Sunday, July 12, 2020
By:
[All views are my own.]
This week, I made some fun coding progress. I refined my maps of the storms and started exploring some new variables. Up till now, I’d been working with 2D averaged data fields; now, I’m working with 3D data cubes of weather data. Moving up a dimension means lots more information, which also means even bigger files and even slower code. Should I be proud or concerned that I’m making a supercomputer run slow?
At NASA (virtually), I got to hear from some scientists working on LISA. If you liked LIGO, you’re gonna love LISA; it’s a massive, space-based interferometer that’ll detect gravitational waves in the millihertz band! They’re hoping to launch it in the 2030’s, which seems far away but on NASA timescales that’s basically tomorrow. They already have a ton of cool science plans and I’m pretty excited about them. I also got to hear from some graduate schools in a panel for us interns. I’m considering a lot of factors, but schools removing their GRE requirements are definitely moving up on my list.
Us SPS interns helped plan and host a virtual picnic on Thursday, which was less strange than you might imagine. We chatted with each other’s project mentors and various AIP friends, and I woefully lost at Physics Jeopardy. We also have our demo competition deadline tonight. I finished my fire tornado video just in time, and I am pretty proud of it considering I’d never edited a video together before. I’m excited to watch everyone else’s!
Outside of this internship, I’ve been dealing with TN’s voting laws and calling my representatives. Because I moved counties, I had to go show my ID to the voting office in order to vote absentee in the upcoming elections. I really feel like all in-person requirements should be waived due to, y’know, the pandemic, but TN does love its restrictive voting laws. I called my senators about the student ban that ICE is trying to impose on international students. I’m not sure if it helped, but I figured I might as well. There are so many things to be concerned about right now and I am trying to do whatever small things I can to help.
From 6ft away,
Anna Murphree