The @ligo.org and @egovirgo.bsky.social collaborations officially announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves #OTD in 2016. Hard to believe we are ten (ten!) years into the gravitational wave era of astronomy and astrophysics. A remarkable tool for understanding our Universe. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a statewide disaster declaration to prevent the potential spread of the New World screwworm into Texas. The harmful parasite presents a serious threat to the livestock industry and wildlife.

We are excited to announce the 2nd Annual Cosmic Horizons Conference hosted by the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins and @thenrao.bsky.social! We are now accepting abstract submissions for both speakers and posters! July 13th to 16th, 2026 Charlottesville, VA go.nrao.edu/Cosmic-Horiz...

A nice piece on GMA about light pollution, dark skies, and the importance of preserving the night sky as much as possible. I've been out to @texasscience.bsky.social's McDonald Observatory and seen the night sky in an area without the light pollution we take for granted, and it's just stunning. 🧪

🧪🌏 Opinion: Coral species from another ocean may be the only way to save Caribbean reefs. #coralER @pnas.org @texas-ib.bsky.social @texasscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Meet Milit Patel, who got his start in the award-winning Freshman Research Initiative at UT. Now a biochem senior & statistics & data science minor, he is corresponding author on a major paper in the Annals of Oncology. #TexasScience #CancerResearch #HappyFRIday cns.utexas.edu/news/feature...

Find that Bee! Our annual Spring Bee Competition is now OPEN! @alexwild.bsky.social biodiversity.utexas.edu/news/feature...

UT Astronomer Appointed President of Organization Building World’s Most Powerful Telescope mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/release...

Congress set to reject Trump’s major budget cuts to NSF, NASA, and energy science. Story by @policyhound.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

Public voting is now open for our 2026 Visualizing Science contest! See this year’s entries & vote at txsci.net/2026VisSciEntries #SciArt #ArtinScience #ScienceArt #ScientificArt #ArtandScience @texas-ib.bsky.social @utaustinchemistry.bsky.social @texasastronomy.bsky.social @utmsi.bsky.social

On the one hand, it's pretty depressing that we still haven't directly detected dark matter (and I'd argue that, at this point, the odds aren't great that we will any time soon). On the other hand, the technology and sensitivities are incredible and open the door to other physics applications. 🧪

Fantastic video of the expedition being led by UT Austin’s @archaeal.bsky.social

UT biologists have devised a 1-2 punch that could curb populations of invasive tawny crazy ants — which are wreaking havoc across the U.S. Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas — using a natural pathogen & a little elbow grease. #InvasiveSpecies @texas-ib.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...

Excited for Adam Klivans and my other colleagues at UT working in the AI space!

Starting at 7pm Central I will be streaming from the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Uruguay! Feel free to join and ask questions. www.youtube.com/@SchmidtOcean

A wonderful collaboration between my lab and Andy Ellington and Edward Marcotte here at UT. We obtained lots of thermal stable plastic degrading enzymes from the deep sea (Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California)

This new paper documents a tenfold increase in research papers using community-collected iNaturalist data over just five years: tr.ee/89Ot3I According to the study, here are four key ways that iNaturalist data directly powers science 🧵⤵️

Meet new Stengl-Wyer Fellow: Tianyi Xu. Her research examines how reptile diversity responds to global change across space and time using tools from #paleobiology, #ecology, and evolutionary #biology. Blog here: tinyurl.com/eb85be2p #herpetology

📅JOIN US TOMORROW Dementia Risk, Prevention, and Intervention: A Research Agenda at UT Austin Friday, October 31st 12:00 - 1:00 pm CT Robert L. Patton Hall, Room 1.302E Or Virtual More info@ liberalarts.utexas.edu/caps/events/...

New research from UT astronomers could change how we look at binary star formation. #BinaryStars @taccutexas.bsky.social @utaustin.bsky.social @mcdonaldobs.bsky.social oden.utexas.edu/news-and-eve...

Despite having “dark” in their name, these ancient orbs would have burned bigger and brighter than our current stars. If they existed, that is.

We’re thrilled to announce the 2025 class of Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering — 20 innovative early-career scientists who will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research. Meet the 2025 Packard Fellows ⬇ www.packard.org/2025fellows

Wild, wacky, and sometimes downright contradictory: Come celebrate a century of quantum mechanics with SciFri. 🎉 ⚛️

UT Austin has a new “genius grant” recipient! Texas Science professor Jason McLellan has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship — aka the “genius grant” — by The MacArthur Foundation. #TexasScience @mclellanlab.bsky.social #MacArthurGenius @utaustin.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/accolad...

