Although the huge amount of fumes currently convecting around my room might be helping :/
18 May 2012, 3:43 pm
Although the huge amount of fumes currently convecting around my room might be helping :/

Desktop Project Part 21: Dancing in the dark filaments | Bad Astronomy
15 April 2012, 8:00 am
DiscoverMagazine Desktop Project Part 21: Dancing in the dark filaments | Bad Astronomy - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastr... April 15 from Discover Space - Comment - Like [My Desktop Project -- clearing off the cool astropix from my computer's desktop by posting one each day -- is getting close to being done soon; I'm down to my last few pictures!] It’s funny how different the Sun looks at different wavelengths of light. In visible light, you can see all sorts of surface features like sunspots, granules (rising and falling packets of gas convecting like a pot of water on a stovetop), and more. But when you have eyes sensitive to the ultraviolet, the Sun takes on an entirely new appearance. That’s where the effects of the Sun’s active and crazy magnetic field claim dominion, and you see vast arcs, loops, and towers of incredibly hot plasma. To be fair, you can see this in visible light too, but it’s not quite so… dynamic. Cue NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, and its UV detectors: This image was taken by SDO on March 28, 2012, and shows the limb of the Sun at a wavelength of 19.3 nanometers — well into the UV. What you’re seeing is plasma — gas so... - pb:

Desktop Project Part 21: Dancing in the dark filaments | Bad Astronomy
15 April 2012, 8:00 am
Science24 Desktop Project Part 21: Dancing in the dark filaments | Bad Astronomy - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastr... April 15 from Discover Space - Comment - Like [My Desktop Project -- clearing off the cool astropix from my computer's desktop by posting one each day -- is getting close to being done soon; I'm down to my last few pictures!] It’s funny how different the Sun looks at different wavelengths of light. In visible light, you can see all sorts of surface features like sunspots, granules (rising and falling packets of gas convecting like a pot of water on a stovetop), and more. But when you have eyes sensitive to the ultraviolet, the Sun takes on an entirely new appearance. That’s where the effects of the Sun’s active and crazy magnetic field claim dominion, and you see vast arcs, loops, and towers of incredibly hot plasma. To be fair, you can see this in visible light too, but it’s not quite so… dynamic. Cue NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, and its UV detectors: This image was taken by SDO on March 28, 2012, and shows the limb of the Sun at a wavelength of 19.3 nanometers — well into the UV. What you’re seeing is plasma — gas so... - pb:

Imox: On a singular incompressible porous media equation. (arXiv:1203.0990v1 [math.AP])
5 March 2012, 8:47 pm
Imox On a singular incompressible porous media equation. (arXiv:1203.0990v1 [math.AP]) - http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0990 March 5 from math updates on arXiv.org - Comment - Like In this paper we study a singularly modified version of the incompressible porous media equation. We investigate the implications for the local well-posedness of the equations by modifying, with a fractional derivative, the constitutive relation between the scalar density and the convecting divergence free velocity vector. Our analysis is motivated by recent work \cite{CCCGW} where it is shown that for the surface quasi-geostrophic equation such a singular modification of the constitutive law for the velocity, quite surprisingly still yields a locally well-posed problem. In contrast, for the singular active scalar equation discussed in this paper, local well-posedness does not hold for smooth solutions, but it does hold for certain weak solutions. - Imox

Imox: A Simple Framework for the Dynamic Response of Cirrus Clouds to Local Diabatic Radiative Heating. (arXiv:1202.5050v1 [physics.ao-ph])
23 February 2012, 8:37 pm
Imox A Simple Framework for the Dynamic Response of Cirrus Clouds to Local Diabatic Radiative Heating. (arXiv:1202.5050v1 [physics.ao-ph]) - http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5050 February 23 from physics updates on arXiv.org - Comment - Like This paper presents a simple analytical framework for the dynamic response of cirrus to a local radiative flux convergence, expressible in terms of three independent modes of cloud evolution. Horizontally narrow and tenuous clouds within a stable environment adjust to radiative heating by ascending gradually across isentropes while spreading sufficiently fast so as to keep isentropic surfaces nearly flat. More optically dense clouds experience very concentrated heating, and if they are also very broad, they develop a convecting mixed layer. Along isentropic spreading still occurs, but in the form of turbulent density currents rather than laminar flows. A third adjustment mode relates to evaporation, which erodes cloudy air as it lofts. The dominant mode is determined from two dimensionless numbers, whose predictive power is shown in comparisons with high resolution numerical cloud simulations. The power and simplicity of the approach hints that fast, sub-grid scale radiative-dynamic... - Imox

