Thanks for the Memories, Les Miles!

Dear Tiger Fans,

The past few days have marked a time of transition for our football program, but I can assure you this season still holds great promise due to the dedication of our talented student-athletes and the contagious enthusiasm of Coach Ed Orgeron and his staff.

Coach O and the Fighting Tigers will represent our university and our state with tremendous pride and energy, and I encourage you to support their efforts over the next two months of the regular season and beyond. There are no limits to what can be accomplished in the coming weeks!

I know you’ll join me in offering sincere thanks to Les Miles for his substantial contributions to our football program and for the first-class manner in which he always represented LSU and Louisiana. We are very grateful to Coach Miles for the impact he made upon the lives of his players, and we wish him and his family the best in all of their endeavors.

We have five home games remaining, beginning this Saturday at 6:30 p.m. when Missouri visits Tiger Stadium for the first time. LSU and Mizzou have met on the gridiron just once before – at the 1978 Liberty Bowl – and this weekend’s matchup should provide plenty of excitement as the Tigers take on one of the nation’s leading passers, Missouri’s Drew Lock.

The LSU offense, under the guidance of new coordinator Steve Ensminger, will look to provide fireworks of its own with adjustments in its style of play. Saturday is also Homecoming on the LSU campus, and we’re expecting gorgeous weather for all of the festivities leading up to kickoff.

The atmosphere you’ve created in Tiger Stadium has inspired LSU teams for decades and has earned Death Valley enduring recognition as college football’s greatest venue. LSU has a remarkable record of 100 wins and only 15 losses at home since 2000, and that’s due in large part to the passion of the Fighting Tiger faithful.

Let’s make this Louisiana Saturday Night versus Missouri a memorable evening for Coach O and the players, and I look forward to seeing you in Tiger Stadium!

As always, we welcome your comments at athletics@lsu.edu. Unfortunately we cannot answer every e-mail we receive, but please be assured they are all read.

Geaux Tigers!

Joe Alleva
Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics

Check out the letter at LSU Sports.

I am very sad to see Coach Miles go! He is a class act and one of the most highly respected coaches in the country. He still has the love of our fan base, and we are confident that he will have a prominent position somewhere soon. Thanks for the memories, coach!!! Let's see some highlights...

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Be A Martian!

Mars needs YOU! In the future, Mars will need all kinds of explorers, farmers, surveyors, teachers… but most of all YOU! Join us on the Journey to Mars as we explore with robots and send humans there one day. Download a Mars poster that speaks to you. Be an explorer!

Explorers Wanted on the Journey to Mars

Hike the solar system's largest canyon, Valles Marineris on Mars, where you can catch blue sunsets in the twilight, and see the two moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) in the night sky.

Work the Night Shift on Martian Moon Phobos

Night owls welcome! If you lived on Mars' moon Phobos, you'd have an office with a view, mining for resources with Mars in the night sky. Settlers below on Mars would see Phobos rise and set not once, but twice in one day!

Farmers Wanted for Survival on Mars

Got a green thumb? This one's for you! In space, you can grow tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and radishes just like you would find in your summer garden. New ways of growing fresh food will be needed to keep brave explorers alive.

Surveyors Wanted to Explore Mars and its Moons

Have you ever asked the question, what is out there? So have we! That curiosity leads us to explore new places like Mars and its moons, Phobos and Deimos. Just what lies beyond the next valley, canyon, crater, or hill is something we want to discover with rovers and with humans one day too.

Teach on Mars and its Moons

Learning is out of this world! Learning can take you places you've never dreamed of, including Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. No matter where we live, we can always learn something new, especially with teacher-heroes who guide us on our path, daring us to dream and grow!

Technicians Wanted to Engineer our Future on Mars

People with special talents will always be in demand for our Journey To Mars. Whether repairing an antenna in the extreme environment of Mars, or setting up an outpost on the moon Phobos, having the skills and desire to dare mighty things is all you need.

Assembly Required to Build Our Future on Mars and its Moons

Are you someone who can put things together, solving challenges to ensure survival? Dare to forge our future with space-age tools - build spaceships to carry us to Mars and back, and habitats to protect us while we're there.

We Need You

We need many things for our Journey To Mars,
but one key piece is YOU!
Check out the feature at NASA Mars Exploration.

Will we actually see the colonization of Mars in our lifetime?

If human exploration and colonization of Mars is a subject that interests you, I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - consisting of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. In this awesome work of science fiction, Robinson delves into the technological, social and political aspects in a realistic future of Martian colonization and terraforming. You'll find no light-sabres or warp drives in these books... just down-to-earth, scientifically-feasible sci-fi!!!

