Kapland

plutopostcards: Finally, I can say that the New Horizons team...

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 22:29:03 -0700

Finally, I can say that the New Horizons team has found three possible post-Pluto encounter targets! I’m working on a post with more detail, but meanwhile, Emily Lakdawalla over at Planetary Society wrote an excellent article about our new objects (I think she said half of what I was planning to say anyway).

Meanwhile, if you have any questions about the search or our new objects, I would be happy to answer them!

Picture credit: Alex Parker

plutopostcards: So I haven’t been posting much lately, and I’m...

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 13:17:46 -0700

plutopostcards:

So I haven’t been posting much lately, and I’m sure my dad wasn’t the only person who noticed.

A few weeks ago, the New Horizons team was approved to use the Hubble space telescope to search for a Kuiper belt objects that could be targetable by the New Horizons spacecraft sometime after the Pluto encounter.

Our Hubble time came with strings: we would receive 20% of the images we needed and we had to discover two never-before-seen, potentially-reachable objects before the two weeks were up, otherwise we wouldn’t get any more time.

Two things happened: first we were sworn to secrecy, and second, nobody had anything resembling a life for that period. Let’s just say there was a lot of computer programming done on the fly.

Now that it’s over I can blog about it and tell you a bit of the inside scoop.

plutopostcards: I hate winter. I hate being cold, and...

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 11:14:52 -0700

plutopostcards:

I hate winter. I hate being cold, and despite being from New England, I’m not much of a snow fan. Even worse, I hate the filthy snow piles that get even filthier as the snow melts and then just dirt and salt are left on the street until the street sweeper trucks go by. Would you be surprised if I told you that street sweeping day is my favorite day of the year?

Fortunately, living in Boulder, there are far fewer of these piles besmirching our fair city streets than I had to put up with in Cambridge as a grad student at MIT. Not to mention the Cambridge snow piles linger longer, since it’s less sunny there compared to Boulder. Also, what is with people who throw their trash on the ground? Not cool, man.

So what does this dreck-strewn pile of filth have to do with Pluto?

It’s an analogy Alan Stern (New Horizons mission PI) made that helps me understand one of the neatest things about the Pluto and Charon system: they’re made of different stuff. Or rather, infrared spectroscopy shows us that Pluto has methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide on its surface, while Charon has none of those things, but does have water ice and ammonia.

However, on Pluto, the “snow” is the carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen, while the “dirt” is water ice. All of these things can be delivered to either body by comet impacts. With temperatures ranging from -400 to -360 degrees F (or -240 to -218 degree C) Pluto and Charon are cold enough that water isn’t going to melt (surprise?), but carbon monoxide, methane, and nitrogen can. On Pluto and Charon these compounds are considered “volatiles”, but water is not (some say it’s not volatile on Earth, because it doesn’t evaporate quickly enough). However, on Charon, once these volatile compounds go from solid to gas, that’s it for them. Charon’s gravity isn’t strong enough to retain volatiles, so the volatiles get lost to space, while the water is left behind. The loss process takes just a few years, so if we do find volatiles, we know an impact was very recent (I was co-author on a paper about this). On the other hand, Pluto’s gravity is strong enough to retain its volatiles, and they travel around with the seasons and cover the surface, hiding the water ice.

So, how do you know whether a Kuiper Belt Object will hang onto is volatiles or lose them to space? Emily Schaller and Mike Brown wrote a paper in 2007 that outlines whether or not a KBO will hang onto is volatiles. (link) This is a technical paper geared at planetary scientists, but Figure 1 shows that the size of a planet and its temperature determine whether or not that planet will hang onto its carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen. Each volatile has a line the shows the point where loss will begin to happen. Pluto, along with Triton, and Eris, are very firmly on the “volatiles retained” side of the line. Sedna, one of the furthest objects known, wouldn’t be ordinarily big enough to hold its volatiles, but it’s so cold that being smaller doesn’t really matter. On the other side, Charon and most other KBOs just aren’t big enough to hang on to any of the volatiles on the list. And thus, the water is left behind like dirt on an Earthling city street. Except it’s everywhere.

So next time you see a dirty snow pile, just remember, on Charon, snow is the dirt.

Linking tumblr to Google Buzz

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:09:26 -0800

If you want to link your tumblr blog to google buzz, you need to identify your blog to your google profile.

First you’ll add the site to your google profile by editing your google profile. Scroll down to the links section and add a custom link to your tumblr blog.

Next you need to add a line of code to your tumblr blog to tell your google profile that the tumblr blog really belongs to you. To do this you just add an XFN link to the <head> section of your template. The XFN link should be formatted as follows:

You’ll want to replace “your.name” with the correct url for your google profile. This will identify your blog to google the next time google crawls the site.

If you want to speed up the crawling process, you can use the google Social Graph API. When you log in, you will see a list of links to sites you own, click on the “recrawl” button next to your tumblr blog.

If everything worked, you should be able to add your tumblr blog to the connected sites section of buzz. Google claims this works for any site with content that is published via Atom/RSS, you can read more about it in the Google Buzz API docs.

