Welcome to Cosmic Diary

(credit: The Other 98%)

It is amazing the amount of money and time wasted in 2012 on this “end of the world” prediction. We can blame ignorance of the people or sensationalism from the media, but we should also discuss the role of educated people, such as scientists, who have been spent time writing books & websites, answering interviews and debating on this non-sense. They promoted this myth until it was deemed a truth in the mind of people. This energy could have been spent to do something good for this world, something useful to make it a better place.

I may be utopian but I can not dismiss the potential greatness of a humanity that decides to work together to solve the real problems. I don’t despair and I hope we have finally learned a lesson from this wasted moment of our collective resources.

I am eager to read your thoughts on this topic.

Clear Skies

Franck M.

A piece of Mars: On Earth, it’s typically water that erodes a landscape, as rivers cut down rocks, storms trigger landslides, and ocean waves eat away at shorelines. On Mars, it’s usually the wind that slowly grinds down a landscape. Can you pick out the circle that once was an impact crater? (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, HiRISE ESP_028911_1815)

A piece of Mars: These wispy dunes look like veins on a leaf, don’t they? The thicker ones are older, and they are slowly being reworked by the younger, thinner ones. If they remain active, then the smaller ones will eventually completely erase the older ones. (HiRISE ESP_029516_1730)

This exceptional result was brought to my attention late on Friday evening, but it clearly deserves a short post on this blog. Chang’E 2, a chinese mission dedicated to the exploration of the moon was recycled to explore the Near-Earth Asteroid (4179) Toutatis  and succeeded.

Chang'e 2 images of (4179) Toutatis captured at 93–240 km distance between 16:30:09–16:30:24, maximum resolution 10 meters/pixel

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CNRS (the main French research agency) put up a very nice video about December 21st 2012 and the Mayans. Even if you don’t speak French, give it a look!

I hope it get translated/subtitled in other languages soon.

We are safe

http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/doc=3968
(click on “Visionner”)

Les Mayas, le calendrier et le 21-12-2012 – Vidéo Dailymotion.

Les Mayas, le calendrier et le 21-12-2012 is also accessible on DailyMotion.

CNRS (the main French research agency) put up a very nice video about December 21st 2012 and the Mayans. Even if you don’t speak French, give it a look!

I hope it get translated/subtitled in other languages soon.

http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/doc=3968
(click on “Visionner”)

Les Mayas, le calendrier et le 21-12-2012 is also accessible on DailyMotion.

We are safe

A piece of Mars: Small dunes or ripples in a depression provide a striking contrast with the surrounding bedrock. The sand in the dunes changes color, too, to mark off which regions have more recently been actively moved by the wind (yellowish areas are probably more active). (HiRISE ESP_029542_1510)

A piece of Mars: A lonely dune slowly makes its way (towards the upper right) across a plain. Well, look closer, it’s not all that lonely. Surrounding it on the plain are smaller streaks that are ripples, which also once worked their way across this plain. The smaller ripples are thought to be inactive, or at least far less active, than the larger dunes on Mars. (HiRISE ESP_029660_1350)

Third day of the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting tomorrow, Wednesday December 5, and I anticipate another busy day. Julie Castillo from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and myself organized a session on the internal structure and composition of small solar system bodies (SSSBs). This session will give us an opportunity to discuss recent results on the compositions and physical properties of asteroids and comets.  The discussion and results should be new since our view on the internal structure of SSSBs has changed drastically over the past decade thanks to the exploration with spacecrafts and the discovery of satellites around several asteroids.

Possible asteroid internal structures by Walkers et al. (Advances in Space Research Volume 37, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 142–152)

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Tomorrow is the first day of the AGU Fall Meeting, in San Francisco, CA. I love this conference, not only because it is 30 min door-to-door from my house, but also because it is BIG… Last year there were ~27,000 registered geoscientists, and there is no reason there should be less of them this year. With more than 29 parallel sessions in diverse  topics such as Atmospheric Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Hazards, Biosphere, Volcanology, Cryosphere, Education and of course Planetary Sciences, plus several social events, and press conferences, it will be a feast for scientists, science reporters and the public.

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