Here is where I admit I have never taken Geology or Organic Chemistry. This is my third time coming to LPSC and each time I come I learn there are more minerals yet to learn.
Today I spent my morning sitting in on sessions involving the new data coming down from the Lunar Missions Kaguya, Chang’e-1 [...]

One of the either high points or low points (emotionally) of every LPSC is the NASA meeting. This year I have some sense that this will be a good experience for all. We have a new administration, we have new NASA HQ staff, and we know a new NASA director is on the way. Life [...]

Carol Stoker and Suzanne Young just presented a pair of presentation on the habitability of Mars. Bottomline: The Mars Phoenix Landing Site is capable of supporting life today.
The also calculated a habitability index for the various sites landers have explored on Mars. If a site has a probability of supporting life greater than 50%, [...]

This year’s Masursky Lecture is being given by Alan Stern. Stern seriously earned my respect last year in the face of a disgruntled room of geophysicists who didn’t have the nuclear engines they needed, who’d been told that Mars was not a funding priority, and who had been saddled with manned moon plans. He handled [...]

(disclosure: I left my cellular internet dongle in my room, so I’m twittering sessions live and posting blog entries on a semi random basis when I can go out and find internet)
I’m leaning against the back wall of a packed ballroom filled with the brim with silent and attentive geophysicists who are absorbing all they [...]

For the next two days I’ll be soaking in the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Confernce down in Houston, TX. Join me?
Here is a basic schedule of what to expect.
- Tomorrow is the Education Forum that precedes the main meeting. I’ll be there along with Mary Lynne Dittmar giving workshops on IYA related New Media, including [...]

What will happen to all the inner planets, dwarf planets, gas giants and asteroids in the Solar System when the Sun turns into a white dwarf? This question is currently being pondered by a NASA researcher who is building a model of how our Solar System might evolve as our Sun loses mass, violently turning [...]

If you thought neutron stars and magnetars were exotic, think again. In studies of magnetars that occasionally blink to life, generating an intense blast of X-rays and gamma-rays, astronomers have been at a loss to explain why these objects have such strong magnetic fields. After all, after a supernova, a neutron star remnant conserves the [...]

Just as psychologists and detectives try to “profile” serial killers and other criminals, astronomers are trying to determine what type of star system will explode as a supernova. While criminals can sometimes be caught or rehabilitated before they do the crime, supernovae, well, there’s no stopping them. But there’s the potential of learning a great [...]

o how do you take the temperature of one of the most exotic objects in the Universe? A neutron star (of ~1.35 to 2.1 solar masses) is the remnant of a supernova after a star has died. Although they are not massive enough become a black hole (over 5 solar masses), neutron stars still accrete [...]