which means it uses devices that exploit quantum physics to replace transistors and other components of ordinary computers. The quantum nature of the inner workings in theory should make the computer solve problems much faster than anything else available, making it useful for a wide range of applications. While there are no fully quantum computers out yet, the 2X is the closest yet—assuming it works as advertised. [Read the rest at The Daily Beast…]

by

The week in review (September 1-7)

A full-size wooden mock-up of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). [Credit: moi]

A full-size wooden mock-up of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). [Credit: moi]

The last week was especially busy because I attended the launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. I will have a lot to say about that launch, LADEE, and related topics later on, but suffice to say it was a great experience — increased because it was my first successful rocket launch viewing. (I attempted to watch the Antares rocket test in April, but that was scrubbed at the last minute and I couldn’t attend the rescheduled launch.) So, here’s my very small list of articles published this week.

  • Turbulence ahead: Interstellar wind changes direction, blows faster (Ars Technica): The Solar System orbits the center of the Milky way, and as it does, it’s passing through a diffuse nebula known as the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC). Various satellites and probes have measured the passage of atoms through the Solar System since the 1970s; analysis of that data shows that the direction of this wind has changed and its rate has picked up. That reveals some interesting new detail about the environment surrounding the Solar System.
  • Of maps and math and Buckminster Fuller (Galileo’s Pendulum): Mapmaking will never be perfect because there’s no way to create a flat representation of the curved surface of Earth without some distortions. This post goes a little into the math of projection, the art of converting positions on a globe onto a flat map, and how the eccentric utopian architect Buckminster Fuller tried to solve the problem. The result was his wonderful Dymaxion map, which as a physicist I’m very fond of.

I also wrote a brief viewing guide for the LADEE launch, which is now necessarily obsolete. However, you can find a lot of photos and video from the launch at NASA’s LADEE site.

 

Aside by

My media badge from the aborted Antares rocket test launch.

My media badge from the aborted Antares rocket test launch.

Most major American rocket launches have been from Florida, which means I’ve never had a real opportunity to see one. However, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility is beginning to host orbital rocket launches, in collaboration with the private company Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS). (Historically, Wallops has launched suborbital rockets and balloons.) So, I trekked over to Wallops Island, Virginia to watch the test launch of the new Antares rocket from Orbital Sciences Corporation. Unfortunately, that test was aborted during the countdown, but I managed to write a few pieces about the experience anyway. (Antares successfully reached orbit on Sunday, so all was well that ended well.)

I went to a rocket test launch, and all I got was this stupid name tag

Aside by

The business end of a Rocketdyne F-1 rocket engine, used in the first stage of the Saturn V rockets. Five of these engines were used to launch the Apollo missions into space. Note the picnic tables at left for scale comparison.

For the next two weeks, I am on the move, traveling to various observatories in the American south and southwest, as part of the research for my book-in-progress Back Roads, Dark Skies: A Cosmological Journey. This morning, I will be visiting the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) near Livingston, Louisiana, before heading west to other observatories in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. My full itinerary is over at Galileo’s Pendulum:

Being a travel book, though, I am also seeking a new way to see through travel and exploration. Cosmology is a very familiar field to me, but often the person closest to a subject is the worst to try to explain it to a lay audience. By going to particle physics labs and astronomical observatories, I am learning to see my own discipline in a new way, in hopes that it will help me bring it to my readers. As you can tell, this book is different from most cosmology books (A Brief History of Time is perhaps the best example), where the focus is on highly speculative ideas and Big Theories. While theory will always inform the research I discuss—and, being a theorist myself, I can’t help but discuss theory—the primary emphasis of Back Roads, Dark Skies is on experiment and observation. Without these things, theory is nothing but the ramblings of creative people, unconnected to reality. [Read more…]

While the scientific part of the agenda begins today, I haven’t been idly driving without keeping an eye out for interesting things. To wit: yesterday, I saw a wild alligator and one of the engines from the Saturn V rockets, which were used to launch the Apollo missions and the Skylab space station.

The Bowler Hat is on the move