It was October in the void. The white dwarf, Nain Blanc, had been, for some time, slurping up the hydrogen and helium from the vast gas envelope of its partner, a red giant, Géant Rouge. When they were younger, the two stars burned bright in the dark of empty space, […]
Life
494 posts
The pastor was prayin’For sinners unpracticed,Preparin’ communion(Except for us Baptists) And I’m in the second pew ready for healin’When a voice next to me says “We should be wheelin’;The ERs the place that I want to beOn Christmas Eve, o brother, why can’t you see?” We’ll go to the ERAnd […]
The most common thing Canadians say to us after we exclaim how much we love it in Sudbury is this: Just wait until January. All Sudburians to Foreign Nationals from Warmer Climates To which I say: some like it Hoth. Hoth was, and still is, my favorite setting in the […]
The last few months on this blog have been quiet … too quiet. I think it is generally true that the activity level of a blog may be inversely proportional to the level of activity of the writer. If that be true, then let the lack of effort here be […]
I own a number of internet domains, including most notably cooleysekula.net (this one), polari.us (where some social media stuff is run), and astrohep.org (hosting some services for astrophysics and high-energy physics research). Since these are all hosted on servers I own and run out of my house, and since we […]
Bittersweet moment #4 this week: we went to SMU and packed our personal things in our faculty offices. Did not get everything, but books and papers are done. This just leaves knick knacks to pack in my office.
The news became public for the first time yesterday: Jodi has been selected to be the next Executive Director of SNOLAB and has accepted the offer for the position. You can read more about this here in the press release from SNOLAB: Dr. Jodi Cooley named Executive Director of SNOLAB […]
Today is the spring equinox. From an orbital perspective, this marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. The tilt of the rotation of the Earth, relative to the line through the middle of the sun about which we orbit, is what drives seasons on this planet. For all […]
An ice storm is descending on the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Our car was encased in a thin shell of ice that was hard to scrape off. We left SMU as soon as we could today (right after my last class) and took side roads all the way home. We passed […]
North Texas, like many other parts of the U.S. Southwest, seems to be falling fast down the far slope of Omicron Mountain. The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 exploded across the globe and quickly became the dominant strain, now accounting for 98.8% of all COVID-19 cases world-wide. It led to a […]
It warmed up just a little above freezing today, and the sun came out and played its light on the ice encasing the trees. It was a day for cold and for virtual teaching, as we continued to work remotely but classes moved forward. I dusted off my old remote […]