Hmm. With solar energy, the big explosions take place 93 million miles away

In grad school in the 80s we were taught that most other stars *should* have planets, which we’ll hopefully be able to observe some day, since the formation of planets seems to be a normal byproduct of star formation. This was right! But we were also taught that (2)…

4 October 1957...the USSR launches Sputnik I. Teams of citizen scientists around the planet - all part of the Smithsonian's Operation Moonwatch - turn out and successfully spot and track it.

“There is no longer a path for someone to come work at NASA when they grow up.” 😢

Talk about a life well lived. An inspiration. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

It's finally in my hands! @harvardpress.bsky.social did such a wonderful job with the jacket. It's available for preorder, and will ship (to anyone in the US or Canada) on October 28th. #EnvHist #Astronomy #Space

Applicants Sought for Editor of Environmental History - @envirohistory.bsky.social @aseh.bsky.social & @foresthistory.bsky.social seek applicants to serve as Editor(s) and a new institutional home for the journal Environmental History for a 5-year term. niche-canada.org/2025/09/27/a... #envhist

I see 4 possibilities: 1. The tech plateaus, the bubble bursts. 2. The tech improves, millions are jobless, they rise up, the industry dies. 3. An unaligned AGI emerges, improves itself, and threatens humanity. 4. A golden age of human wealth and health, powered by AI. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

A special honor to be back at #NASA HQ last week. Drawing on the research in my new book, Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean (out on October 28!), I traced some ways in which the search for life on other worlds is helping us understand - and, hopefully, preserve - the future of life on Earth. #Astrobiology

Nobody’s better at social media than @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social! This footage has been my holy grail since I was a kid…

I'm often skeptical of big histories that focus on disaster. Yet Goliath's Curse (by @lukekemp.bsky.social) is masterful. It explores the causes & consequences of collapse as a historical phenomenon. It's clear, insightful, harrowing - but ultimately hopeful. #EnvHist www.amazon.com/Goliaths-Cur...

The UN is a bit like the foundation of an old house. Expensive to maintain and costly to repair but WOW you do not want to break it. So much of our modern world is held together by the invisible work of multilateral diplomacy. I shudder to think what the world would be like without it

In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong". Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!

A strong response to a thought-provoking article. In my view, some form of geoengineering *will* be implemented sometime in the next few decades. The costs will seem low, and the damage inflicted by #ClimateChange will make the temptation too great to resist. There are many risks, unfortunately....

ASTROBIOLOGY AND… Life, The Cosmos & the Human Story Short talks by all the NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Chairs DC area folks - This will be an amazing event next Wednesday (9/17) afternoon at NASA HQ - open to the public, not live-streamed. Attendance limited. Please RSVP & attend! 🧪

We're halfway between the IPCC 6th and 7th Assessment Reports, and an international team of 61 scientists updated some of the key metrics used in the reports. As I wrote for @climateconnections.bsky.social, the findings were pretty bleak, but there are some glimmers of hope 🧵 (1/6)

LIFE ON MARS??!! I know you’re wary of overhyped claims of ET life. & we need to be cautious. As Sagan used to remind us, life should be the hypothesis of last resort. But this is one to watch. Legitimately a “potential biosignature” which demands follow up. 🧪 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Today we are sharing a @harvardpress.bsky.social interview with @dagomardegroot.bsky.social on his forthcoming book, Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System niche-canada.org/2025/09/02/e... #envhist #histsci #space #books

Looks like I’ll have to update episode ten of the climate chronicles (not in a good way)… #climatechange

NEW: Tenure-track position in History at UC Berkeley in the GLOBAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY. We are casting a wide net here: *all* periods, places, and fields are under consideration. I'm on the search committee, so do let me know if you have questions.

Delighted to see this new review of "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean," a book that pulls "earthlings out of their complacency to recognize the precarity of their position amid ongoing cosmic dramas." Now available for pre-order! #Space #EnvHist www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/ripp...

I raise this point frequently - we're not even well-adapted to the weather and climate extremes we already experience ('adaptation deficit', a la Burton 2009). Addressing that would go a meaningful way toward reducing total vulnerability to future climate changes www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Tonight, the Perseid meteor shower is at its peak. Will you be watching? We recently spoke with @dagomardegroot.bsky.social, the Blumberg/NASA Chair at the @librarycongress.bsky.social, about his new book, Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean...

