Sometimes, I am not in the office working.
If that is the case, you can probably find me playing ping-pong in the basement instruments lab where some cool person set up a regulation-size table. I have been playing ping-pong (and soccer) since first grade and, considering myself a decent player, am always looking for worthy opponents! I was also the captain of the Physics and Astronomy intramural soccer team at JHU (and previously Columbia) until my poor ankle got smashed.
Thinking about circumbinary planets for 12+ hrs a day for the past two years has tinted even the few things I do to relax, like reading the recently popular Game of Thrones books. The story takes place in a world where seasons last decades and where weather patterns and political alliances vary in duration, depth and severity. Naturally, I couldn't but help myself thinking that a planet with such erratic weather pattern must surely be in a binary-star system. A tongue-in-cheek paper was written, and in the long tradition of such things, was posted on the ArXiv on April's Fool Day 2013.
Incidentally, the following article was published on Space.com three days earlier where the same concepts were discussed by heavyweight astronomers Greg Laughlin from UCSC and Geoff Marcy from UC Berkley. What followed was completely unexpected (complied by Dan Allan at JHU).
If that is the case, you can probably find me playing ping-pong in the basement instruments lab where some cool person set up a regulation-size table. I have been playing ping-pong (and soccer) since first grade and, considering myself a decent player, am always looking for worthy opponents! I was also the captain of the Physics and Astronomy intramural soccer team at JHU (and previously Columbia) until my poor ankle got smashed.
Thinking about circumbinary planets for 12+ hrs a day for the past two years has tinted even the few things I do to relax, like reading the recently popular Game of Thrones books. The story takes place in a world where seasons last decades and where weather patterns and political alliances vary in duration, depth and severity. Naturally, I couldn't but help myself thinking that a planet with such erratic weather pattern must surely be in a binary-star system. A tongue-in-cheek paper was written, and in the long tradition of such things, was posted on the ArXiv on April's Fool Day 2013.
Incidentally, the following article was published on Space.com three days earlier where the same concepts were discussed by heavyweight astronomers Greg Laughlin from UCSC and Geoff Marcy from UC Berkley. What followed was completely unexpected (complied by Dan Allan at JHU).
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