“That [Barack Obama] leads us now is a breathtaking statement of American open-mindedness and, yes, our native liberality,” writes Joe Klein in Time. I appreciate the sentiment, but I think he could hardly be more wrong. Rather, it’s because of the long-standing American closed-mindedness and their native conservatism that only now do the US have a president who is not a white male. And if Ameria truly were as open-minded and liberal as Klein implies, Obama’s skin colour wouldn’t have attracted even a fraction of the attention it has.

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day. Not only did NASA announce the strongest evidence yet that there might be microbial life on Mars, it was also the first time I celebrated my birthday outside the Netherlands. In many parts of the US, it was the coldest day in thirty or so years. The highest temperature reached in Granville was -13 °C (9 °F), making it my coldest birthday ever. (From what I can find in Dutch weather archives, the former record holder was 1985 with a relatively balmy daily high of -8 °C. My warmest birthday so far was in 1993, when thermometers reached 13 °C.) And then there was the crash landing on the Hudson River yesterday: the first time ever that an underwing-engined commercial airliner landed on water without any fatalities. Truly astonishing!

Oh, and if you think yesterday was cold, it’s even more so today. Walking up to the university this morning, it was -25 °C (-13 °F). That’s the sort of weather that makes you feel glad mankind invented clothes.

NASA scientists have found strong evidence that microbes once lived on Mars, and may still do so right now, British tabloid The Sun reports. The evidence consists of a haze of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Professor Colin Pillinger, a Mars expert from the UK, says NASA will announce this discovery later today. The methane is believed to be a waste product from microbes living—or having lived—in large underground water reservoirs. No other features on Mars are known that would produce methane in the observed quantities.

If this story is confirmed, it would be a huge find: the first strong evidence that we are not alone in the universe. Even if our neighbours are just a bunch of methane-burping microscopic lifeforms, it would be one of the biggest discoveries in history. So, keep an eye out for any news coming from NASA today…

Update: NASA did indeed report on the discovery of Martian methane, but (quite expectedly) they don’t go as far as to say that this is strong evidence for life on the Red Planet. The methane might well have a geological origin, rather than a biological one. Nevertheless, it’s an important step in our ongoing quest of finding signs of life outside the Earth.

I spent a few days in London earlier this week, attending the annual meeting of the Astrophysical Chemistry Group (APCG) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Hosted by the University College London, the topic of the meeting was computational astrochemistry. That’s pretty much what I do on a daily basis, and indeed there were a number of talks very relevant to my own research. Unfortunately, the meeting ran a bit chaotically. It was shifted from Leeds to London at the last minute, giving the organizers too little time to get everything properly arranged. Also, it felt like some services at the university were still on a holiday break, a problem that previous APCG meetings also suffered from.

Anyway, despite some organizational problems (and a broken heating system on the first day, with temperatures outside around freezing), the meeting was certainly useful. I met some old friends from the UK and elsewhere and got to make a few new ones. On the second (and final) day I gave a 25-minute presentation of my own research, which was met with enthusiastic reactions from several people.

The meeting ended late Wednesday afternoon, so I had the rest of the day to do some sightseeing. It was over ten years since my last visit to London, and back then I only saw a small part of the city. I took the subway (a.k.a. tube or underground) to Trafelgar Square, where both fountains would have been frozen over if people hadn’t been breaking the ice all the time. Heading south, I passed by Downing Street (with the Prime Minister’s residence at No. 10) to arrive at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. After a brief stop at Westminster Abbey, I crossed Westminster Bridge and had a quick bite at Waterloo Station. Refueled, I took a ride in the London Eye. This 135-metres tall ferris wheel (the largest in the world) takes about half an hour to complete a full circle. The view from the top across nightly London is truly magnificent.

Back on the ground, I took the tube towards London Bridge and walked along the Thames’ south embankment to the Tower Bridge. Crossing it, I followed the street past the Tower of London and carried on towards the Bank of England. I got back onto the underground for a quick ride to my final destination: St. Paul’s Cathedral. This one was a bit of a disappointment. Beautiful and large though it is, at night from the outside it doesn’t look all that spectactular. So, after a quick walk about, I headed back to the hotel. After all, I did have an early flight to catch the next day.

Pictures can be found here.

