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For #WomensHistoryMonth: Let us celebrate the life and accomplishments of Sally Ride (1951-2012), Ph.D. physicist, educator, and the first U.S. woman in space. As a member of the Rogers Commission, she helped bring to light the O-ring failure that led to the Challenger disaster. 🎢⚛️⭐️🔭🧪🪐 1/3

let it be known that my achilles heel is cadbury mini eggs

One thing I’m seeing is that AI appears to be perceived by many as an increasingly political topic, whereas a decade ago it was largely one of technology alone. Both statements of critique and praise for such systems are becoming seen as latently partisan, much like climate science experienced.

Very interesting Astrophysics colloquium given today by Prof David Kipping (@davidkipping.bsky.social) about the role of Bayesianism and Anthropics in searches for life. Excited to see the paper published! Much to think about when it comes to finding life with future space telescopes.

Pompeii really is amazing

“I think, therefore I am.” The only thing we can be sure of. So what does that mean about our thinking machines?

“I am somebody” shaped how millions of us saw ourselves as kids, including me. That message mattered. It still does. Rest in power, Jesse Jackson 🙏🏽

The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a pioneer of progressive Democratic politics, close ally of Martin Luther King Jr, and two-time candidate for the presidential nomination, has died at 84. See his life in pictures: bit.ly/3OxOT3f

Claude Code is highly addictive. I find myself constantly walking back to my laptop to check on builds and agents. Is this the new social media?

I just want to get to the point where I can prompt “make TNG season 8” and it’s perfect

One of the most stupid things I’ve ever seen www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...

#31 Joshua Winn - Exoplanet New Discoveries, History and Future youtu.be/ISZHVwY5YjE

Am I the only one who names all my devices after Tolkien Elves? What’s your naming system?

#AstroHiveMind In my stats class we often code up an MCMC from scratch as a pedagogical exercise. Has anyone tried coding up a simple LLM or a different AI architecture? How did it go?

#AstroHiveMind In my stats class we often code up an MCMC from scratch as a pedagogical exercise. Has anyone tried coding up a simple LLM or a different AI architecture? How did it go?

I attended a meeting last week that was one of the most shocking of my career. Here’s the lowdown…. youtu.be/PctlBxRh0p4

"How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, admiral?" - Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Insurrection

It’s fascinating to see what would be the 3rd giant exomoon candidate reported using a wholly different method to transits: using astrometry. And it’s the biggest yet at 0.4 Jupiter masses. I’ve long punted on what defines a binary-planet vs a moon but this makes me wonder! arxiv.org/abs/2511.20091

Are these university rankings just tracking pure research output rather than impact? If so, it seems hardly surprising that Chinese institutes could gamify that and spam out papers. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

The future can often feel dark and dystopian. But what are YOU excited about for the future in the next few decades?

Centrifugal force on the surface of this rapidly rotating asteroid would be 0.11g outwards! So almost Lunar-level anti-gravity…

NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks https://theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-planet-with-conditions-that-could-sustain-rocks/

In geopolitics, history keeps repeating itself. Different actors, different victims, but same themes. We seem unable to evolve past law of the jungle rules.

A little 3I/ATLAS update building on @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social's nice RNAAS from last week. Given its non-grav acceleration and the rate at which it's losing mass, you can work out its size. The answer: a diameter around 1 km, very typical for comets. arxiv.org/abs/2512.18341 🔭 🧪

The Eschatian Hypothesis arxiv.org/abs/2512.09970

Heading to gay Paris tomorrow! Let me know your favorite things to do

#CoolWorlds Podcast Episode 28 is out! With Néstor Espinoza, in which we discuss JWST, Exoplanet Atmospheres & Molecule Detection... youtu.be/bZ7Hge0OUTE

The US tax code makes no sense. So if you own and AirBnB-out a second/third/etc home, you get a massive tax break via depreciation + offsetting maintenance/utilities. But you own+live in one house you get none of that. And if you rent it’s even worse. Isn’t this backwards??

Just get on with it already, you coward

Public health warning that I am not interested in your pet theory that you developed with ChatGPT

With more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered, confirming an exomoon would open new questions about how planetary systems form, and maybe even where life could exist. Watch this converation between physicist Brian Greene and astronomer @davidkipping.bsky.social at the World Science Festival

What a defense… #NYT #EpsteinFiles

The rise of “hyper-authorship” has neutered the correlation of publication metrics vs academic accolades. “The mean # of coauthors per pub, averaged across highly cited physicists, was 121 in 2004. It rose to 952 in 2019, with 10% of the scientists having >2,441 coauthors per pub on average”.

Some poor civilizations probably live in Bootes Void and think the universe must be playing a cruel joke on them.

If 3I/ATLAS is an alien Trojan horse, then why would there be any anomalies at all? Surely they could dress it up to be identical to our typical comets.

I've summarized the truth about Loeb's 10 "anomalies" about 3I/ATLAS in one post. Thanks to @deschscoveries.bsky.social @michael-w-busch.bsky.social @cometary.org and @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social for contributing their expertise!

Dr Ben Cassese (from yesterday!)

“What I’m saying is that we need to consider the possibility it’s aliens.” “Sir, this is a Walmart please stop harassing customers.”

New #CoolWorlds podcast episode just dropped with Jason Steffen, exoplanet scientist, author of "Hidden in the Heavens" and inventor of the "Steffen Perfect" technique for boarding planes! youtu.be/vaqgPzT8PXA

By this point in the year, even the Sun is like “fuck it”

So Avi has been arguing 3I/ATLAS is weird, and a common rebuttal has been “weird compared to what?” - as in we only have 2 other ISOs to compare to. But an interesting thought is that if Oort clouds mix during stellar encounters, many of our comets may in fact already be ISOs in origin.

I’ve been thinking a lot about SSA vs SIA in anthropics lately. Which one do you favor? Let me hear your hot takes.

New video! Why We Might Live in a "Barely Habitable" Universe youtu.be/Hj7a4mPkbsY

statistically, we likely live on one of the planets with the highest population of observers in the universe

So who has read AI 2027 and what was your reaction?

I’d have a lot more respect for Republicans if they responded to the protests with whatever their argument is for authoritarianism. Instead, they don’t address the concerns of the protestors at all and just try to delegitimize their views through ad hominems, call them Hamas/Marxists/radicals/etc.

Contemplating existence in Amsterdam