D-Day - June 6, 1944

SAINTE MERE EGLISE, France -- It was the middle of the night and the town of Sainte Mere Eglise was on fire. Occupied by the Germans since June 18, 1940, the town had survived several allied air raids.

A stray incendiary bomb from one of those raids had set a building near the town square on fire and it was spreading. The townspeople formed a chain to ferry water from the pump in the town square to the fire.

At about 1:30 a.m. that day -- June 6, 1944 -- the sky filled with hundreds of American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Well lit by the flames beneath them, the paratroopers were easy targets for the startled German soldiers on the ground. One of those paratroopers was Pvt. John Steele of F Company, 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Steele was already a combat veteran, with combat jumps into Italy and Sicily under his belt prior to D-Day.

During his landing, Steele's parachute became caught in the steeple of the church in the middle of the town square. Shot through the foot, Steele hung there for two hours pretending to be dead before the Germans noticed him and cut him down.

"There were some paratroopers who landed nearby, but they didn't help him because they thought he was dead. The Germans thought he was dead also, but they wanted whatever papers he had on him and that is when they discovered that he was alive," said Patrick Bunel, a curator at the Airborne Museum here.

The German soldiers took him prisoner, but Steele was able to escape once tanks that had landed at Utah beach arrived. At approximately 4:30 a.m. Sainte Mere Eglise became the first town in France to be liberated. The fighting around the town continued until June 7, when the Germans were finally pushed back. Steele was awarded the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart for his actions during the invasion.

Today a uniformed mannequin hangs from a parachute and rigging on the steeple, in honor of Steele (who actually landed in back of the church), his fateful jump and the liberation of the town below.

"When I first saw it (the mannequin), I didn't know that it had actually happened," said Pfc. Cory Peppeard of the 230th Military Police Company, 18th Military Police Brigade, one of hundreds of U.S. servicemembers here to support this week's 65th anniversary commemoration of D-Day. "It's pretty impressive that he was able to survive that."

Sainte Mere Eglise secured Steele a place in history as a Soldier in the division that helped to liberate the town, but also as the paratrooper who landed on the church. It was a scene that would be recreated 18 years later in the 1962 movie, "The Longest Day," in which Steele was portrayed by the actor Red Buttons.

Steele regularly visited here before his death in 1969 from cancer. But he was not the only American the town remembers.

Their actions here have also been captured in two stained glass windows in the church. One was designed in 1945 by a local artist named Paul Renaud, who was 14 years old when the paratroopers landed and 16 years old when he drew the sketch for a window made by Gabriel Loire in the village of Chartres.

It depicts the Virgin Mary and child above a burning Sainte Mere Eglise with paratroopers and planes around her. An inscription below the figures reads: "This stained glass was completed with the participation of Paul Renaud and Sainte Mere, for the memory of those who, with their courage and sacrifice, liberated Sainte Mere Eglise and France".

"My father worked with the parish to come up with an idea to replace the original window, which had been destroyed," said Henri Jean Renaud, whose father was the mayor of Saint Mere Eglise at the time. Renaud was 10 years old when the paratroopers landed.

A second window depicts Saint Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers. The 82nd Airborne Division, the lion of Normandy, the Sainte Mere Eglise insignia, and symbols for each of the combat jumps made by the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II are also represented in the window.

The idea for the window began at the 25th anniversary of the jump and was donated by the veterans of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, in 1972. The same artist that made the first window also made the second. The inscription at the bottom reads: "To the memory of those who through their sacrifice liberated Sainte Mere Eglise."

While the mannequin and windows are but inanimate objects, Renaud said, they help keep the memory of very real heroes alive.

"We are really very devoted to the veterans," said Renaud. "For me, when they landed, they were like heroes in a movie. Now they are brothers."

Check out the article at The Official Home Page of the United States Army.

NEVER FORGET D-DAY!!!

Be sure to visit the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana for some exciting events going on today!

If you are interested in accurate D-Day and WWII history, I highly recommend the following books by Stephen Ambrose. He has written other WWII books, but those four are by far the most notable and my favorites:

• Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
• D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
• Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
• Pegasus Bridge

The HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, inspired by Stephen Ambrose's book by the same title, is a must-see for any WWII history buff. I have found the series to be one of the most historically accurate movies made on the topic... I highly recommend checking it out!

There are MANY movies made in the WWII setting, check out World War II on Film at www.worldwar-2.net and the Wikipedia List of WWII Films.

