Hi all!
Today, I woke up at 8:45, walked to the lecture hall, and ate oatmeal for breakfast. I eagerly checked the results of the simulations on our asteroid we had been running overnight. Painfully, ⅔ of them had crashed (maybe 100% CPU utilization for 12 hours wasn’t the smartest idea), but we still collected more than enough data – over 1600 simulations! Before lunch, we analyzed our data and prepared a presentation. We also ran an additional 400 simulations to reach an even 2000.
After lunch, we presented the results of our simulations and attended a lecture by the Southwest Research Institute about chaos theory – the final piece of work at SSP! We had some free time before and after dinner, and watched The Martian afterwards. We also had an observation through the telescope planned midway through the movie, but it was canceled because it was pretty cloudy. After we finished The Martian at 12:30, we walked back to the dorms, played some ICBM Ping Pong (disclaimer – the name is purely metaphorical and no intercontinental ballistic missiles were used), and went to bed at 1:30. One day left now.
Simulations of our asteroid (2012 FN62) that we had started last night.
Our presentation on the results of our simulations (Fun Fact: there is a 92% chance 2012 FN62 will be ejected from the Solar System within 50 million years).
Movie Night: The Martian!
-Adam