sickest hallucinate Paulette message:lackey concatenate Potomac.phentermine http://phenterminehclhere.blogspot.com/ …

Thanks, I do know about the Ambassadors program too.
I maintain though that we have gotten too specialized so that it
is harder for folks to make a living doing what they want to do and
would be good at doing.

Jeremy, I think frame-dragging is expected to be detectable in Earth’s gravitational field. There is a probe out there tryng to do this right now. It’s called Gravity Probe B and was launched back in April 04 (http://www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/launch_update_gpb.html).

For something to generate a substantial amount of gravitational waves, you need a quadrupole moment (the graviton has spin 2). That means that a spherical rotating body is in itself not enough. People are looking for two heavy bodies that are spiralling in towards each other. It seems that the pulsar discussed here wouldn’t do the trick.

No idea how you would do it, but it seems that something as massive as a pulsar and moving that fast would be a good place to start looking for some of those more difficult to detect gravitational distortion theories (Frame dragging I believe is the correct term for one of them) certainly it would be making space/time in the immediate vicinity look like it went through the puree cycle.

Thanks for all the comments. I’m glad I was able to give a taste of the meeting to those who couldn’t attend!

Cindy, yeah. The SIM and TPF missions I think are still doing OK. Girrfin mentioned one of them by name in his talk (as he did GLAST, one of my missions). Some missions might be in trouble due to JWST’s huge overruns but we’ll know better in a few weeks when the budget comes out.
Kevin– you were there? I never saw you! And yes, NASA’s missions do a vast amount of outreach to people of all ages. The missions tend to concentrate on school age kids, but it’s not exclusive. We just funded a planetarium show about black holes, for example, that anyone can see (well, for the moment, if they live in Denver). I’ll blog about that in a couple of weeks when I go to the premier.

Ed — if you are saying that NASA is doing outreach to kids at the expense of adults I can’t agree. NASA is doing a lot for adults through the Solar System Ambassadors program, all the information and pictures and websites that are produced for you, there are also observing campaigns amateurs can participate in, ect. ect. The small amount of funding that’s put towards children’s programs is apparently being “refoucused” on higher education. The problem is that if young kids are not hooked early, they won’t go to college for science or engineering, so the taxpayer will be paying for programs that their kids will never benefit from (most likely those spots will be filled by foreign students with the US taxpayers footing the bill).

Thanks for the report since I can’t get to the AAS meetings anymore.

I remember about 5 years ago being on a NASA EPO review for all of the interferometry missions and they were talking about ways to include underserved populations (rural and inner city). I really hope that won’t go away but probably will.

Too bad we can’t convince rich people to reject their tax cuts from Bush and have the money fund education instead.

-Cindy

I remember being an 8 year old boy in Holland, sending a letter in broken English to “NASA, Washington, USA”, and they sent me a large promotion package with pictures of the space shuttle, and articles that I couldn’t read, etc. Fantastic! Was I the cool kid on the block that week! And look at me now…

Kids don’t vote but adults do and especially those who are interested in things like astronomy I think.

What I am really stressing is extend the outreach to the folks that are interested.

In the final analysis, it comes down to money.

Kids don’t vote but adults can & do.
Kids for the most part don’t have to earn a living,adults have to.

You want your programs funded? Find a way to include those who are most likely to support you and you will find your programs funded.

I wonder how fast _it_ thinks it’s rotating.

Sorry to hear about the future NASA education policy. I think it would be a pitty for NASA to cut down on the public outreach and education programmes. These are extremely important in motivating new people and in getting the tax-payer support for the different missions. And if you look at the NASA and ESA activities in this area, for example, NASA has done/is doing by far a much better job. Not a good idea to slowdown of cutdown now. However, even with any possible cuts, I wouldn´t mind getting here just a fraction of the support and investment you get in the US. I little help to pay my mortgage would be nice as well

The images are fantastic, extremely cool, and the science behind them can be tremendous. Difficult to choose a favourite one, but being a “star formation person” I have to go for the Orion Nebula
The zoomable image is simply amazing!

You know what am I reading every morning for the recent news?

1) http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/
2) Universe Today
3) Astro-Ph

I think you know what does this mean.
Thanks for doing this for us.

Cheers,

Tigran

Phil,

I’m quite sure that whatever happens you will be able to land on your feet
but I think there is some truth in what the NASA administrator says.

Like many other amateurs, I am a child of the space age being born only months before Sputnik. We were there, all of us, as Mercury,Geminii & Apollos launched, we were there late on Chrismas Eve of 1968 when astronauts Borman, Lovell & Anders read from Genesis in orbit around the Moon, we were there during our “Moon Summer” when Neil Armstrong & Edwin Aldrin landed on the Moon.

And we were there during Challenger …

Some of us knew a bit more math and became PhD astronomers and some of us still are amateurs and taxpayers.

All the while we see NASA reaching out to kids but not to the space generation who still has the awe and enthusiasm but unlike the kids pays the taxes to keep NASA running and flights to the Space Station.

And we are hardly listened to.

I think that we have become too darn specialized. We limit those who come to our ranks, whether it be in the sciences or education or I guess any other walk in life.

I think back on those old astronomers in years past, the ones who made discoveries and while I know that you can make discoveries in Astronomy I know that I can’t even teach an Earth Science class without having to go
back to school.

I think this specialization locks folks out and all the while
there is a hew and cry because there aren’t enough teachers or nurses or whatever and I have to wonder:

If all this specialization is so necessary, especially in science or education, then why the heck do we have a large amount of folks running around not knowing that a year means that we on the Earth have gone around the Sun one more time?

Yes, education is really wanting but as a society we seem to be afraid to open the floodgates and let those of us who have always had enthusiasm teach or do science.

Theodore

It’s a LOT faster. In fact, it’s as fast as a gas turbine or a turbo-pump rotor at 43,000 RPM!

- Jack

It would be cool to listen to the sound of that pulsar, if converted to audio.

I suspect heliochromolgy was not heralded this year. Darn, and nearly every thing you’ve shown is so colorful, too.