A Giant Landing for Mankind

Why SpaceX's Rocket Landing On A Drone Ship Is A Big Deal

There couldn't have been a more perfect launch than yesterday's. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off right on schedule. As we watched from a few miles away, the glare of the rocket's flames was searingly bright, hard to look at but impossible to look away from, like the sparklers kids play with on the Fourth of July. The sound, too, was like Independence Day, the boom and shake of a thousand fireworks going off, crashing through the sound barrier.

The cargo made it safely into orbit, where it's on its way to the International Space Station. But the real magic was in what happened after the launch. For the first time ever, the Falcon 9 came down for a gentle (non-explosive) landing on a drone ship. The achievement is critical in developing reusable, relatively low-cost spaceflight.

“It's another step toward the stars,” said Musk during a press conference.

Traditionally, rocket boosters fall into the ocean after launch, never to be used again. But Musk often compares that to throwing away an airplane after every flight. Reusing the booster could shave millions of dollars off of launch costs, and the first step to that is getting the boosters back to Earth safely.

SpaceX landed its rocket on solid ground in December, but landing on the drone ship was key to SpaceX's reusability strategy.

That's because about half of all launches bring the rocket over the ocean. After that, the rocket doesn't have enough fuel to turn back around and head for land. The autonomous ship gives SpaceX a movable landing pad, but landing on it proved difficult. It's akin to a jet landing on an aircraft carrier—the target is small and moving—except that the rocket comes down at about 17,000 miles per hour.

Unlike the booster that landed on land last year SpaceX is planning to reuse this one. After the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You brings it back to port, the company will test fire the engines about 10 times, and if all is working well, they could fly it again as soon as May or June.

Eventually, the company hopes to “hose off”, tune up, and re-launch each rocket in a matter of weeks, Musk said. If they can do it on a reliable enough basis, it could shave millions of dollars off the cost of launching.

It costs about $60 million to build a rocket, but just 2 or 3 hundred thousand to refuel it. Inspecting and tweaking each booster could cost some time and money, but Musk says they're expecting reusability to bring costs down “100-fold”.

It should be noted that the space shuttle program had similar goals—it was hoped that reusing the vehicle and launching often would bring down costs over time. Unfortunately, the price stayed constant around $450 million per flight.

But SpaceX has already changed the face of spaceflight and ISS resupply with its $61.2 million dollar launches, compared to $225 million for its competitor ULA.

If reusability pans out as well as Musk hopes, a 100-fold decrease would bring the cost of each launch from roughly $60 million to about $600,000.

That figure isn't counting the cost of having to build new rockets—Musk estimates that each rocket could be good for 10 or 20 launches. But even if it's somewhere in that ballpark, such a dramatic price cut would revolutionize access to space, opening it up for business, research, and tourists. It would make the Falcon 9 into the Model T of space exploration.

There's still a lot that could go wrong before that happens.

By the end of this year, SpaceX intends to amp up its launch frequency to every other week, and most of those launches will be accompanied by landing attempts. So if the reusability plan really works to cut costs, we should know it sooner rather than later.

Check out the article at Popular Science.

Private industry is the way of the future in space!

Check out:

• SpaceX's Dragon Soars As Its Rocket Lands: An Epic Spaceflight in Photos
• Falcon 9 Overview
• CRS-8 Dragon Mission
• CRS-8 Science Haul
• Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)

Of course, here is the video of the now-famous landing!

Rituals abound as LSU fans prepare for Alabama

Around the Bowl and Down the Hole... Roll Tide Roll!

It’s Bama week in Baton Rouge, when a robotic elephant dangles from a tiger tail, a dog chews on a Nick Saban doll and a pig prepares to take flight.

LSU fans are a superstitious bunch.

Did LSU lose to Florida when you wore that purple jersey? Burn it, regardless of the $100 price tag. Did the Tigers stomp the Gamecocks when you debuted new pants? Wear them for every game for the rest of your life, and perhaps don’t wash them if you’re afraid of destroying the luck they carry.

No game brings out the rituals, traditions and superstitions in the LSU faithful quite like Alabama. And with LSU having lost the past four contests against the Tide, Tiger fans are ready to pull out all the stops to ensure a purple-and-gold win during LSU running back Leonard Fournette’s Heisman campaign season.

Laurie Laville, of Baton Rouge, abuses a robotic, stuffed elephant during Bama week each year. She started it shortly after Nick Saban, her former neighbor, became the icon of crimson and houndstooth.

Laville uses a tiger tail to make a noose for the little gray “voodoo elephant” to hang on gameday and incite coos from LSU and Alabama fans alike.