New evidence from an ancient lunar rock suggests that the moon once harbored a long-lived dynamo — a molten, convecting core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago.
27 January 2012, 5:47 am
IowaScience New evidence from an ancient lunar rock suggests that the moon once harbored a long-lived dynamo — a molten, convecting core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago. - http://www.reddit.com/r... January 27 from science - Comment - Like

What drove the lunar dynamo? Moon's molten core was likely sustained by alternative power source
27 January 2012, 5:20 am
PhysOrg24 What drove the lunar dynamo? Moon's molten core was likely sustained by alternative power source - http://www.physorg.com/news246... January 27 from PHYSorg.com: Space & Earth... - Comment - Like New evidence from an ancient lunar rock suggests that the moon once harbored a long-lived dynamo — a molten, convecting core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago. The findings, published today in Science, point to a dynamo that lasted much longer than scientists previously thought, and suggest that an alternative energy source may have powered the dynamo. - pb:

What drove the lunar dynamo? Moon's molten core was likely sustained by alternative power source
27 January 2012, 5:20 am
Squid Read What drove the lunar dynamo? Moon's molten core was likely sustained by alternative power source - http://www.physorg.com/news246... January 27 from PhysOrg.com - spotlight... - Comment - Like New evidence from an ancient lunar rock suggests that the moon once harbored a long-lived dynamo — a molten, convecting core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago. The findings, published today in Science, point to a dynamo that lasted much longer than scientists previously thought, and suggest that an alternative energy source may have powered the dynamo. - The Black Book

Noriyuki Hosaka: unknownskywalker: The Saturn Storm Chronicles New Cassini images chronicle the birth and evolution of the colossal storm that has ravaged northern Saturn for nearly a year. The head of the storm is well established in the image 1 captured early in the storm’s development on Dec. 24, 2010. The storm continues west through the planet’s atmosphere in the image 2 in January 11, 2011. In the first two images, Saturn’s atmosphere and its rings are shown in near infrared through filters of methane absorption. Red and orange colors indicate clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Yellow and green colors, most noticeable near the top of the view, indicate intermediate clouds. White and blue indicate high clouds and haze. The rings appear as a thin horizontal line of bright blue because they are outside of the atmosphere and not affected by methane absorption. The image 3 offers two 84-images mosaics showing the changes of the storm over the span of one Saturn day (11 hours). Both mosaics were captured on Feb. 26, 2011. Cassini’s radio and plasma wave instrument detected the storm’s electrical activity, revealing it to be a convective thunderstorm. The active convecting phase ended in late June, but the turbulent clouds still linger in the atmosphere today. Image 4, in true color, chronicle the storm from its start in Dec. 5, 2010 through Aug. 12, 2011. The storm formed from a small, white cloud on the terminator between the day side and night side of the planet. The storm is more like a volcano than a weather system. The pressure builds up for many years before the storm erupts. This storm is the largest and longest-lasting observed on Saturn since 1990. The storm’s active phase ended in June 2011, but, as of October 2011, the turbulent clouds have continued to linger in the atmosphere. The storm encircles the planet whose circumference at these latitudes is 300,000 km. From north to south, it covers a distance of about 15,000 km. It encompasses an area of 5 billion km2. This storm is about 500 times the area of the biggest of the southern hemisphere storms observed by Cassini in 2004.
17 November 2011, 10:59 pm
Noriyuki Hosaka unknownskywalker: The Saturn Storm Chronicles New Cassini images chronicle the birth and evolution of the colossal storm that has ravaged northern Saturn for nearly a year. The head of the storm is well established in the image 1 captured early in the storm’s development on Dec. 24, 2010. The storm continues west through the planet’s atmosphere in... - http://bgnori.tumblr.com/post... November 17 from Tumblr - Comment - Like

Seeing the Big (and Small) Picture: Panoramic Tool Lets Users Observe Dynamic Imagery
17 November 2011, 5:00 am
ScientificAmerican Seeing the Big (and Small) Picture: Panoramic Tool Lets Users Observe Dynamic Imagery - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article... November 17 from Scientific American - Comment - Like For most of us, the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and that is the extent of the change that we notice in its appearance. But our host star is no static, glowing orb, as solar physicists well know--it is a roiling, convecting, chaotic mess. [More] - pb: