🚨Great opportunity to get involved with an IODP3 expedition to the North Sea in 2027! We’re especially looking for folks who do: -glacial sedimentology -macrofossils (esp molluscs) -OSL Those from 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇳🇴 are particularly welcome to apply. Great opportunity! ⚒️🌍🧪 iodp3.org/special-call...

UK Higher Education is a slow motion disaster movie. And no one is coming to save us (or our students) from the decimation. We will look back on this period of destruction in the same way we look back at the Brexit vote. Oooops! I’m so done with this sector 😡 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We had a great time at #bpsc2026 last week! 🌕 Six members of our group gave talks on all things lunar and meteoritical ☄️ Two of our newest PhD students presented posters 🥇 Dr Tom Barrett won the UKPF early career award and presented a keynote talk 🥇 Flo Wilkinson won a prize for best student poster

Planetary Science Job Announcement Postdocs and fellowships 6 postdoc positions on habitability as a fundamental planetary process. Freie Univ. Berlin, TU Berlin, DLR, RUB Boschum, Univ. Wien, TU Dresden, Germany https://jobs.planetary-research.org/f511-f16b

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

PLANETARY SCIENCE JOB ANNOUNCEMENT Category: Non-tenure track faculty Senior Research Associate - Hypervelocity impact melting in early crustal evolution University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK https://jobs.planetary-research.org/3a80-e395

Planetary Science Job Announcement Postdocs and fellowships Post Doctoral Research Associate, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK https://jobs.planetary-research.org/180c-9b84

Working in partnership with the Mining Remediation Authority, we're proud to share our new mine plan viewer which gives access to a massive resource of over 120,000 scans of mine plans, made available online for the first time. www.gov.uk/government/n...

📣 Calling UK particle physics, astronomy and nuclear (PPAN) researchers. The @royalastrosoc.bsky.social is co-hosting an event for MPs on 15 June as part of our campaign to reverse catastrophic funding cuts. Write to your MP and encourage them to attend! Full details at ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Taken with our VLT over a period of four years, these images show the rotating disc of gas & dust around the young star AB Aurigae. Features like “twists” signal the places where #exoplanets could be forming 🪐 More: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2622a/ 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/A. Boccaletti et al.

Reposting for the Sunday morning reading crowd with a free-to-read link that isn't behind the Nature paywall! 🔭⚛️🧪👩‍🔬 📖: rdcu.be/floXQ

I have observed the Moon. You can too. It’s right there! Looking pretty good. Doesn’t have to be a special day for Moongazing. Well done, Moon.

The petition is currently on 79,700 🚀

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

#OTD 18 May 1991, British astronaut Helen Sharman was launched into space on the Soyuz TM-12 spacecraft, becoming the first Briton and first Western European woman in space 🚀🧪 @exploration.esa.int @ukspaceagency.bsky.social @spacecentre.bsky.social @sciencemuseum.org.uk

IOP President Paul Howarth and I have today written to Science Minister Lord Vallance calling for a full impact assessment of proposed STFC cuts to particle physics, astronomy and nuclear (PPAN) research.

There are 15 (!) PhD positions available to join the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission science team. Funded through the MSCA EXODOCS doctoral network: www.exodocs.eu Apply here: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/432752

Article from Ian Crawford, Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology, Birkbeck, University of London. "For those interested, here are some brief thoughts on Artemis II and the geopolitical implications of the cosmic perspective": www.democracywithoutborders.org/42654/artemi... #Artemis 🚀 🌒

ICYMI (because I certainly did), last week STFC published some numbers about where its cost pressures have come from Increasing costs of international subscriptions is the biggest driver www.ukri.org/publications...

The issue is (of course) that it should not be either or, even with constrained budgets. To paraphrase - exploration and science are linked and feed off each other, even if agency programmes are structured differently. I think this is the strongest combination.

This week we're in the field at the Ries impact crater in Germany to study how impacts create and shape rocks and landscapes. Behold volatile escape structures in suevite impact melt ☄️🪨

Finally some clarity on the #STFC budget: it's falling in real terms as UKRI spending rises. A conscious decision has been made to decrease UK funding for fundamental physics, despite all the evidence that our blue skies research is key for economic growth. Thank you @resprofnews.bsky.social!

"It's really important for the astronauts to have an opportunity to make observations with the human eye and to describe them in a human voice with the wonder of the human heart," said LPI's Dr. David Kring. Read the full article: https://ow.ly/Zxmi50YGESw

This is the face of a lunar scientist who has just been told that the #Artemis II crew saw SEVERAL impact flashes (the flashes when meteors hit the lunar surface) in real time 😃 🌓💥

The Artemis II crew just reported several impact flashes—explosions from hypervelocity impacts of meteoroids with the Moon—during the solar eclipse. We make a big effort to see a handful of these from Earth with telescopes. That astronauts flying by the Moon saw >4 in tens of minutes is AWESOME.