He’s robotic, but Laville “took his batteries out because we certainly don’t want him having any energy.” She and her friends hold his leg during kickoffs and they cover his black, beady eyes during key plays.

When LSU was losing the BCS National Championship game in 2012, they threw the voodoo elephant on the barbecue. He still has the grill marks to prove it.

“We take turns doing little voodoo things to him,” the 51-year-old Laville said with a laugh. “We do actually do crazy things. Sometimes I feel like it works.”

The abuse of an Alabama-related symbol is a common trend among Tiger fans. Judy McGehee, 60, pulls out a Nick Saban doll during Bama week each year for her dog to enjoy as a chew toy.

“One time I was just looking at him and just hating him and I thought, you know, he really does look like a Ken doll,” she said about Saban. “Doesn’t his hair look like it?”

She bought a Ken doll about five years ago, dressed him up in red fabric and turned him into the Barbie-fied version of Saban. Her Maltese, Leo, chewed the Alabama coach with gusto.

“Leo was a real tiger,” she said. “He just couldn’t wait to get Nick every year and do him some damage. But I was afraid I would have to go buy a new Ken doll.”

Leo has since died, and her new dog, Hank, sported a No. 7 LSU shirt while he faced off with Ken Saban this year. McGehee thinks the combination of the shirt and the doll was too much for Hank, who is timid.

She plans to let Hank have another go at the doll during the game.

While some LSU diehards try voodoo, others turn to God.

Bo Bienvenu, of Prairieville, told The Advocate that he would sport an LSU shirt this week to a papal audience in Rome. He said he hoped the blessings would help against Alabama, and added that he knows “the old alma mater needs divine guidance directing the governor and Legislature.”

Many LSU fans are hoping that their standard gameday traditions are good enough for a win against Alabama.

Aaron Caffarel, a 25-year-old LSU graduate, has a strand of lucky LSU beads with an Uncle Sam-esque tiger medallion. He noticed at the end of last season the Tigers played better when he wore the beads. The two times he was not wearing them were when LSU got blown out by Auburn 41-7 and by Arkansas 17-0.

He’s in a wedding on Saturday, but that won’t stop him from doing what he can to bring LSU luck. Caffarel will wear the beads under his tux.

Randy Rice, 65, will sport his lucky purple-and-gold-sequined LSU top hat during the game, and rub it for good luck. He said he also will carry on a tradition that he started decades ago.

Rice and his wife, Carolyn, kiss every time LSU scores, regardless of whether it’s a touchdown, extra point, field goal or safety. They will watch the game on TV, and it will be a good night if LSU keeps scoring.

The Alabama-themed rituals can also make it easy for Tiger fans to play tricks on one another. Whitney Borruano, 26, is part of a tailgating group called JK tailgating that makes “elephant chili” for the Alabama game each year.

“It was just regular ground meat chili,” she said. “We started telling people the night before we were going to make an elephant chili, and we had this whole story made up.”

Borruano said she and her friends convinced many fellow tailgaters that they were eating elephant meat, though they eventually told them the truth. But the tradition of calling their Alabama meal “elephant chili” has stuck.

And while most of the Alabama game traditions happen leading up to and during the game, K. Charles Bedell, of Prairieville, said he will only get to engage in his if LSU pulls out a win. He has a toy gray pig that’s 16 years old called Piglet, the Prairieville Pig.

He remembers the adage that “pigs would have to fly” for LSU to beat Alabama years ago. And when the Tigers won in the past, he attached some wings to Piglet and hoisted him from a tree, showing his neighbors that the adage was true.

Four LSU-Alabama matchups have come and gone since Piglet got to wear his wings. Bedell thinks it’s time for him to fly again.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Geaux Tigers!!! BEAT BAMA!!! BEAT SABAN!!!

LSU Baseball's Lil Brown Suga

Zac Person speaks of Lil Brown Suga like he’s alive — like he’s a walking, talking animal instead of the furry, stuffed bear that he really is.

Lil Brown Suga asked to join the LSU baseball team, Person says. Lil Brown Suga has his own locker with “sleeping arrangements” in the clubhouse, and he’s got his own Twitter account, too.

He has a glove, a bat and a prime, cushy seat atop the bench in LSU’s dugout during games. He even has cool sunglasses and a white shirt emblazoned with “LSU.”

Is the bear this team’s new can of corn — a good-luck charm, a superstitious item often associated with baseball clubs?

Maybe, but the bear can thank his maker, Person, for what unfolded Sunday.

“I think,” Parker Bugg said, “we’re going to keep him.”

