This also totally fails to account for different fields having different norms. In astronomy, the last author slot is meaningless (and is almost certainly someone who didn’t contribute all that much). 🔭🧪

By popular demand, a side-on view of the glass gravitational lens! Now with extra autumnal-ness. 🧪🔭

Gravitationally lensed autumn colours! 🔭🧪

I'm delighted that my first children's book, Astrophysics for Supervillains, is featured in BookTrust’s Great Books Guide 2025, chosen as one of their top recommended children’s books of the year 😀🔭 www.booktrust.org.uk/book-recomme...

Oh to be a cat in a drawer

Back at the Royal Institution, as part of the book tour 😀

On the contrary, Cornell et al. (1994) was way ahead of its time, positing the existence of quasi-stars (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-s...) which mainstream astrophysics didn’t predict until 2006.

She basically invented astrophysics. She proved the laws of chemistry, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics, not just gravity, applied universally. She determined the composition of the sun and primacy of hydrogen in the universe. She advised the PhDs of Frank Drake and Frank Kameny.

Google AI doesn’t understand how borders work

I’ll be back at the Ri on October 4th, talking about all things dark matter-y. Come along!

Somehow seems right the best appreciation of In Our Time - and Bragg - is in the New Yorker. Captures the hunour if it - especially thosr abrupt intros. www.newyorker.com/culture/podc...

Exciting news! I'm going to be giving TWO talks at the Royal Institution on 4th October: an afternoon talk for children about my latest book (The Great Alien Hunt), and an evening talk for adults about the mysteries of Dark Matter. 🔭🧪👽 www.rigb.org/whats-on/gre... www.rigb.org/whats-on/sea...

Major discovery

Absolutely incredible post on the latest piece of silliness produced by the Florida Man of astronomy

GPT5 now knows how many 'r's are in the word strawberry. But this seems like a one-off, and fails on similar words. Has the 'how many 'r's in strawberry' question become easy just because it's now part of the training data?

The colour-coordinated flowers are on point at Peterhouse College!

Big day for the matriarchy! 🥳 Huge congrats to the awesome Prof. Doughtery, lead on the Jupiter-bound ESA JUICE mission & STFC Exec Chair. If anyone's confused on the astro royal hierarchy: Michele and I are the astro equivalents of 🇬🇧Westminster and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Holyrood 🤗 ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 👩‍🔬🔭🧪

Reset the count!

It's official: A new interstellar object is currently flying through our solar system at 61 km/sec. Comet 3I/ATLAS, as it's now known, is only the 3rd known interstellar visitor, but the new Rubin Observatory is likely to find dozens more in the coming years. 🔭🧪 science.nasa.gov/solar-system...

OK, looks like 3I/ATLAS is a comet! If it were an asteroid the image would be symmetric circles. The distortion is likely due to ices sublimating to form a gaseous tail.

Aaaaaand… done! The first draft of Astrophysics for Supervillains 3 has been officially sent to my editor 😀 (Due May 2026. Ish.)

Reset the counter!

A visitor from another star has been spotted speeding through the solar system! This is only the third ever interstellar object we've seen so far - I'm excited to learn more about it in the coming months before it flies away again www.newscientist.com/article/2486...

Another interstellar visitor? Looks like it could be… Also, I can’t wait for Rubin to find hundreds of these things. Exciting times!

The details are not yet finalized, but the budget bill would devastate NASA science and the future of US exploration in space and astronomy. Among many other things. 🔭🧪 www.planetary.org/articles/nas...

I used cubehelix for lots of papers! Dave was my academic mentor when I started as a postdoc at the Cavendish, he spent a lot of time nerding out about the greatness of cubehelix 😀

It was amazing to be part of the Read For Good 2025 Summer Party, alongside so many great authors and illustrators. We went live to 65 schools around the UK, and spoke about scary unicorns, anxious doughnuts, and alien life across the galaxy. Fun times!

Terrible, terrible news. NASA is being gutted. A 50% cut to science funding will haunt astro research for decades to come

It's our Summer Party this week - celebrating 40 years of Readathon!! A FREE online event with Nick Sharratt, @neillcameron.bsky.social, @afsteadman.bsky.social & @mattbothwell.com @dkbooks.bsky.social @simonkidsuk.bsky.social @dfbstoryhouse.bsky.social @puffinbooksuk.bsky.social

Am going to set up a consultancy advising science projects to work with media instead of producing their own live streams.

I’ve never been so jealous of Australia before. Look at it. All its frosty loveliness

David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...

New exoplanet classification just dropped 🔭🧪 xkcd.com/3103/

The Astronomy Picture of the Day website posted its first picture OTD in 1995. It was a computer-generated image showing how Earth would bend starlight if it had the density of a neutron star. APOD is *thirty years old* today! 🧪 🔭 apod.nasa.gov/rjn/apod/ap9... Image: Robert Nemiroff

1/ Pretty sure this article about the Moon on the BBC gets the facts wrong.... (unless I'm misunderstanding) 🔭🧵... www.bbc.co.uk/weather/arti...

It was so great to speak at Cheltenham Science Festival (in one of the biggest venues I’ve ever spoken in!). Hundreds of super keen students came to talk all things extraterrestrial life, as part of the Great Alien Hunt book tour 👽🧪🔭

At the Cheltenham Festival to talk about The Great Alien Hunt!

Turns out London is infinitely nicer/more bearable when you cycle around

Oh to be a cat napping in a sunbeam

People talking with ChatGPT and thinking it’s conscious are basically doing the human version of this

24 years after Tidal!

Somehow, my 2021 book The Invisible Universe is currently the #1 bestselling physics book on Amazon 🤯 I think I have Curious Cases to thank...

Rainbow! Our Cambridge heliostat splitting a beam of sunlight. 🧪

What a fine specimen of a cat

I'm on Curious Cases this week, talking to Dara Ó Briain and Hannah Fry about all things invisible! From radio stars and X-rays of black holes to the weirdness that is dark matter and dark energy. It was really fun 😀 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Great thread on the new K2-18b results 👀

Measured, responsible journalism as always from The S*n…

This is factually inaccurate! The Sun is far too small to explode. Instead, it will swell up into a massive red giant and roast the Earth to a crisp. Much better.

🚀🚀

My current hot take. There are now: Professional astronauts Hobby astronauts Space tourists