Author Archives: John F. Lindner

About John F. Lindner

John F. Lindner was born in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and educated at the University of Vermont and Caltech. He is an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at The College of Wooster and a visiting professor at North Carolina State University. He has enjoyed multiple yearlong sabbaticals at Georgia Tech, University of Portland, University of Hawai'i, and NCSU. His research interests include nonlinear dynamics, celestial mechanics, and neural networks.

The Double Planet

John F. Lindner July 10, 2015

Next week the New Horizons spacecraft flies by the Pluto-Charon binary system. This week New Horizon photos indicate the dramatic differences between Pluto and Charon (where many astronomers pronounce the latter more like “Charlene”, the name of the wife of … Continue reading →
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Chaos in the Clockwork

John F. Lindner June 9, 2015

The work of Newton and Laplace suggested to many that the solar system was like a giant clockwork, which was illustrated by beautiful mechanical models called orreries. The controversial Molchanov hypothesis avers that every oscillatory system evolves to a resonance … Continue reading →
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The Flight of the Dragon

John F. Lindner May 13, 2015

Last week, SpaceX conducted a successful pad abort test of its innovative Crew Dragon spacecraft. The hypergolic (= ignite on contact) MMH + NTO Super Draco engines accelerated Dragon from 0 to 100 mph in 1.2 seconds — that’s faster than … Continue reading →
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The unveiling of Pluto

John F. Lindner May 2, 2015

As a kid, I poured over diagrams in Popular Science magazine describing possible Grand Tours of the outer solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) made possible by a rare alignment of the planets. Unfortunately, budget cuts reduced the Grand … Continue reading →
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Strange Non-Chaotic Stars

John F. Lindner April 15, 2015

On the second day of my  University of Hawai’i sabbatical, I began to work with space telescope data that would justify my NASA T-shirts and invigorate the study of variable stars. While the brightness of stars like the sun is nearly constant, the … Continue reading →
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Wooster Physics in Hawai’i!

John F. Lindner April 8, 2015

Aloha! Thanks to Wooster’s generous sabbatical program, I’m spending the 2014-2015 academic year at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa on the island of O’ahu in Honolulu, and I’m learning my Hawaiian accents. I live in a very small studio apartment with … Continue reading →
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