Three LSU pitchers threw a nine-hitter, walked none and struck out six, and the Tigers jumped to a big early lead, coasting to a 6-2 series-clinching win over Auburn on Sunday at Alex Box Stadium.

LSU (31-6, 10-5 Southeastern) won a third rubber match this season, avoided what would have been a second straight disappointing home series loss to a middling SEC team and claimed a series despite missing its best pitcher this weekend.

Person had a one-hit, three-inning start, Bugg threw four innings of one-run ball and Jesse Stallings wiggled free of a jam and closed out the game to deliver the Tigers’ third straight series win over Auburn (21-14, 5-10) in a precarious situation.

Coaches rested star freshman Alex Lange, 6-0 with an SEC-leading 1.39 ERA, this weekend because of arm “tightness” — not a serious issue, coach Paul Mainieri said. Austin Bain replaced him Saturday, leaving LSU to turn to a host of relievers Sunday.

No problem.

Person, Bugg and Stallings hurled a walk-less, nine-hit nine innings, and LSU broke out to a 6-0 lead in the third, chasing AU starter Rocky McCord and rebounding from Saturday’s 6-1 loss.

Lil Brown Suga watched it all — and even got a brief spot on the SEC Network’s online broadcast over the weekend. He’s similar to LSU’s new can of corn — a good-luck token that sat in LSU’s dugout during the run to the 2013 College World Series.

“We wanted a rally bear. So we got Lil Brown Suga,” pitcher Alden Cartwright said.

Person made the bear at the Build-A-Bear Workshop at the Mall of Louisiana earlier this week. The bear talks: When pushed, it plays a recording that pitcher Russell Reynolds taped.

“We were walking around the mall the other day for an off-day, and this bear came up to us and told us he was a huge LSU fan and would like to be a part of the team,” Person said Sunday, trying his best to keep a straight face. “He’s been running with us since.”

Usually the Tigers’ setup man, Person (2-0) said he was “surprised” by the start and didn’t know it until a Mainieri text at 9:15 a.m. Sunday. He got a win in his career-long three innings and rebounded from his only other start — a five-run, four-hit, 2.2-inning start at Florida last season that still angers him.

“I think in the Florida start my mind wasn’t in the right spot. I was too focused on, like, trying to prove I could still start,” said Person, who was 17-0 as a starter at LSU-Eunice. “In this one, I was like, ‘You know what? I come out and pitch regularly here. I can get guys out.’ ”

Person retired his first four batters and sat down the final two in the second with runners on first and second. He struck out the last batter he faced — No. 3 hitter Daniel Robert — with a man on first, eliciting a fist-pumping run back to the dugout to his friendly, fuzzy friend.

“Good-luck bear,” Bugg said.

Bugg helped shut down Auburn center fielder Anfernee Grier, who had three RBIs and five hits in the first two games of the series. He went 0-for-4 and hit into a double play Sunday.

Bugg tied his career high by pitching four innings, and he left two in scoring position in the sixth before a perfect seventh. Stallings limited the damage to one run in his first inning, the eighth. He allowed three hits but retired the final batter with runners at first and second and threw a perfect ninth.

“If you would have told me before the weekend began that we would have won a series and Alex Lange would not have thrown one pitch for us, I probably wouldn’t have been all that upset about it, quite frankly,” Mainieri said. “Obviously, it’d be nice to sweep the series, but even if Lange would have pitched, who knows if we would have beat (Keegan Thompson) last night?”

Mainieri hasn’t decided on Lange’s next start. He threw long toss on Sunday and “felt great,” the coach said, and many – including Bugg and Lange himself – expect the pitcher to return for a three-game series next weekend at Georgia (20-17, 6-9).

Lange threw Saturday, too, and will throw a bullpen Tuesday — at which point Mainieri will decide on his status for next weekend.

“Everything is looking good,” the coach said.

LSU finished with a combined 20 hits in the series against Auburn — its lowest total in any SEC series this season — and didn’t have a base runner for the final four innings. The Tigers did enough against McCord, though.

They started the game with back-to-back doubles in a two-run first and got another in the second. The first three batters reached in that four-run third, and Kade Scivicque hit a bases-loaded single to extend his hitting streak to a whopping 20 games.

“We didn’t play great this weekend,” Mainieri said. “Didn’t swing the bats like we’ve been swinging them, and yet we still won two our of three games.”

Now it’s on to a home game against Lamar (17-18) on Wednesday before a trip to Athens, Georgia. Lil Brown Suga is along for a ride — one that might not end for a while.

“So far, all of the guys enjoy being around him,” Person said. “As long as he’s making friends on the team, I don’t see why he can’t travel with us.”

