TEPS 2019 Summer Internship

Summer loving, had me a blast

Picture it, Atlanta 2019. Here I am, working with my old research group at Georgia Tech in the Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab. It is quite the change from London, Ontario. The temperature alone is roughly 10 degrees hotter on average (5 in C). Returning to Western campus will be far more comfortable, but that will soon turn uncomfortably cold. Then there’s the city. Everywhere you look theirs something to do. Great food is in abundance (hence the ~5 pounds I’ve gained while I’m here), and there is infrastructure for biking.

Even with the unbearable heat, I take my bike to the old town beltline-trail, and I ride till I can’t no more. I got my water in the bag, bike bags are attached. stickers on my Black helmet with black tennis shoes to match. Can’t nobody tell me nothin’.

Making my way downtown, biking fast, faces pass, and I’m school bound.

There’s also the distance. Its been great seeing friends and family. I went to some fresh water springs last weekend with my sister, father and a couple step siblings. I also spent my sisters 30th birthday with her and her friends at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. I spent 4th of July with my dad at his house in South GA near Jacksonville. I visited a few friends and my mom a couple times over the summer too; they’re just an hour north east of Atlanta. I also got to see my grand mother and grand father in Macon!

My sister and I swimming at a fresh water spring in north Florida. You are looking at us above a deep whole, maybe a couple meters below the surface and itself another couple meters deep.

Then there’s Werewolf ATL. It was great seeing all my werewolf friends in Atlanta. I was able to join in on their monthly WW meet ups and a couple birthday parties too! That has all be a blast, but the best is yet to come. Dragon Con is upon’s us. It is the superbowl for WW (in my opinion). We will be doing pregaming the Saturday and Wednesday leading up to it. (This all may have passed by the time I publish this post). This year I am volunteering and will enjoy moderating games for part of my time. This year, I have a strict schedule for myself to ensure I get a few hours of sleep (most of the nights), but I also want to make sure I diversify my time at DragonCon. There is so much more to DC than WW.

My first year at DC was dedicated entirely to Space, Science, and Skepticism tracks with a special focus on Space Track. This is where I first saw Dr. Trina Ray talk about the wonderful Cassini mission and how it had been officially extended. It was here that I chose to change focus and give space science a shot. Sure, I had years of love for space and science that had been culminating up to this point, but the space track is what did it, introducing me to people who work in the field. What’s more, it showed me just how much planetary science was left to be done. I must stop or this will become a love fest for space and science and so on.

An artistic representation of Cassini as it plunged itself into the atmosphere of Saturn.

My point is there are other things that are worthy of my attention. There are also other geek tracks that focus on science fiction and fantasy in tv, film, and literature. I have so much passion for the things I consume, and I have no doubt I would love these panels if I just made a point to attend.

That will conclude my trip as I return right after it ends on Tuesday, the 3rd of September. Then it’s back to reality.

Modeling Update

New readers may want to check out my previous discussions on what I have been working on. I don’t have the pretty pictures I would like just yet. I have been modeling Titan impact craters with a mix of HCN and water for a range of concentrations to hundreds of meters in depth. The goal has been to find the concentration of HCN in the ice after it freezes assuming an initial concentration. We find this at a range of thermal gradients (depths), and this is all we need to do a 2D model for a melt lens of a given shape and size. Then, we can track the thermal gradient at each point in the pond and get a clear picture of the distribution of concentrations within the ice.

I have the concentrations. I need to fit it to a series of functions to plug into Chase’s model. We have discussed what I need to do to adjust it for Titan. I have not had a chance to do that yet. Once it is set up, we can run it. This is work I am trying to get started on. With the end of my trip and my impending manuscript deadline (I haven’t mentioned that have I?) I haven’t had a chance to dig into that yet. This is work I intend to get into this as soon as I get back. However, the actual results are still several weeks away because I identified a problem with my data. I have enough data to work with the model and get it set up (the hardest part), but the data I have is bad.

I made a mistake in the eutectic curve I used in the model that determines the HCN concentrations. This curve essentially says, if the concentration of HCN is X, the melting temperature is Y. The problem was that I mistakenly type 7307 when I meant to put 73.7. How I missed this is beyond me, but suffice it to say, it probably skewed parts of the data. That means I need to rerun my results. This isn’t all bad. I have a better idea how to expedite this process and can adjust a few of my input parameters. It will still take a few weeks to get the data I need because modeling centimeters in a profile of 100s of meters is tedious work.

The eutectic curve used for HCN (Coates and Hartshorne, 1931).

But fear not! There is a clear path forward, and I still see myself on track to finish this this fall. That paves the way for the daunting task of where to go from there! I’m not scared. Why would I be afraid of reaching a point with no clear path forward (*sarcasm*).

Manuscript Update

I have finished making the updates for my manuscript. I haven’t done a lot of blogging about my work because when I wasn’t blogging, I was editing the manuscript. Forgive me if I was not too keen to carry over my thoughts to here (although you can enjoy my recent writings on books I’ve been reading). I sent my edits to my coauthors. I hope there aren’t too many complaints; the deadline is right at the start of September. The comments weren’t too extreme, but they did prove time intensive. There were changes I might could have justified not doing which would have saved me time, but it was hard to ignore it if I knew it could be done slightly better. Some of the more tedious tasks (table and figure updates) even gave me a chance to enjoy some audiobooks while I worked.

IT: Chapter 2

Finally, in what is undoubtedly the most important event of our lifetime, IT: Chapter 2 is set to release on September 6th. As sad I am to leave Atlanta, I am so excite to finally see IT: Chapter 2. It was such a blessing when the first was released a couple years ago, and I am so happy to see such a major motion picture production for one of my favorite books of all time.

I may update this with some post Dragon Con pictures and comments, but for now, I am going to sign off until I’m back beyond the wall.

The actual wall separating Canada and the US, as documented by one explorer.