🚨 Stephen Hawking was right: when two black holes collide, the resulting black hole has a bigger surface area than the originals. Amazing finding on the 10th anniversary of gravitational wave astronomy!

Has a huge blob of dark matter been found in our galactic neighborhood? | Science | AAAS @science.org 🔭🧪https://www.science.org/content/article/has-huge-blob-dark-matter-been-found-our-galactic-neighborhood

Congrats to Stella Offner on earning a Cottrell Scholar Singular Exceptional Endeavors of Discovery (SEED) Award for 2025! #CottrellScholars #TexasScience @utaustin.bsky.social @texasastronomy.bsky.social @mcdonaldobs.bsky.social

“Everyday acts of support — whether organized or personal — can have lasting cognitive impact.” — Sae Hwang Han, study lead & UT Austin asst. prof. of human development & family sciences #HelpingOthers #CognitiveDecline #CognitiveAging #TexasScience @umassboston.bsky.social @utaustin.bsky.social

👀 👀 Attention potential post-docs! Stengl-Wyer Scholars are three year post-docs to develop independent projects at UT. If you would like to talk about potential projects please get in touch!

Vote to bring our panel “Revolutionizing Astronomy + AI with Next Generation Big Data” to SXSW! Register for a SXSW account & vote by clicking the heart ❤️ - open now til Aug 24! participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sx... @stephajuneau.bsky.social @niall2.bsky.social

A foundation of knowledge about AI has never mattered more. With the U.S. NSF, we are doubling down on research and initiatives to help meet demand for a highly skilled AI workforce.

AlphaFold is great, but contrary to public opinion it has not completely solved the protein folding problem. Much work remains to be done. clauswilke.substack.com/p/no-alphafo...

An international team of geneticists & archaeologists — including UT’s Vagheesh Narasimhan — used #AncientDNA to reconstruct the prehistoric origins of two major Eurasian language families: Uralic and Yeniseian. #TexasScience #Archaeogenetics @utaustin.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...

A set of weapons bacteria use to fight each other, called microcins, are much more widespread and diverse than previously thought. They might inspire new ways to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria. Learn more in Nature Communications: rdcu.be/eumkH

We have developed an AI-powered tool to support your research ideation process. We're inviting researchers to test our tool and share their feedback. #aiforscience #LLM #research #ideas

The first images from the @vrubinobs.bsky.social are available! To give a sense of scale, I took one of the first images — of the Virgo cluster of galaxies — and added a box that shows you the size of JWST's field of view. LSST sees ~3600x more of the sky at a time!! 🤯🧪 noirlab.edu/public/image...

Andy Ellington of @utaustin.bsky.social was a project participant in this new release, which also features research from the lab of UT marine scientist Brett Baker @archaeal.bsky.social

Heard of "Darwin's paradox"? It refers to Charles Darwin's observation that coral reefs are wildly productive despite occurring in nutrient-poor tropical oceans. Reefs are, so the story goes, oases in marine deserts 🏝️... Turns out that 2/3 of these assertions are very wrong... 🌐 🦑🧪 🧵⬇️

In my latest podcast, I went to the Texas coast to find out how the sound of tiny bubbles could help fight climate change.

The 80-year recipe stoking America’s Prosperity: 1) Free-market capital investments in brilliant ideas… 2) enabled by Engineering Innovations… 3) based on Science Research in Universities… 4) funded by Grants from the US Government. It’s time more people understood this.

⚛️ Fusion energy breakthrough: Physicists solved a 70-year-old problem, speeding up the design of “magnetic bottles” that are a key part of fusion reactors called stellarators. cns.utexas.edu/news/researc... @utaustin.bsky.social @type-one.energy

Our grads do amazing internships, volunteer projects, summer research & leadership activities. To connect more Texas Science students with experiences like these, give via 40 for Forty right now. You can double your impact, as we match donations dollar for dollar May 7-8: txsci.net/CNSStudentSuccess

Teaming up with @joshuaroebke.bsky.social to develop a grad class called "Scientists as Writers." We want to merge a craft workshop with a scicomm class while writing for different audiences. PLEASE reply w 1) science writing resources you like & 2) things you wish were taught but are not. THANKS!

A new study by researchers from Brazil, Germany & UT Austin shows that nearly half of frog & toad species in Latin America may lose their habitat range by 2050. #ClimateChange #NeotropicalFrogs #ConservationBiology @utaustin.bsky.social @kzutaustin.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...