My friends, ankaret has restarted her "The Bachelor" recaps. I confess I have never seen the show, but I also feel I don't need to, seeing as (a) the premise is not complicated and (b) I am confident ankaret's descriptions are far more entertaining than actually viewing them. They contain such gems as:

Frankie is wearing a bodycon scuba long sleeved high necked mini dress in a strange repeated digital print that looks like a website using the Stargate SG-1 logo as a tiled background some time in the early nineties. I half expect a message saying 'Under Construction' to circle her waist in rainbow marquee.

You can begin reading her recaps from Episode 1 of the current "The Bachelor UK" series here.

It is now just over three weeks until Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere and the mission (but not the Project) comes to an end. I grow a little sentimental.


This is the flight spare of Cassini’s fluxgate magnetometer sensor, which will live on. We use it for command simulations on the ground.


This is a 1:25 scale model of the Cassini spacecraft, with the Huygens probe attached to its side. It includes the magnetometer boom, which is hidden in this view. These were distributed to the payload teams. It's been in our group longer than I have (>11 years).

I recently ordered a big perspex display box for the model, so we can have it on show at the upcoming Imperial Fringe festival, post-mission-end. I’ll be giving a talk at the Farewell to Cassini exhibit. Details to follow (on the Londoners filter) when they’re confirmed and the web site for event registration is live.


This is a screenshot of NASA Eyes on the DSN that I took on 4 August. DSS-14 at Goldstone (the antenna in white on the left) is receiving data from Voyager 1 (spacecraft shown on the right). I accompanied this with “We’re still listening” on magnetometrist on Instagram.

NASA has a poll, open until Tuesday 29 August, to choose a 60-character-or-less #MessagetoVoyager, to be sent on 5 September. If you want to vote on a message, go here.

A selfie I took on the bus from Leiden Centraal to Noordwijk. The bus takes about 45 minutes, so most people opt for a taxi when they’re visiting ESTEC. I like the bus, though. It’s a really pretty route through the city and out into the countryside. Plus, it only costs 4 euros.

While I’m on the subject of space agencies, here are a few links.

• Want to holiday like an Elder God? Try these lethal exoplanet destinations! Galaxy of Horrors (h/t to redsixwing)
  
  
• For a more soothing experience, you can watch a mildly animated page of the Deep Space Network stations uplinking and downlinking data from different spacecraft. I sometimes do this. I mean, I have a PDF with all the scheduled DSN passes for Cassini, but let’s face it, this is much prettier. Eyes on the DSN.
  
  
• And finally, in Geeky Space Swag news, the Rosetta mission shop has been updated with new shirts and hoodies that include the cartoon spacecraft from the “Once Upon a Time” video series about the mission. Best of all, you can get your mitts on a cuddly/plushy toy of Rosetta and Philae, or donate one to be sent to a primary school.

majoline asked: Space! Any really interesting projects or phenomena happening right now?

Ha, now this is a broad topic. I'm going to choose three things to witter about that are close to my heart because I'm personally involved with them.

1. On 20 January 2014, the Rosetta spacecraft is going to be switched on after 2.5 years of hibernation. This is going to be quite an event. Rosetta has been traveling towards its rendezvous with a comet since its launch in 2004. The comet has the exciting name 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, or "Chury Gery" for short. It needed to hibernate in order to use as little power as possible for the last stage of its journey. Assuming it comes back on as planned, Rosetta will go into orbit around the comet whilst its accompanying lander, Philae, drops onto the comet's surface and probes its composition. Since comets are thought to be some of the last remnants of early solar system, we hope Rosetta's exploration will teach us something about the way ours formed.
   
   Here is a short YouTube video (2 minutes 29 seconds) that shows how Rosetta will wake up.
   
   "" (Watch on YouTube)


You can follow Rosetta's progress towards wake-up on Facebook.


2. There is a massive hexagonal hurricane at Saturn's North Pole.
   
   
   The Cassini spacecraft discovered this feature on Saturn a few years into the mission, because the poles were dark when it first arrived at the planet in 2004. Hurricanes on Earth tend to migrate north, but this one is as far north as it can get. The storm is effectively stuck at the pole. The eye of the storm is about 50 times bigger than your average Earth hurricane.
   
   There's a short article on the hurricane here.
   
   For me, this discovery highlights the importance of keeping missions to the outer planets going for as long as possible. It takes years to get a craft to them (7 years in the case of Cassini traveling from Earth to Saturn) and it doesn't happen very frequently. No space agency has a mission to Saturn currently in the works. The time from planning to launch is usually a decade, minimum, for outer planetary missions. Cassini is therefore likely to maintain its position as the first and the only spacecraft to orbit Saturn for at least a couple of decades if not longer.
   
