Today’s the day! There are still some tickets if you’re interested to join.

Happy Halloween!

This excellent press release about a paper favouring dark matter over MOND came out a few days ago. A great primer to get you excited for dark matter day and the power of tiny galaxies 🔭🧪 bsky.app/profile/8min...

Who wouldn’t vacuously stare at the back of a computer screen showing a globular cluster when doing research on dwarf galaxy dynamics? AI slop at its finest. 🙄 (from www.cadena3.com/amp/noticia/...)

Analysis of stellar velocities in faint dwarf galaxies indicates their internal dynamics are better explained by dark matter models than by modified gravity theories such as MOND. doi.org/g977ff

New press release about our new paper led by my PhD student Mariana Pouseiro Júlio! 🔭🧪☄️ English version here: www.aip.de/en/news/dark...

New press release about our new paper led by my PhD student Mariana Pouseiro Júlio! 🔭🧪☄️ English version here: www.aip.de/en/news/dark...

Charon: There just isn't enough money to go around to fund free public transport for everyone.

Researchers face uncertainty like never before. Join the To Be Honest Conference 2025 to discuss careers, funding & resilience in academia. 🗓 Dec 4–5 | Online 🎓 For PhDs & academics 🔗 Register: events.zoom.us/ev/AqL7Vnz0Q...

After my lecture we had a fun excursion to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand yesterday afternoon. Got to see their planetarium and some workshops where they coat telescope mirrors.

Made it to Thailand. Already learned that you can buy vegetables at the airport, where the bathroom also had an interesting name. Now making some final edits on my lecture slides while fighting the jet lag with coffee.

Big plane.

Neat, I have free WiFi in the plane on this leg of the trip. Though to properly work on my laptop in these tiny economy seats some T-Rex arms would come in handy. 💻🦖

And now on to the more demanding part of this trip, getting to Chiang Mai in Thailand to give a lecture for the WE-Heraeus and NARIT Cosmology School. First leg is a train trip to Madrid, then flights to Doha and Bangkok. If all goes according to plan, it’ll take me 31 hours door to door.

After an intense IAU Symposium on galaxy outskirts with lots of interesting talks but too little time to chat with everyone, I got a half day to enjoy beautiful Cordoba yesterday.

Paper day! My PhD student Mariana Júlio, with @readdark.bsky.social, @pengfeili.bsky.social and others, studies the internal dynamics of dwarf galaxies and finds they don't agree with the Radial Acceleration Relation, challenging the dark matter alternative MOND. arxiv.org/abs/2510.06905 🔭☄️🧪 1/7

Congratulations to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for winning the Nobel Price in Physics … for Johns. By my count from last year, this should now make it 12 men named John who were awarded the Nobel, versus a total of five women (of any name). 🧪

And we’re stuck on the tarmac in Berlin “for at least an hour” in a fully boarded flight because some oil-related maintenance light came on.

Heading to Cordoba in Spain for IAU Symposium 403 ‘The Hidden Beauty of the Galactic Outskirts’, and from there to Chiang Mai in Thailand to give a lecture on dwarf galaxies and small-scale problems for the German-Thai ‘WE-Heraeus & NARIT Cosmology School 2025 – Galaxies and Beyond’. 🔭☄️

Facebook reminded me that exactly 12 years ago there was another government shutdown in the U.S. I had arrived for my first postdoc just before, applied for a SSN, but the shutdown delayed getting assigned one. Which meant that I couldn’t be paid my salary until 2 months after my international move

🕶️ Dunkle Materie & Zwerggalaxien: Im neuen Video der virtuellen #BabelsbergerSternenächte beantwortet @8minutesold.bsky.social vom AIP wieder Fragen zu spannenden Themen. Jetzt reinschauen! youtu.be/TZLht8_YkGU

Just returned from a meeting last week, and already had to get up early for the next trip. To Brussels this time, for a workshop on “Knowledge Transfer for Policy Making” at the @leibniz-gemeinschaft.de and European Parliament.

This all makes so much more sense if you interpret the “PhD level experts” as referring to the numerous (mostly conservative/liberal) German politicians who have lost their degrees after it turned out that they heavily plagiarized in their dissertations.

Nice end-of-semester surprise: someone from the Potsdam Graduate School appeared in my team meeting to give me a special recognition in their SUPERvisor Award. Feels like enough of a reward to work with this amazing team, but I take any excuse to celebrate these great people with great coffee. 😉

LLMs like ChatGPT, GoogleAI, etc are to learning what wrist magnets are to good health and vibrating belts are to weight loss.

It's never aliens? Stick with me & it'll ALWAYS BE ALIENS That's bc I'm announcing RIGHT NOW that my book FIRST CONTACT: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, is coming out on September 30! 👽👾🛸🚀🔭📖 Preorder here: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/becky...

Heute wurde am AIP im Rahmen des #PrideMonth die #vielfalt gefeiert! 🏳️‍🌈✨ Mit einen Rainbow-Food-Contest, einem Büchertausch und einem inspirierenden Talk über LGBT+ Inklusivität in der Wissenschaft wurde der #Pride Day zelebriert. 💬📚🧁

I'm being informed that a package for me was delivered to my neighbor "Drzwi3p" ... 🤷‍♂️

The German Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology (TIB) has created an archive of the arXiv, to prepare for a possible loss of millions of articles at the whim of US politics. Crazy that it feels that this is necessary. 🧪🔭 More information in English here: blog.tib.eu/2025/05/14/p...