The second paper for my thesis just got accepted by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics today. We submitted it last August and, following the referee report in October, resubmitted a corrected version in November. The referee asked for a few additional corrections just before Christmas. By sacrificing a day or two out of my Christmas and New Year’s break, I managed to get that done pretty quickly and resubmit again. This morning, the A&A editor emailed to relay the referee’s stamp of approval.

This paper deals with gas and ice during the formation of a low-mass star (like our Sun) and the surrounding disk of gas and dust (in which, at a later stage, the planets are formed). We constructed a fairly simple model to simulate the star and disk formation process, which we then used to analyse how carbon monoxide and water change between being a gas and an ice. This is an important point in understanding the chemical composition of the disk, which in turn determines the look and feel of the planets that are formed there. It also helps us understand our own solar system a little bit better. For all the details, have a look at the PDF preprint (3.9 MB).

My computer clock shows 2:49 as I begin typing this post. That is to say, eleven-to-three on Friday morning (indeed, more like pre-morning) in London. My day started over 21 hours ago, at 5.30, in that city. It is now coming to an end several thousand kilometres to the west, in the small town of Granville, Ohio, where the local time is 21:49. It’s been a day of travelling interspersed with lots of waiting. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, I still don’t really feel tired.

My day ran something like this:

05:30 (GMT): The alarm goes off. I’m instantly awake and ready to get up—a clear sign that today’s a special day, because when my alarm goes off at 07:00 on normal work days, I still very much feel like getting another hour of sleep.

05:55: I check out of the hotel and lug my 25+ kilos of luggage (one suitcase and one backpack) onto a quiet London street for a short walk to the nearest underground station. The London underground is a splendid way of getting around, except when there are power outages or other problems, as has happened already thrice this year. Things are fine today on my line, and I’m soon zipping towards Heathrow.

07:05: Heathrow Airport. I already checked in online the other night, so I’m well on time to check in my suitcase for the 08:50 flight. Security is a breeze, leaving me plenty of time for some breakfast.

08:50: In an unusual case of timeliness, we depart at almost exactly the scheduled moment. The weather is good all the way to Detroit, the captain tells us, and we’re expected to land half an hour early.

11:45 (EST): We must have had some extra push, because we actually arrive forty minutes early. Great! Now I’ll have a layover of almost four hours.

13:40: Almost two hours after arriving in Detroit, I’m finally at the gate where my connecting flight to Columbus is scheduled to depart. Immigration took forever, mostly due to half a dozen Chinese and Arabian people being unable to properly complete the immigration form. The immigration officer looked positively relieved when I got to her counter and had everything in order. Getting my suitcase rechecked and myself through security again also was anything but a quick affair, but it seemed like only a few minutes compared to the infinite slowness at the immigration desk.

14:20: The 15:26 flight to Columbus is delayed because the incoming plane hasn’t arrived yet. The new scheduled departure time is 15:47, with the plane only expected to arrive at four-something. Clearly, that’s not going to work.

16:15: We board the plane. The departure time by now is listed at 16:30. Some red lights go off during pre-flight checks, and our captain informs us it may take some time, as all mechanics are already busy fixing other planes.

17:45: After sitting idly on board for an hour and a half, we are sent back into the terminal building. I’m not sure whether they’re still trying to fix the original problem, or something else came up, but clearly the plane isn’t going to fly to Columbus anytime soon. Back inside the terminal, we are sent off to another gate to be booked onto another plane.

18:30: We’re boarding a slightly larger plane with a different flight number, but with the same destination and the same group of people. By 18:47, we leave the gate to be de-iced and take off for Columbus.

19:52: We hit the tarmac at Columbus Airport, three hours and eighteen minutes after we should have. Steve Doty, my host here for the next three weeks or so, soon arrives to pick me up and bring me to the Bed & Breakfast in Granville.

22:31: After stopping at the local supermarket for some groceries, I check into the B&B and hook up to the wireless internet to check the latest gossip from home and write this post. (You’ll notice that I’m not particularly quick at writing these things. Actually, it’s already 22:32 at this point, and it’ll probably be 22:33 by the time I jot down the final period.) Now that that’s done, let me get some sleep. More stories (including London, and what I was doing there) tomorrow.