   
3. BRB, going to Ganymede. Okay, maybe not exactly "BRB". The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft is not scheduled for launch until 2022. But it is now over a year and a half since the mission was selected to be the first L-class, or large, mission launched as part of the European Space Agency's Cosmic Vision programme. It will study Jupiter's icy Galilean moons - Europa, Callisto and most particularly Ganymede, which it will orbit. It will attempt to discern, among other things, the extent and depth of the subsurface oceans on these moons. The oceans are thought to be one of the most likely places for life to have potentially developed elsewhere in our solar system.
   
   It's over a year since our lab was selected to build the magnetometer, which will measure the magnetic field to an absolute accuracy of 0.1 nT. To give you an idea of how small a tenth of a nanoTesla is, the Earth's magnetic field is, on average, 45 microTesla. Hence, what we experience every day is over a hundred thousand times bigger than what the JUICE magnetometer will be trying to measure.
   
   There isn't much in the public domain about the mission development that I can link you to now. Suffice it to say that even though press coverage is light, there is a hell of a lot of work going on behind the scenes. As I have signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with respect to the instrument and spacecraft development, that's about as specific as I can get. Any disappearance on my part from social media for the next eight years can probably be attributed to intensive work on JUICE.
   
   A description of the JUICE payload can be found here.

Finally, this post allows me to showcase my exciting new icon by itsamellama, featuring me cosplaying Abby Sciuto from NCIS. \o/

The comet ISON is on approach to the sun and has entered the field of view of the long-running SOHO (Solar Heliospheric Observatory) mission. There are some fantastic shots of it traversing towards the sun through a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) on the SOHO web site. The images were captured by the LASCO instrument on board the spacecraft. Stunning stuff - have a look!


This is LASCO's perspective on the sun and the comet. The sun is in the centre, blocked out so that the instrument can focus on what's going on around the edge of it. If you watch the latest movie on the web site, you'll see a big CME forming on the lower right side of the sun, and then ISON appears from the side and streaks toward the centre.

Images and movies from today's data on the SOHO NASA web site.

ETA 20:50 GMT: It looks like the comet may have broken up at perihelion (closest approach to the sun), as shown in this video by another sun-observing spacecraft, STEREO.

*WARNING: SWEARY.*

Maybe it's enhanced because I recently had my own child, but the shootings in Connecticut and the kibosh on gun control discussion imposed by the White House have made me so, so angry. Why does this keep happening? Because, as The Onion summarized neatly in its caption of a photo of a woman hugging a sobbing child, "Right To Own Handheld Device That Shoots Deadly Metal Pellets At High Speed Worth All Of This".

When are we going to sort this out, America? Civilians don't need to own handguns and assault rifles. They may want to, but they don't need them. If you need to hunt to survive (and very few people's survival depends on this any more), a shotgun and some decent target practice will suffice. You don't need an assault rifle.

Never have I been more pleased to have chosen to raise my child in a country where there is a ban on ownership of the types of weapons which are primarily used to kill other people rather than edible game. I'm not saying Britain doesn't have problems. Just that I'm glad my daughter will be able to go to fucking primary school largely without fearing she'll die in a massacre enabled because one of her teachers owns a goddamn assault rifle.

Kids in a primary school were massacred. Kids in a goddamn primary school were fucking massacred. This isn't bad enough for you, America? Really? REALLY? What the hell is, then?

This was written after the Aurora shooting. Which was in July of this year. The first bloody line of this piece is: "How many more tragedies need to happen before the United States joins the modern world in banning assault weapons?" How fucking short are our memories?

From the New Statesman. "In the US, the total of firearm homicides in 2011 was eleven thousand, one hundred and one, and this year is on track to be even higher. Look at it this way: if the Connecticut attack was the only shooting yesterday, then the day's death toll would actually be below the US average. More people die from firearm homicide every year than the total number of US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. More than twice as many people die from firearm homicide as in 11 September and Pearl Harbour combined. 31 people every day die on average from a firearm-related homicide. This doesn't count accidental deaths. Just murder." [emphasis mine]

The final word goes to The Onion.

Physics needs your help. Yes, yours, my friends!

A very nice chap called Jony here at Imperial College is doing a simple yet elegant statistical experiment. He would appreciate it if you would visit the web page linked below and watch the lovely blue pendulum. All you have to do is click the Start/Stop button to time a single swing of the pendulum, and you will have helped. At the default swing time setting, this takes all of four seconds. Only four seconds, that's it. And you will have performed SCIENCE. If you have more than four seconds to spare and you enjoy tinkering with your SCIENCE, you can fiddle with the controls under the timer to make the pendulum go faster or slower and higher or lower.

Please do your part to enable physics today!