Direct images from the James Webb Space Telescope show what could be a Saturn-mass planet around Alpha Centauri. skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne... . . #astronomy #exoplanets #planetaryscience #cosmology #alphacentauri #jwst #newplanet

Worried about #AI? Here's a scenario for the near future that will make you even more worried. But is it ever interesting. ai-2027.com/race

In my forthcoming book, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean," I show that what happens in space matters on Earth—and what happens on Earth increasingly matters in space. In this interview with Harvard University Press, I reflect on the implications of that idea. #EnvHist www.hup.harvard.edu/features/the...

Another positive pre-publication review for my next book, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean," this time from Publisher's Weekly. The book debuts on October 28th! #EnvHist #Astronomy #Environment www.publishersweekly.com/9780674986503

A Kirkus starred review for my next book, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean." Look for it in October! #Astronomy #Space #Environment #History www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

Happy to share the dust jacket of my forthcoming book - coming in October! #EnvHist #Space

Our most-read articles published in March! Find links to them in the thread below! #envhist #cdnhist #envhum

The Warming Stripes have now been extended downwards into the ocean and upwards into the stratosphere! Collaborative paper which tells the story of how the stripes were developed, and discusses their extension across the Earth system, is now available in BAMS: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

This is a new image from #JWST. The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way. Everything else is a galaxy. Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.

In "Memories of Atlantis," @dagomardegroot.bsky.social reveals how an extraordinary rise in sea levels, approximately 10,000 years ago, overwhelmed ecosystems and human populations from Europe to Australia. 🧪 🔈 Listen here: theclimatechronicles.com/2025/04/07/e...

Join the Zoom call next Tuesday to chat with me about the making of the Climate Chronicles podcast (theclimatechronicles.com), and anything related to the #EnvHist of #ClimateChange.

Now here's a cool #ClimHist visualization, nice work @hausfath.bsky.social and @thirstygecko.bsky.social!

The world has warmed more than 1.1C since the first Earth day in 1970, with the fastest warming occurring over land (where we all live!) and in higher latitude regions:

Is there really life on planet K2-18b? We can’t rule it out, but some key questions must be answered | Nathalie Cabrol 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 A new study of a sphere orbiting a red dwarf star 124 light years from Earth is raising hopes. Here’s why the evidence is inconclusive: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In episode 10 of The Climate Chronicles, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social unpacks concepts such as radiocarbon dating and climate vulnerability to explore the ingenious and diverse ways in which our ancestors coped with the Pleistocene’s final climate changes. 🧪 🔈 Listen here: buff.ly/C9KFja8

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume... Download what you need asap and send comments to: [email protected]

As the owner of the URL climatetippingpoints.com, I have to say: this is a phenomenal paper and thread (I’ve been using “tipping elements” in recent years, but may now rethink some of that terminology, too). #ClimateChange

In the third episode of The Climate Chronicles, season 2, Escaping the Pleistocene, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social provides different explanations for what may be the ultimate climate change disaster: the extinction of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals. theclimatechronicles.com/2025/03/05/e... 🧪

My favorite Svalbard whaling scene made the cover! #EnvHist

Looking forward to hearing from Mel Smith on the Danube and the "Fall" of Rome in a couple of weeks time for our April Seminar! More details and sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1305760186...

Continental-scale behavioral response of birds to a total solar eclipse: www.nature.com/articles/s41... -> Eclipse echoes - groundbreaking study reveals surprising avian vocal patterns during solar eclipse: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

In the second episode of the second season of The Climate Chronicles, Escaping the Pleistocene, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social explores how climate change influenced humanity’s migration out of Africa and into lands no other hominin had been to before. Listen here: buff.ly/9SMsUbI 🧪 #podcast

The challenge of #ClimateChange policy in a nutshell.

buff.ly/58lSFSu In a recent #SETILive, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social joined @planetarypan.bsky.social to discuss The Climate Chronicles podcast. The podcast focuses on the Earth’s climatic evolution, spanning 50 million years, to shed light on what history can teach us about today's climate crisis. 🧪

It exists in the physical world! @merleeisenberg.bsky.social

In the first episode of The Climate Chronicles' second season, Escaping the Pleistocene, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social describes the two biggest explosions in human history: the catastrophic eruptions of the Los Chocoyos and Toba super volcanoes about 75,000 years ago. Listen here: buff.ly/OaXGtm4 🧪