Planetary geophysicist who understands the gravity of a situation. Trying to follow Jesus. Associate prof @BaylorGeo, formerly @eapsMIT/@LamontEarth/@LPItoday

Waco, TX
Joined June 2009
One of the first applications of gravity anomalies was to measure the mass of the Earth (before the Cavendish experiment!)
In 1774, a Scottish mountain was used to weigh the entire planet. And pretty much as a by-product, the people doing it helped invent something you'll find on every single walking map you've ever owned. This is the story of the ‘fairy hill of the Caledonians’: Schiehallion. 1/5
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Bomb threat at the 4th street DMV polling place. People are evacuated and waiting for the all clear @kwtx
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One of the Baylor Student Senate’s top priorities is to nudge the faculty away from being “AI vegans”. That’s quite the imagery 😆 It shouldn’t surprise anyone but there is a big generational divide here.
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Peter James retweeted
The Earth's and Moon's geoid heights, at the same scale. Moon is a lumpy little guy: very uneven gravity. It's why almost all low lunar orbits are unstable.
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This is the least surprising graph in the world if you understand how gradient descent works.
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There’s a subculture of people striving for “Financial Independence / Retire Early” (FIRE). Some people yearn for freedom from their job so much that they would trade it for literal incarceration.
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“I’m so curious about beautiful things.” — our pre-schooler who announced she wants to work at NASA
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Peter James retweeted
NASA has selected three new science investigations through its PRISM program to prepare for humanity’s first lunar outpost, @NASAMoonBase. From monitoring hazards to finding natural shelters and mapping water ice, take a look at the science paving the way for lunar exploration: go.nasa.gov/4iS0h7k
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There is a grass fire at the intersection of 6 and 84 @kwtx
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Some thoughts on the Navier-Stokes news from a professor of aerospace engineering: 1) take a deep breath 2) posts indicating we "solved Navier-Stokes" are incorrect and overblown. A very specific mathematical proof involving a niche scenario for Navier-Stokes has *potentially* been shown (that a perfectly smooth incompressible initial condition with finite energy could produce a singularity--note the assumptions here piled on to an equation set that already involves some assumptions). 3) there is no general closed form solution for N-S and that's not what this news is about 4) this is more of a mathematical curiosity than anything else and could matter a lot to mathematicians but basically changes nothing in the way N-S are used in practice 5) there are already very useful exact solutions to Navier-Stokes that greatly simplify the equation set with the right boundary conditions/geometry like laminar flow through a pipe or a 2D Taylor-Green vortex 6) in aerospace, we already treat N-S as an approximation in many instances and are well aware of its limitations. we don't outright solve these equations anyway and regularly chop off terms or simplify parts (at the expense of accuracy) to make them easier to deal with. 7) to be honest I have never found this specific problem to be particularly interesting because we know a core assumption of N-S is a "continuum" fluid where you ignore molecules and assume hydrodynamic scales >>> molecular scales. We know a real fluid cannot have infinite velocity or energy. But clearly you can push equations outside of their bound of validity and make them produce funky results and singularities.
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One thing about modern kid life is that there are animal trends. A few years ago, owls were everywhere in school: in books, in school handouts, and in cartoons. Then it was llamas. This year, the trendy animals are axolotls.
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The state of Texas wants to honor Dolly a little longer than the rest.
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Imagine the draining of Lake Bonneville…
पानीको वाहाव यति शक्तिशाली हुन्छ भन्ने मैले जिवन मा कल्पना समेत गरेको थिइन! #Staysafe #nepal #flood
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The technique of using gravity anomalies to calculate the density of a mountain was developed a century ago by L.L. Nettleton. The first page of his 1940 book states that 10-15 years of oil reserves remain. I guess the lesson is to be humble about projecting into the future.
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Peter James retweeted
Kind of wild that NASA has never operated a robotic rover on the surface of the Moon.
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The funeral service for my department chair was lovely in the way that comes from the deceased loving Jesus and having tight-knit children and grandchildren. His son noted “He gave the world what it needed: laughter, love, and a reason to get a good cup of coffee.” I love that.
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The new crater formed by the Falcon 9 upper stage, via the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter narrow-angle camera
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