A day in Boston

Boy, oh boy, there were a lot of kids at the Science Museum in Boston. It was still pretty cool though, we saw the original (3-story!!!) van der Graaf generator and a pretty cool lightning show (some pictures are included).




Afterwards, we went to the Samuel Adams brewery for a free tour and beer tasting, which was pretty decent. Got a sample glass, too, and some quart-sized bottles of Sam Adams to take back home.

Finally, we hit up the Harpoon brewery in the Waterside District (or some such). Picked up 2 growlers (Harpoon Winter Warmer and Cider) and a case of UFO, one of my favorite beers.



For supper, I convinced my dad to go to the Cheesecake Factory (mostly because I wanted to get that 'Big Bang Theory' vibe). What a great place, a little pricey, but the portions are huge and the food is tasty.

Tomorrow, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Harvard campus (it was something like -25C here with the windchill today, which meant we weren't walking about anywhere), refilling a growler back at the Harpoon brewery and likely a local homebrew shop (I'm looking for some cheap kegs).

Anyways, off to bed, I'm going to read some more of my newest book, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!". I'm something like 4 pages in and hooked already.

Vacation.

So, mostly spur-of-the-moment, my dad and I decided to take a trip to Boston. We're here until Thursday, at which point we'll likely drive to New York City and check out Time's Square for New Year's Eve. 

We got stuck in a blizzard on the way in, averaged 40kph for about 2 hours, saw 10 SUVs go offroad and into ditches and not a single small car, imagine that!. 

Tomorrow it's the Museum of Science, the day after the Institute of Contemporary Art, Harpoon Brewary and the Samuel Adams brewery with any luck.

More to come as things happen.

Post Everthing Update

Now that.... Everything is complete, let's talk about it.

The Galaxies and Cosmology presentation a few weeks ago went pretty well. On the subject of the Hubble Sequence and time evolution therein, it was. I got fairly good reviews (I will post the slides as soon as I can find the most up-to-date version, it's sitting silently somewhere on my netbook). 

Now, on to AstroFluids. For this, we had to choose a subject and write a paper / do a presentation. My subject was planetary migration.

For those of you who don't know, planetary migration explains how hot Jupiters can exist, for example, or how planets like Uranus and Neptune can come to be, so far from the sun. The issue lies in that the model behind planet formation has rocky planets forming close to their parent star, and gas planets farther out, past about 4AU, typically, for a Sun-like star. The planets are born from a protoplanetary disk, gas and dust orbiting the central star. Jupiter sized planets form farther out because there's more matter to accrete and form the planet from (ie, you're going in bigger circles around the star through the protoplanetary disk when you're far out, so you're going to impact more of it) and so far from the star, molecules like water and some organic compounds can condense (yielding more matter for the planet formation process) and gas is less energetic, so it can also be accreted onto the forming planet (forming the gassy envelopes of the gas giants).

This is all great, but when we look outside the solar system, most of the planets we find are super massive (Jupiter masses) and orbit their stars at distances 10 times less than that of Mercury, so they're whipping around their stars once every couple days. Not only is there not enough mass in the protoplanetary disk at this radius to form these planets, there's no way that the gas would be gravitationally bound to the planet rather than floating around diffusely due to such high temperatures so close to the star. So, the solution is the planets form far out, then move in. Why? You'll have to read my paper for that (link to be added as soon as my online storage updates itself). 

Today, I want to finish my last assignment, and perhaps brew some beer. I've also got to go buy a tree though, as unfortunately, I couldn't find any Festivus poles.

4:55 AM

It's 4:55 AM the day I need to submit my Astrofluids paper. I write this as I need a mental break from looking at accretion equations. The paper is some 19 pages long and incomplete (albeit containing a two full pages of references and a few large figure). I believe that I will be able to finish tomorrow morning before noon, if I am productive enough, and then I can prepare my talk afterwards. I will then use the train ride home to edit the paper, before finalizing and submitting it at some point before midnight.

Ambitious or rubbish? Stay tuned...

Galaxies and Cosmology presentation: done. 

Powerpoint will be uploaded when I get a chance.

Planetary Migration according to Megan

To all my followers, I'm terribly sorry about my lack of updates as of late. The end of the semester crept up on me awfully quick. 

So, I've got two presentations coming up, one for AstroFluids, the other for Galaxies and Cosmology. There is also a paper due for the former that I'm a little nervous about. Planetary Migration. If you're curious what that is, I refer you to Megan:

Megan says:
what's the subject?

Sean says:
Planet migration.

Megan says: 

well

planets get cold during winter

so they're like "fuck this we headin' south"

and they move closer to the sun

it's just like the canadian geese.

True story. 

I'll be sure to post my presentations. The one for Galaxies and Cosmology is on the Hubble Sequence.  

My FPGA project is nearly ready for testing. I need only get a serial gender changer, and I'll be ready for some preliminary low-speed tests. Unfortunately, given how busy I am over the next two weeks, I might only be able to test it right before Christmas, a bit later than I'd hoped. 

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