-kap

Machinist's Workshop

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:06:00 -0800

I just got a no-obligation issue of Machinist’s Workshop in the mail, apparently they know 3 things about me:

1) I love machining…
2) I love new projects for my shop…
3) I didn’t ask for this magazine…

Well at least they got #3 right. And #2, well that just bums me out, I don’t even have a shop :( maybe someday…

Apparently Machinist’s Workshop is the most comprehensive metalworking publication in the world. This month’s issue features a cover story on building a scale 81mm mortar. Sounds like a fun weekend project.

-kap

How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:23:00 -0800

How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme:

ReadWriteWeb (a blog I regularly read) recounts a story of how an interesting post title, and a high google ranking with the words “facebook” and “login” in them, can bring in the typical facebook user in droves. And let’s face it, the typical facebook user does not quite understand the internet. Make sure you visit the original post as well “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login" and read the comments.

-kap

As a long-boarder (albeit not a very good one), I have to say...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:11:59 -0800

As a long-boarder (albeit not a very good one), I have to say this is just crazy…

9gag: Super Mario Equation

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:44:56 -0800

9gag:

Super Mario Equation

"Pluto is so small and distant that the task of resolving the surface is as challenging as trying to..."

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:39:41 -0800

“Pluto is so small and distant that the task of resolving the surface is as challenging as trying to see the markings on a soccer ball 40 miles away.”

Legos and smartphones will soon take over the world!

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:10:08 -0800

Legos and smartphones will soon take over the world!

9gag: Hitler vs. Chaplin

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:18:27 -0800

9gag:

Hitler vs. Chaplin

"Before you criticize someone you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize..."

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:16:36 -0800

“Before you criticize someone you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away, and you have their shoes”

This makes me laugh hysterically for some odd...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:25:54 -0800

This makes me laugh hysterically for some odd reason.

-kap

credit to: Gizmodo

How To Tie Your Shoes

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:10:55 -0800

How To Tie Your Shoes:

If you’ve been tying your shoes with a Granny knot like I was, and your shoes constantly came untied, here is a simple change that will fix your problems!

SEC non-conference schedule - A statistical look (A college football post)

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:56:00 -0700

Much of this info I blatantly took from Phil Steele’s blog:
http://www.philsteele.com/Blogs/DailyBlog.html

Let’s start with baselines, the SEC teams play 4 games each and there are 12 total SEC teams for a total of 48 non-conference games. The Pac 10 has 10 teams and plays 3 non-conference games for a total of 30 non-conference games.

Out of 48 games the SEC plays 13 BCS teams or 27.1% of non-conference games.
Out of 30 games the Pac 10 plays 15 BCS teams or 50.0% of non-conference games. If you add in the extra conference game, that’s basically 25 out of 40 or 62.5%

So the Pac 10, with their out of conference schedule and round robin plays 35.4% more BCS teams! Obviously very unscientific but interesting.

Also out of 48 OOC games, the SEC plays 14 FCS games (note that even with 4 OOC games the SEC in total plays 1 more FCS games than it does against BCS conference games) a total of 29.2% games against FCS teams.
The Pac 10 out of 30 games plays only 4 FCS games 13.3% if you give us the additional conference game back, it’s only 4 FCS games out of 40 or 10.0%

I don’t really have a conclusion here other than how would anyone know if the SEC is so great top to bottom if they never really play anyone and the same 3 or 4 teams are the only ones winning their bowl games consistently.

"Those who are slow to know suppose that slowness is the essence of knowledge"

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:04:07 -0700

“Those who are slow to know suppose that slowness is the essence of knowledge”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

AT&T Is a Little Slow

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:02:28 -0700

I just recieved an “AT&T Free Msg” on my iPhone, it’s July 22nd at noon. It’s funny becuase the iPhone 3.0 software was released way back on June 17th and got quite a bit of media coverage at the time. I installed the software at the time. Does this mean that AT&T has no idea what software version we are using?

The message also instructs me to connect my iPhone to my computer and “Check for Update”. The iPhone and iTunes will inform you of an update just a few days at most after it’s released. Are there really iPhone users out there that don’t connect to their computer for over a month? Who are these people, and why the hell would the have an iPhone?

AT&T is so slow in basically everything they do. Their service is slow, their network is slow, and they are so slow to inform their users of updates. When is the iPhone going to get some new carriers in the US???

"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:20:47 -0700

“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”

- Abraham Lincoln

A Futuristic Movie Timeline

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:19:27 -0700

Those of you who know me personally, know that I’m a bit of a sci-fi movie buff, and a data geek, which is why I found this timeline so fascinating.

Some interesting things to ponder:

Futuristic bloodsports peak late next decade (Rollerball, The Running Man).
We don’t have to worry about super-intelligent Apes for a loooong time.
The coming singularity (google Ray Kurzweil), will probably render all futuristic predecitions moot.
Even in 2500, people still won’t understand Barbarella (but people will still think that Jane Fonda sure was hot).

-kap

Image courtesy of DANMETH

"It is better to be the head of chicken than the rear end of an ox."

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:23:25 -0700

“It is better to be the head of chicken than the rear end of an ox.”

- Japanese Proverb