In April 2024, burning remnants of a defunct Chinese spacecraft fell to Earth. As the space junk tumbled through the atmosphere, the fragments created a series of sonic booms. Seismic stations on Earth were listening. https://scim.ag/49Lsc2w

Achievement unlocked: a paper in Science! My friend and colleague Constantinos Charalambous & I showed how seismic data can be used to track and characterise the break-up of re-entering space debris. Also features a beautiful graphic by @jhuartssciences.bsky.social Sophia Economon.

(This from @spacequakes.bsky.social's excellent @royalastrosoc.bsky.social talk)

YESSSS! We’re going (back) to the Moon! Big win for our SaveVIPER campaign! 🐍

Locked beneath a single-plate crust, Mars’ mantle holds a frozen record of the red planet’s primordial past, according to a new Science study of Martian seismic data collected by NASA’s InSight mission. https://scim.ag/47jTkWX

Conferences are key enablers of community building and can provide constructive environments for open discussions of cultural issues within science, write @spacequakes.bsky.social @jhuartssciences.bsky.social and Mariama Dryák-Vallies @ciresceee.bsky.social eos.org/opinions/eig...

Huge explosion at SpaceX's Starbase this evening! Detected what looks like Rayleigh waves and airwaves from hundreds of miles away. (will make a better-looking plot when I'm less sleepy haha).

We're recruiting a undergraduate research intern to work part-time in London with me and @nhm-london.bsky.social this summer on analysing micrometeroids from the world's first deep-sea ocean expedition (HMS CHALLENGER, 1873-76). Pease encourage your undergrads to apply!

Ben Fernando (Johns Hopkins): Impact seismology can give us a sense of the trajectories, speeds and numbers of impacting objects in the Solar System. We can use "insights" gained from observations on Mars and the Moon to learn about high velocity objects moving in Earth's atmosphere.

Researchers say that a NASA-funded institute is over-interpreting Trump’s anti-DEI order https://go.nature.com/3YD039e

Planetary scientists have been really, really mad about DEI-related conference abstracts being taken down from LPI meeting sites. I wrote about it: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Horrific news. Hopkins research helps some of the most in-need communities around the world. This will cost lives. 🤬🤬🤬

Interesting signal recorded on the northern Cuban coast post-Starship 8 last night - looks like a sonic boom (and a big one at that!) to me...

A team led by Johns Hopkins University scientists has dispelled fears that Iran conducted a nuclear test following a Magnitude 4.5 earthquake last October, showing these concerns were unfounded. Read more: doi.org/10.26443/sei... spacequakes.bsky.social

Road trip day #2 - Raleigh, NC! Ticked off my 5k in state number 25. Very wet and very very windy…

About to set off on a road trip to Johnson Space Center to drop off some non-flyable equipment. Looking forward to ticking off some new states! 🚗🚀🪐

How much of a bang did OSIRIS-REx make when it re-entered the atmosphere? Take a look at our new paper to found out! doi.org/10.1785/0220... w/ @neerajac.bsky.social @tomrivlin.com and others!

New paper alert! 🧪⛏️ Led by the amazing @spacequakes.bsky.social, here's a seismologically ordinary earthquake that got outsized attention due to some misinformation. It was cool to be a small part of this work! Open access in @weareseismica.bsky.social : seismica.library.mcgill.ca/article/view...

This was a fun thing to be part of, in an otherwise grim week. TL;DR - we can use seismometers to track space junk re-entering the atmosphere in close to real-time. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Some interesting signals from Grand Turk in the TCI last night, a few minutes after the Starship explosion. Possible/likely sonic booms from re-entering debris I suspect!

The Moon occulting Mars a few minutes ago from Baltimore, MD!

Went running with some Baltimore friends round St James’ Park yesterday. Cold but stunning. I do miss having open green space to run in!

Interested in a free, one-day workshop with @markpanning.seismology.space, I, and others, on how to access and use InSight seismic data? More info/application here! forms.office.com/r/TNRCKfP8yp

Hey, that’s an article about our InSight observers program in that table of contents! Congrats to @spacequakes.bsky.social on that and thanks to all of our InSight Seers who were a great part of our science team meetings in the last couple of years of the InSight mission.

This week I’m continuing to do fieldwork everywhere except the field… Very cool to visit the @ctbto.bsky.social ops room this morning!!

After the end of the Dragonfly Team meeting, I drove up to Baltimore and got to give a talk in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at the invite of @spacequakes.bsky.social, and also got to visit the lab of @planetdr.bsky.social. Very cool!

Today’s M 4.7 as seen from my PiShake at Johns Hopkins Homewood campus!

😬😬😬

Avi Loeb's team presented their interstellar-debris-in-the-ocean claim yesterday at #LPSC. It was ... a lively session. Words by me: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hello, bluesky! Glad people liked this interview 😀