What do rock climbing, book clubs, and sci fi have in common? The answer is they all help an astrophysicist with job hunting. Read on for why and how!

Back on May 1st, 6 months ago, I decided to transition to a pure freelancer lifestyle. At the time, Stephanie P. asked "How do you transition from research to writing within NASA?" My answer was "I think I need to see what luck I get hunting, before I can speak with any credence on 'how to transition'!?!". And indeed, freelancing @NASA is still a nut to crack. Their culture doesn't encourage outside contribution as much as I think it needs to.

I'm a reasonable man, but there's a laxness in cyberspace I just can't abide with. And I'm talking to you, space.com. I'll say it straight, you may know science but you ain't giving your readers any links to the real stuff. You just echo-chamber yourself-- all your dang blag links link back to you! If you ain't gonna share your references, you ain't doing science, just flappin' yer gums. Buck up and cite like a man, ya here?

Let's look at us down home at ScientificBlogging. We got us an article on NASA's report of 'water on the Moon'. It's a purty piece, maybe a bit talky, but it's got itself some solid references. Let's list 'em:

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on Tinkering Makes a Comeback Amid Crisis. They are talking about what is referred to by varied terms such as Do-It-Yourself (DIY), the Make movement, and simply Crafting.  The concept is 'build cool stuff, like machines and lasers and robots."

While today we're pretty darned certain there is no intelligent life on Mars, in the early 20th century, it was still an open question. 

So-- about four decades before the publically known Project Ozma search-- the Navy stepped up to find out. 

Well before SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Project Ozma, Area 51, or even the 1938 radio hoax 'War of the Worlds', the Navy was looking for Martians.

A friend, John Kovalic, once quipped "I now have more social networks than I have friends."  So for today, a trio of social media webtoons.  The first is Cat and Girl, the other two are from ThisIsIndexed.com.  Enjoy!








Alex, the Daytime Astronomer

Scientists used a pair of gravity-measuring satellites, GRACE, to look at Amazon river basin water levels and, hopefully, better predict future water storage and runoff.  The twin GRACE satellites measure the mass distribution of the Earth between the two satellites, and accumulating these measurements over time lets us know how the Earth's mass shifts around.  A team led by Shin-Chan Han compared this data with simulations to look at, basically, how water is stored, released, and sloshes about within the Amazon river basin.  They compared the data with simulations.

Way back when, there was an excellent film loop called "Powers of 10".  Created by Charles and Ray Eames, it can now be found at the conveniently-named powersof10.com website.  The video is elegant, starting with a couple having a picnic and then simply pulling back the camera one order of magnitude-- one power of 10-- to reveal the entire country, world, solar system, galaxy, the finally universe.

Nothing happened Tuesday in space science, is the conclusion reached by this researcher. As a hard scientist here at ScientificBlogging, I find interesting topics to write about twice weekly. However, today, there was nothing. Nothing at all happened in science, at least involving space, or astronomy, or Mayans (who, according to /., apparently predicted the apocalypse in 2220, not 2012 as commonly misreported).

In the grand tradition of plotting things to make them interesting, we have (from the excellent webtoon Indexed), Pancakes from space:

A Canadian SUV was just hit by a meteorite. Some people have all the luck

For most of recorded history, no one had ever been hit by a meteorite. This was a useful factoid for us scientists when speaking to the public. It reaffirmed both probability-- how little of the Earth's surface area we cover-- and safety concerns.

Then, in 1823 it all changed. A horse was hit. Life had been damaged from space for the first time on record.