Impact geology celebration on the Moon yesterday with Artemis II. One of the key skills geologists employ is to make observations with our own eyes. We draw what we see, we describe what we see. It means we pay attention to detail to ask further questions.

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The Artemis II mission seems good because it is. People seem excited by it because they are. It looks like a testament to the value of teamwork because it needs many people working together to succeed, and it’s succeeding. One of the best things about this is how straightforward it is. Authentic.

quick and dirty recreation of the current lunar geometry visible to Artemis II using Quickmap. link in the reply if you want to explore this tool yourself!

Sarah Noble talking about lunar geology right now saying there's a "back room to the back room" of geologists watching the lunar flyby, where the feeling is "giddy" haha

✅ #Artemis II update: the spacecraft entered the lunar sphere of influence this morning at 05:37 BST/06:37 CEST, 6 April, at about 51 000 km from the Moon (the region of space where the Moon’s gravitational pull is stronger than that of Earth’s). www.nasa.gov/image-detail... @exploration.esa.int

Moon Joy 👋👋

In 2013, a group led by LPI Postdoc Ross Potter (including myself and LPI colleagues) published a paper about Orientale that combined topographic and geologic analysis with "hydrocode" numerical modeling of the impact process. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Orientale is a special impact basin, being the youngest and also the least obscured by subsequent volcanism - the dark basaltic lavas that collectively form the lunar "mare". That makes it a unique "natural laboratory" for understanding the impact basin formation process.

This is absolutely for all the lunar scientists whose shoulders we stand on to have seen this far, and those lunar scientists for whom we are writing their future. 🔭🧪🚀🌘

Want a excuse to skip out of your Monday meetings? Follow along with the #ArtemisII crew and Lunar Science Team as human eyes and human brains observe and discuss the lunar far side for the first time ever. 🧪🔭🚀🌘 Download a guide to the observation plan here! science.nasa.gov/resource/art...

Oh my. It's taken from the right side of an aircraft flying past Cape Canaveral just as the Artemis II mission was taking off. Source: Reddit (posted by u/Spook_485; I don't know if that's the person who took the video)

The countdown is on! #Artemis II is scheduled to launch later today, the first crewed mission to the #Moon in over 50 years. earthandsolarsystem.wordpress.com/2026/04/01/a...

Need to catch up on #ArtemisII science ahead of today's launch attempt to the MOON? See our explainer at @nature.com 🧪🔭 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Zoom zoom zoom. We're going to the Moon... 5...4...3...2...1 🌜🚀

Cuts to UK Astronomy? It's all about the base(line). A short post on LinkedIn highlighting that the effective cuts to UK Astronomy funding are not some far off possibility - they have already started. www.linkedin.com/posts/profji...

There seem to be some inconsistencies between what Patrick Vallance and Ian Chapman wrote about #STFC funded postdoc numbers in their letter to the Commons science committee and recent reports from the chairs of STFC's own grant panels 🧵

We are looking for a new volcano-petrology postdoc to join the NERC-funded large grant ‘ex-x: understanding dangerous eruptive transitions’ Based at Bristol University! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRA042/s...

UKRI responds to the select cttee: “Across PPAN, UKRI typically funds a few hundred post-docs and we can reassure you that the current level of post-docs will be maintained across the SR.” So will the drastic reduction in AGP PDRA awards be reversed now/next round? Also hints at LHCb options 🔭🧪

A new 225-meter (740-foot) crater appeared on the Moon while nobody was looking. NASA's lunar orbiter imaged the dramatic aftermath. Such large impacts are once-in-a-century events. This one happened in the spring of 2024. 🔭🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/moon...

We're accepting new #NERC projects! If you would like to access the ionprobe facility, please submit your application to [email protected] by 17th April. Forms, guidance and alternative access modes can be found on our website. #isotope #geochemistry #geochronology

OCR exam board removes AS and A Level Geology. This leaves only the Eduqas (WJEC) exam board offering this subject. Not sure entirely what the implications are, but, this does not feel good 😩 www.ocr.org.uk/administrati...

The future of UK Astronomy & Particle Physics is at risk from proposed 30% funding cuts that, if implemented, will be "genuinely catastrophic". Great to see this detailed BBC report on the issue by @pallabg.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️ #STFCcuts #SaveUKAstronomy 🗞️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Utterly galling after the community is thriving with involvement in many international missions and collaborative projects...

Overview of the STFC funding crisis. the cuts will also have significant detrimental effects on blue skies planetary science research (space mission data analysis, sample analysis, lab experiments, astrobiology) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...