The Pendulum Experiment

If you enjoy your Pendulum Experience, please feel free to pass it along via the medium of DW or LJ or Twitter or Facecakes or G+ or Tumblr, etc. Jony needs lots and lots of data for best experimental results.

With apologies to friends who have already been asked to participate via the medium of capslock_dreamwidth and/or the many other places I've posted this link today.

Yesterday, I had a quiet evening out with friends, an experience which I would normally take for granted. We were on Holloway Road, predicted to be the scene of more of the smash-and-grab looting that's marred the past few days in London.

Before I left work, I checked in with my social network - thank you, Tweeple - as searches for "Holloway Road" on Twitter were bringing up wildly conflicting reports. One claimed that the Odeon cinema was on fire. Within two minutes I had eyewitness confirmation from locals that all was peaceful and quiet.

I hopped on the tube at 18:15. Normally this is one of the worst times to be on the Piccadilly line, because all the museums have just shut in South Kensington (Science, Natural History, V&A) so the tourists as well as everyone who's gone for a pint after work are all trying to pile onto the tiny train carriages. (Fun fact: Each Piccadilly line train can carry 1238 passengers. Each Victoria line train can carry 1448 passengers.)

This train was nearly empty. I had an entire row of seats to myself from Gloucester Road to Holloway Road (12 stops), which is unthinkable at rush hour. At Green Park, a pair of well-dressed young people boarded and sat across from me.

"Do you think it's going to kick off tonight?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
"Nah," he said.
"But they said he didn't shoot at them,"* she insisted.
"Still too many cops around tonight," he replied laconically.
"But they're gonna use this as an excuse," she said.

He shook his head. They started gossiping about work colleagues, so I tuned out until eavesdropping radar picked up, "Yeah, like I'm really gonna smash up Selfridges," as the young woman swung herself up to disembark at Leicester Square.

"Be safe," he said.
She laughed slightly hysterically. The train suddenly lurched to a stop in the tunnel. She tried to say humorously, "Oh, this isn't good," but the expression on her face was pure fear. The train picked up again and she hopped off at the platform, forcing a reassuring giggle at her friend.

I was oddly grateful for the vicarious vent their interaction gave to my own feelings, which were concealed under an attempt to relax by solving all the sudoku puzzles in the Metro. I screwed up an easy one, which revealed nothing to anyone but me about my mental state.

I disembarked at Holloway Road, ran up the steps and popped out into the golden afternoon light. Nothing was unusual about most of the shops being shut at that time, other than the ones that had boarded up their windows. One of the pubs I passed was shut as well. The Odeon cinema was emphatically not on fire, though it was shut. I passed two young men in hoodies giggling and throwing chips at one another.

sfred and I spent 20 minutes or so trying to find a place that was (a) open, (b) serving food and (c) not just serving fried chicken, which isn't the most appealing option for a vegetarian. We finally located a caf. The reaction of the woman behind the counter when we bellied up and asked if they were serving food was comforting. She looked at us with disbelief. "Of course!" We sat down to enjoy a hearty meal (English caf with a Turkish twist - you could order a plate of falafel with beans and chips) in the company of djm4 and sfred's parent.

By the time we'd finished stuffing ourselves, it was sunset and the caf had emptied of other customers. The waitress sidled over and told us they were going to close, a prudent move before it got dark. I went to the station while the others returned to sfred's new flat. The road was nearly empty. Only the fried chicken restaurants remained open with no sign of imminent closure. A police car screamed past with blue lights flashing. Three young men stopped suddenly on the pavement in front of me. To give some of their fried chicken to a homeless man.

My uneventful journey home on a train that was preternaturally quiet was punctuated only by a daft kitten's attempt to follow me up the road from Cambridge station. (I returned her firmly to her garden.)

London was quiet last night. Ironically, it was probably one of the safest nights ever to be out in the city simply because no one was around. Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool weren't so lucky. I'm grateful to have had a peaceful evening out. But when you can no longer expect that, you've had a little taste of what it's like to live in fear all the time. Surely nobody wants that. Let's try not to let that happen, please.

* He == Mark Duggan. Them == the Metropolitan Police, who shot him dead after a confrontation took place. It is now known that he did not fire at them first, but the circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear.

UK riot-related links

• Amateur footage of Manchester riot police dealing with suspected rioters. (Trigger warning: they are not gentle.)
  
  
• From the Guardian, putting the riots into context: the UK has worse social mobility than other developed countries, the richest 10% are 100 times better off than the poorest, etc.
  
  
• From the Guardian, a piece about the psychology of looting. Quotes: "[J]ust because there is no political agenda on the part of the rioters doesn't mean the answer isn't rooted in politics." and "[T]his is what happens when people don't have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can't afford, and they have no reason ever to believe that they will be able to afford it."
  
  
• For those who like correlations, here is a map of riot locations superposed over deprivation level in the city of London.