Forward Backward Thinking: Pipelines and Deep Time

A bit of a long-winded digression today, but as a physical scientist at heart I can’t help myself. I’m riled. (Riled to the point of considering expanding the rant to follow into an article submission to the journal Ground Water or perhaps Arid Environments…) Allow me to explain. Industry vs. Academia First, for those who […]

Extrasolar maelstrom!

This week might be considered a red-letter period for discoveries relating to extrasolar planets, from imaging alien comets and their implications for otherworldly oceans to witnessing the dusty disks and primordial protoplanets of young, forming star systems. In case you missed it, this week provides your healthy dose of Exoplanetology: Very “Wet” Extrasolar System Found The European […]

Summer Hits: Martian Water, Asteroid Nukes, Orbital Antimatter!

Here’s a recap of some of this summer’s greatest hits in space news that you might have missed: Water on Mars In an utterly tantalizing development, scientists analyzing imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have announced what appears for all the world to be direct evidence of water on Mars! Because the MRO has […]

Leaving Hydrology, back to Spectroscopy

Well, this is again a tactical time of transition for me. I’ve worked the last two years as a geohydrologist with Parsons in the deep Neavda wilderness performing hydrologic and meteorological measurements and analyses for the Southern Neavda Water Authority. Tomorrow, due to budget cuts, is my last day. I’ve been lucky enough to use this […]

Getting up to speed, part 2. (Space update)

Halfway into the 21-st Century aughts, I landed a job as a scientist in the Environmental Restoration program at the Nevada Test Site. This amounted to the study, clean-up, and documentation of contamination left over from the glory days of above-ground nuclear weapon tests. I wanted fieldwork that other astronaut-hopefuls wouldn’t be getting, and boy […]