Oh no, now AI is taking away the crackpot theory development job from retired engineers! 😱

Today was this semester’s final session of my Dark Matter lecture. 🧪🔭 I loved how engaged these students were throughout the semester, despite the 8am time slot. We ended with an excellent student contribution on judging evidence for dark matter from the perspectives of various philosophers.

All right, let’s play Trump Tariff Mad Lib (@cardsagainsthumanity.com edition).

Had a nice visit to Frankfurt, albeit too short to see anything else (thanks Deutsche Bahn). The Physikalischer Verein offers an impressive range of public events. Its rooftop 🔭 might not be in the best place for astronomical observations … but the skyscraper skyline offers interesting alternatives.

Heute Abend um 20 Uhr halte ich im Physikalischen Verein in Frankfurt am Main einen Vortrag über Astronomie und Zwerggalaxien 🔭 und präsentiere dabei auch mein Buch. Tickets hier: www.physikalischer-verein.de/veranstaltun... Aber es gibt wohl sogar einen Livestream: m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztyT...

Are you an astronomy student (Master & above) or junior researcher based in Germany or Thailand? Interested in learning about cosmology and galaxies for a week in Thailand? 🧪☄️🔭 Then apply for this school by July 11 for full funding (incl. travel & accommodation!): indico.narit.or.th/event/223/ov...

Heute Abend um 20 Uhr halte ich im Physikalischen Verein in Frankfurt am Main einen Vortrag über Astronomie und Zwerggalaxien 🔭 und präsentiere dabei auch mein Buch. Tickets hier: www.physikalischer-verein.de/veranstaltun... Aber es gibt wohl sogar einen Livestream: m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztyT...

The conservative president of the German parliament decided that the rainbow flag will not fly on the Reichstag building for the Berlin CSD, contrary to previous years. The Greens and Left found a perfect way to protest. 🌈

I'm happy to announce that we have a new paper accepted, led by Salvatore Taibi, with @voltarch.bsky.social and others. We obtained beautiful observations of the spiral galaxy NGC 2750 with the Large Binocular Telescope 🔭 (LBT) to search for satellite galaxy candidates. 🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2506.19001

I’m at the “Science & Fiction” event organized by @rwth.bsky.social today. It brings together science fiction authors, scientists, and other experts to discuss innovation, transfer, and the future, and I’ll be part of a panel discussing which science fiction ideas could become reality. 🧪🔭

Read an almost finished paper draft by one of my students this morning that I liked so much I couldn't put it down, then learned that another paper of my group got accepted for publication. What a great start to the week. 😀

We're #hiring 👉 Kommunikations- & Projektmanager*in (80–100 %) 📍 Berlin (Mitte) | Präsenz & Remote 📅 Elternzeitvertretung ab Oktober 2025, befristet bis 31.12.2026 – mit Option auf Verlängerung Mehr Infos auf unserer Website: gsonet.org/stellenaussc...

Open Call for Researchers in #Biology, #Chemistry, #ComputerScience, #Geosciences, #Mathematics, #Neurosciences, #Physics. The #KTBoostFund offers up to 120,0000€ in funding postdocs at German research institutions: gsonet.org/funding-prog...

Luck wasn’t on our side when the ten environments receiving a grant were drawn, but having our small research group selected as one of 24 Best Research Environments – along with whole departments – out of over 270 applications over all disciplines is worth celebrating. 🎉

Excited that my research group „Cosmic Choreographies“ got included in this award honoring the ‚best research environments‘ 🔭🧪 Of the 24 candidates selected by a jury, 10 winners will be picked at random at the award ceremony tonight. I already know I work with the best team, but are we lucky, too?

Was stuck in planes for the last 12h flying back to Berlin. Did I miss anything?

Das Magazin der @leibniz-gemeinschaft.de hat mich zu meiner Forschung am @aippotsdam.bsky.social und zu meinem Buch interviewed: www.leibniz-magazin.de/alle-artikel... BONUS: Bis zum 15. Juni werden drei Exemplare meines Buchs verlost. Details zur Teilnahme gibt es am Ende des Artikels. 🧪🔭

New paper day! This one is by Prem Kumar, who did this study as his master thesis with my team at @aippotsdam.bsky.social. We investigate whether we can infer instability of a plane of satellite galaxies given current measurement errors in proper motions (+ distance and host potential). 🧪🔭

The team made it to Pittsburgh for the Gravity in the Local Group conference. So far we heard a lot about tides and dwarf galaxies, today will start with streams, and then an afternoon of dwarf galaxies including all of our talks. 🔭🧪

Today, the new Maria Margaretha Kirch building was opened on the #AIP campus. With this building, the institute is building a bridge from current #science to #history and creating a #memorial to Maria Margaretha Kirch and her family of astronomers. www.aip.de/de/news/mari...

My son and a friend build this together, and since it is just one for two kids, they agreed to take it home from school on alternating days. So it is kind of a happily smiling irish-american rocket with shared custody. 🚀☘️🇺🇸