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Congratulations Tigers on staying at the top of the polls this season! Can't wait to see what's in store for this collection of great players!

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

LSU Tigers in the NCAA Tournament!

LSU’s upset loss to Auburn in the Southeastern Conference tournament Friday begat 48 hours of hand wringing and rampant speculation, bracketology dissection and bubble watching, and probably in at least one corner, an exorcism for the Tigers’ free-throw shooting.

As the hours ticked away until the 5 p.m. NCAA selection show, LSU guard Josh Gray had to go on Twitter to relieve his jitters.

“I(‘ve) never been this nervous in my life,” Gray said.

Turns out, Gray and the rest of the Tigers had no need to strain their giblets. The butterflies could wait until the next time they toe the free-throw line.

LSU, despite its eccentric mood swings, its ability to come within a contested 3-pointer of toppling the best team in the nation, and its knack for losing to the SEC’s cellar dwellers, was in the NCAA tournament with room to spare.

Lace up some fresh Nikes and get ready to go dancing, fellas.

It’s been a long time coming.

It was not, apparently, a long time debating for the NCAA selection committee.

The committee seeds the entire tournament 1-68. LSU came in just about in the middle, as the No. 35 overall seed, ninth in the East Regional, taking on No. 8 North Carolina State on Thursday night in Pittsburgh.

I participated in the NCAA mock selection exercise last month in Indianapolis. Judging by that experience, LSU was a fairly easy pick.

The selection committee starts by choosing a bunch of teams that are absolute locks as at-larges, 20 or so squads like Kentucky and Kansas and Oklahoma and, most likely, Arkansas.

Then comes a series of votes as teams are transferred over into the tournament, like layers of a cake, a few at a time. My guess is LSU, despite the Auburn loss to fall to 22-10 overall and a No. 56 RPI, made it into the field sometime Saturday.

Why the huge disparity between the Tigers’ RPI and their overall seeding, the speculation and the rather secure seed LSU wound up with?

The reason, NCAA selection committee chairman Scott Barnes said, basically came down to quality wins and the look of the Tigers as a quality team.

“They had two great road wins against Arkansas and West Virginia, plus a sweep of Ole Miss,” Barnes said after the bracket was unveiled. “Then there’s the eye test. As you think about LSU, that really came up often among the committee members.”

“The eye test.” The Tigers look the part of an NCAA tournament participant. They play an exciting, up-tempo, fun-to-watch brand of basketball. The kind of ball that gets you noticed. The kind of ball that had the TV folks set LSU up with a prime-time game on TBS against N.C. State.

“I think we’ve been an exciting team to watch all year long with what we’ve been able to do on the road at West Virginia and Arkansas,” LSU coach Johnny Jones said. “And we’re still the only team in the country to play Kentucky to a two-point game. Although we’ve had some setbacks because of the inexperience of our team, our guys have done a tremendous job of bouncing back.”

The slow but steady progress LSU has made in three years under Jones — from sitting at home with 19 wins two years ago to 20 wins and winning a game in the NIT last year — begs the question: Can the Tigers do more than just earn an NCAA bid?

In North Carolina State, LSU gets a team much like itself, one that beat a No. 1 seed in Duke (not that the Tigers have a win that good) and had a close loss to ACC champ Virginia but also stumbled against ACC lowlights like Wake Forest, Boston College and (like LSU) Clemson. Awaiting the winner of their game is East Regional top seed Villanova on Saturday.

No NCAA tournament path is going to be an easy one, but for LSU, winning a game or two is at least doable. N.C. State has 13 losses. And Villanova (32-2), for all its success, has at least been tested a couple of times lately by Providence (63-61), Creighton (76-72) and Butler (68-65). And it stands to reason: If the Tigers can come within a contested 3-pointer of ending Kentucky’s unbeaten dream, they can play with anyone.

There’s no telling with this LSU team. Could be one-and-done, could be in the Final Four (the former being more likely, of course).

But whether or not the Tigers belong in the NCAA tournament? That’s not worthy of debate.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Congratulations Tigers on your 21st appearance in program history in the NCAA Basketball Tournament!!!

Check out the History of LSU in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

NASA Dawn Probe Enters Orbit Around Dwarf Planet Ceres

The year of the dwarf planet has begun.

NASA's Dawn probe arrived at Ceres today (March 6) at about 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT), becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a dwarf planet. Dawn's observations over the next 16 months should lift the veil on Ceres, which has remained largely mysterious since it was first spotted more than two centuries ago.

"Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," Dawn mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres 'home.'"

