Woodlark paper 8, John 1

Today I sent the manuscript for my collossal research paper "Arc Lavas on Both Sides of a Trench: Triple Junction Magmatism at the New Georgia Arc, Solomon Islands" to my Ph.D. advisor at U. Florida. I began writing this paper in 2000!!!! (!!!!). I took a research cruise on an Australian ship that May and collected lava samples and saw not one but TWO erupting volcanoes while I was down there. But eight years to write a paper? Now my former advisor will do what he always does: tear the paper up and make me completely re-write it. So the sense of completion and satisfaction that I have will be short-lived.

Here's a cool picture from the Phoenix landing last week. It was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the Phoenix parachuted to the surface. It's passing in front of a big crater from the orbiters perspective. Cool!

14,000 mph in 8 minutes

The space shuttle lifted off yesterday. STS-124, carrying a new module for the space station, built by the Japanese. There's a camera on the external fuel tank, so you can get a tanks-eye view of the launch and watch the solid rocket boosters (cool people call them SRBs) and external tank fall away.