NASA officials got a signal from Dawn confirming that it's healthy and in orbit at about 8:36 a.m. EST (1336 GMT) today.

The milestone comes just four months ahead of another highly anticipated dwarf-planet encounter: On July 14, NASA's New Horizons probe will zoom through the Pluto system, giving scientists their first good looks at that faraway dwarf planet and its five known moons.

Dawn of the solar system

The $473 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 to study Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Vesta's diameter is 330 miles (530 km), while Ceres is about 590 miles (950 km) wide.

Both Vesta and Ceres are leftovers from the solar system's early days, planetary building blocks that would likely have kept growing if not for the interfering influence of Jupiter's immense gravitational tug.

The two bodies are "intact protoplanets from the very dawn of the solar system," Dawn Deputy Principal Investigator Carol Raymond, also of JPL, said during a news conference Monday (March 2)." So they're literally fossils that we can investigate to really understand the processes that were going on at that time."

Dawn orbited Vesta from July 2011 through September 2012, when the probe departed for Ceres. So today's arrival made history in another way as well: Dawn became the first spacecraft ever to orbit two objects beyond the Earth-moon system.

The mission's spaceflight feats are made possible by Dawn's innovative propulsion system, which accelerates xenon ions out the back of the spacecraft. This process generates tiny amounts of thrust; it would take Dawn four days to go from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h), team members have said.

But Dawn's ion drive is about 10 times more efficient than traditional chemical systems. So the engines can keep firing for weeks, months and years, accelerating Dawn to tremendous speeds.

"With the 1,000 lbs. [454 kilograms] of xenon propellant that was loaded on board, Dawn has already accomplished more than 24,000 mph [38,624 km/h] of velocity change," Dawn project manager Robert Mase of JPL said during Monday's news conference. "To put that in context: That's more than it takes to get a vehicle from the surface of the Earth up to the International Space Station."

Thanks to ion propulsion, Dawn crept up on Ceres slowly and gradually. The probe eased into orbit today without the need for any harrowing make-or-break maneuvers.

The Mysteries of Ceres

Ceres is an intriguing world that in many ways looks more like the icy moons of the outer solar system, such as Jupiter's satellite Europa and the Saturn moon Enceladus, than its rocky neighbors in the asteroid belt.

For example, the dwarf planet is thought to consist of 25 to 30 percent water by mass, mostly in the form of ice. Ceres may also once have had (and might even still possess) an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface, as Europa and Enceladus are thought to. Indeed, some researchers believe Ceres may be capable of supporting microbial life.

"It's really going to be exciting to see what this exotic, alien world looks like," Rayman told Space.com in late January. "We're finally going to learn about this place."

Dawn is not equipped to search for signs of life. But the probe might be able to spot evidence of an underground ocean (if it exists), if it burbles up in places to interact with surface rocks, Rayman said. Measurements of Ceres' surface temperatures, when coupled with models of heat transportation through Ceres, could also shed light on the question of underground liquid water, said Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell of UCLA.

Dawn will also investigate two Ceres mysteries that have cropped up in the past year or so. Mission scientists will try to figure out just what is producing Ceres' mysterious bright spots, and they'll attempt to confirm and characterize a tenuous water-vapor plume spotted recently by researchers using Europe's Herschel Space Observatory.

Overall, Dawn will characterize the dwarf planet in detail, mapping out its surface and determining what Ceres is made of, among other tasks.

"We'll do typical planetary geology, more similar to what we do on Mars than what we did with Vesta," Russell told Space.com.

This work will not start immediately; Dawn will spend the next six weeks spiraling down to its initial science orbit, getting there on April 23. The probe will then begin taking Ceres' measure from an altitude of 8,400 miles (13,500 km). Dawn will study the dwarf planet from a series of increasingly closer-in orbits until the mission ends in June 2016.

Sizing up Dwarf Planets

While Ceres and Pluto are both dwarf planets — a category created by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006, when it demoted Pluto from a full-fledged planet in a decision that remains controversial today — they're quite different from each other, Russell said.

"Pluto formed differently, formed at a different time and formed out of different materials" than Ceres, he said.

Pluto is also more than twice as wide as Ceres and lies more than 14 times farther from the sun than the queen of the asteroid belt does. So the data returned by Dawn and New Horizons will likely not paint a unifying picture of just what it means to be a dwarf planet, Russell said.

"The legacy [of the two missions] is freeing these bodies from arbitrary labels based on their size or their ability to scatter other objects, or whatever the IAU had going through its head," he said. "These bodies are being liberated from classification, and we now can understand them in their own right."

Check out the article at Space.com.

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Live Long and Prosper!

StarTrek.com is deeply saddened to report the passing of Leonard Nimoy. The legend -- an actor, writer, producer, director, poet, host, voiceover artist, photographer, husband, father and grandfather, as well as Star Trek's beloved Spock -- died today at the age of 83 at his home in Los Angeles. Nimoy succumbed to the end stages of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), an illness that resulted from years of smoking and which afflicted him despite having quit smoking three decades ago. In 2014, he announced via Twitter that he was battling COPD and urged fans to stop smoking before it was too late.

Nimoy's career spanned generations. Born and raised in Boston, he started acting as a boy, but moved to Los Angeles at age 18 to give it a go on a professional level. He worked his way up from small roles in the likes of Queen for a Day, Zombies of the Stratosphere and Them! to major guest star turns in such shows as Broken Arrow, Dragnet, Sea Hunt, Twilight Zone, Wagon Train and The Outer Limits. At one point, he acted in an episode of The Lieutenant, a show written and created by a rising behind-the-scenes talent named Gene Roddenberry, and he acted in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with a young Canadian by the name of William Shatner.

It wouldn't be long before their lives intersected again. Roddenberry created Star Trek: The Original Series, tapping Nimoy to play Spock and Jeffrey Hunter to play Captain Pike. NBC rejected the pilot, but asked Roddenberry to try again. The second pilot once again featured Nimoy as Spock, but after Hunter opted out of his contract, Roddenberry hired Shatner to play Captain Kirk. DeForest Kelley, who'd turned down the role of Spock, came on board to portray Dr. McCoy, and that unforgettable trio -- complemented by Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei and, starting with season two, Walter Koenig -- formed the cast that would see Star Trek through three seasons of the original show, 20-plus episodes of an animated series and six feature films, not to mention numerous television commercials and countless convention appearances.

Nimoy at times waged an internal battle when it came to Spock. He titled his first autobiography I Am Not Spock. Twenty years later, though, he wrote I Am Spock. He turned down the proposed Star Trek: Phase II series, but returned for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Spock died in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, only to be resurrected for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which Nimoy directed. He also directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and produced and developed the story for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and, as a tie-in, he guest starred as Ambassador Spock on two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And in 2009, after 18 long years, Nimoy helped J.J. Abrams reboot the Star Trek franchise by playing Spock Prime in Star Trek (2009), passing the torch to Zachary Quinto, who became a close friend. He also voiced Spock for Star Trek Online, made a cameo in Star Trek Into Darkness and was reportedly in talks to appear in the upcoming Star Trek film at the time of his death.

Beyond Star Trek, Nimoy's many film, TV and stage credits included Mission: Impossible, A Woman Called Golda, In Search Of..., Equus, Never Forget, Vincent, Standby: Lights! Camera! Action!, The Simpsons, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Fringe. With his friend and TNG's Q, John de Lancie, he created Alien Voices, which staged and recorded radio play-style productions of classic and original sci-fi/fantasy stories. And yes, who could forget Nimoy's music pursuits, which included such tunes as "Proud Mary" and "The Legend of Bilbo Baggins"? Nimoy joined Twitter in 2010 and gave William Shatner a run for his money, tweeting more than 1,700 times and amassing more than one million followers.

He was also a friend to StarTrek.com, helping re-launch the site in 2010 with an opening statement, granting an extensive, career-spanning interview in 2011, contributing a guest blog in 2012 about his creation of the split-fingered Vulcan greeting, and checking in with us often over the years for interviews and with updates on his current projects, as well as to answer specific questions about Star Trek as they came up. He ended his emails to us as he did every tweet to the public, with the acronym LLAP... Live Long and Prosper.

Back in May 2012, StarTrek.com teased Nimoy about being the busiest retired man in history. Asked if he truly considered himself retired, Nimoy replied, "Yeah, I do. I am. Look, I liken myself to a steamship that's been going full-blast and the captain pulls that handle back and then says, 'Full stop,' but the ship doesn't stop. It keeps moving from inertia. It keeps moving. It keeps moving. It'll start slowing down, but it doesn't stop. It doesn't come to a dead stop. That's the way I am. I still have a few odds and ends things that I enjoy doing. I don't want to get up in the morning and have nothing to do that day. That would be boring." Perfectly logical, right? And in his final tweet, which he posted on Feb. 23, Nimoy wrote, "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP."

Nimoy leaves behind his wife, Susan Bay, two children and several grandchildren. Please join StarTrek.com in offering our condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and millions of fans around the galaxy.

Check out the article at StarTrek.com.

R.I.P. Spock!