The denial of your national identity because your accent doesn't sound right. Please don't question my identity 😕 I'm from New Zealand, I live in Liverpool, and I have a mixed and doubly foreign identity. I'm a stranger to both spouses and kiwis

Just back from my yearly one week holiday. Went to Ballycastle in Ireland. Visited the Lammas fair but didn't buy any horses... or toy guns

"I hate that we've gone from plastic straws and paper cups to plastic cups and paper straws!" Sebastian(14)

Spotted this grasshopper in my yard. Erin(10) identified it as a long-winged cone-headed grasshopper - she has a few insect books. Could this be a climate change migrant? Because these are southern coast Britain at best, and we're up North --> in Merseyside, UK #climatechange in action?

We are over half way through #NAM2025 @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @durham-university.bsky.social 💫 Here is our incredible conference photo with 100s of the nearly 1000 attendees of NAM! Possibly one of the largest astronomy conference photos ever! We hope you’re having a great week 🪐

Tax the rich graffiti spotted between the tiles above a pub pisser in Cork, Ireland. Always good advice for policy makers

Setting the foundations for our next generation astrophysicists. Here's a press article that describes the two @royalsocietypublishing.org issues we recently published on the prospects for multimessenger gravitational lensing. And I get a quote! #LJMU #ARI #astronomy 🔭 phys.org/news/2025-06...

Mouse in my bird feeder. Quite the adventurous little fellow. Not sure if it's stuck, but it is very happy

Truth-tellers, not rioters. Protect these two men at all costs. “You feel tough with your assault rifles and your sticks. You should be standing here with us. You’re on the wrong side of history.” “John Lewis said make good trouble… that means make trouble on behalf of democracy.”

The proof editor of my recent paper changed every instance of "disk" to "disc". In accretion disk parlance, both are fine... but I had a section titled, "diskoseismology", and that is now, "discoseismology"!? My science gets the dance floor shaking! 😅

Monte Mader @montemader.bsky.social

At the cinema. By myself. To watch the first 3 episodes of the new Dan Da Dan S2. Treat yo'self. #DanDaDan #LightCinemaNewBrighton #GrandmaAyase FTW

Four charts showing the extent of cuts to NASA in the FY26 budget: - Cuts to every science division - Smallest science funding since 1984 - 19 active, inflight missions cancelled - Smallest NASA budget since FY 1961

#highenergyastro 🔭

@ljmuofficial.bsky.social led research into the origins of periodicity in an extra-galactic flash of high energy gamma-rays With my collaborators from Leicester, Melbourne, Hamburg, Sendai, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, Fullerton, and Nijmegen @ljmu-ris.bsky.social #ARI #LJMU #astrophysics #liverpool

The long duration, but likely neutron star merger origin, gamma-ray burst GRB 211211A had a short and low luminosity pre-cursor with duration ~0.2s - and looks to have a 20 Hz periodicity. The question we asked, "what would cause that!?" Our paper in #mnras academic.oup.com/mnras/advanc...

This is actively bananas. LIGO is doing (literally) Nobel winning work, and you need both of them -- the second one is not a spare or a nice to have; this is like buying a fire engine, but deciding it doesn't need wheels on the left hand side...

Fossil fuel companies make billions turning oil in plastic. They want to keep shovelling plastic down our throats to grow their profits. We need the UN to ban them from the Global Plastics Treaty talks - sign the petition now: act.gp/4kgDL5U

ME/CFS is an awful, awful disease that can randomly take all quality of life away from... anyone. And there's no known cure - sometimes people get a bit better, other times not. I'm really glad to see Dianna Cowern aka Physics Girl (an amazingly talented science communicator) get a bit better.

My boss when I was at University of Leicester, and continued collaborator and mentor. A well deserved appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society @royalsociety.org @physicsuol.bsky.social

🔭🧪 Congratulations to Prof Nial Tanvir who has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work studying gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions we've ever seen. le.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...

Urgh! I'm just catching up with UK news! "Incalculable damage..." ...yep, but not by who you say but by what you say, Mr. Prime Minister. Racist apologists everywhere

Breaking News! Code Yikes! One for the record books -- May 9, 2025 was the hottest May 9th on record globally, with daily records dating back to 1940. And yes, this means that May 9, 2025 was likely the hottest May 9th in the last 120,000+ years. The climate 8-ball says: f&%kery ahead!

1. This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a story of breathtaking perversity, told in this thread. (There’s a one-page version at the bottom). 🧵

🚨BREAKING: The new Reform Mayor for Lincolnshire has said she will MEET with a fracking company to discuss extracting gas from the county - claiming it will 'save money for taxpayers.' 92% of Reform's donations come from oil/gas interests. Who else thinks Reform is just a mouthpiece for Big Oil?

LJMU academics and postgraduate students will present their research @pintofscience.uk in Liverpool, 19–21 May. Join us at Murphy’s Distillery for engaging talks on science, technology, health and the environment. Tickets £5 via Pint of Science ➡️ www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/new...

The BBC is institutionally biased towards the right and the far right, and here's the proof: the results of an almost perfect before-and-after experiment. My column today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Watching UK media fawning over the proto-fascist, try hard, Enoch Powell wannabes of Reform in a few UK council elections. Giving credibility and airtime to bigots makes me keep my fingers crossed for the rapid development of an Artificial General Intelligence, so we can welcome our robot overlords

Ah 2016. Little did we know!? This is me (less grey and short hair) somewhere in Corsica wandering around aimlessly on the spare day between an astronomy summer school, "Astrophysical Jets, Cargese 2016" and my flight back north. In my simple mind, I find this hilarious -- still do #boutiquefanny

Space elevators are the future tech our space-billionaires should be building. Rockets are so 20th century 😉

You want to know what #climate scientists got wrong about #climatechange? We were too cautious. It's happening faster than we anticipated and the impacts are going to be worse.

The 2nd part of our special issue on multi-messenger gravitational lensing. This is an ambitious vision of the future science that will be revealed as our detectors get more sensitive. Something that was a novel side thought 5 or 10 years ago is now the foundation for our next generation scientists

Trump presidential approval ratings among lowest since WWII www.channel4.com/news/trump-p...

Did Ch4 News just have a giant Russian flag as the slide transition on their report about Trump's disaster of a first 100 days!? "You might very well say that but I just couldn't possibly comment" 😉 Well played Ch44 @channel4news.bsky.social

Published in #MNRAS: "Multipeaked non-thermal light curves from magnetar-powered gamma-ray bursts", Omand et al. This is Fig. 4: for the caption & to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @royalastrosoc.bsky.social

Happy Moehanga Day

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

I love the time of year when the koru on ferns start to unwind Some photos from my yard #koru #ferns #smallgarden #yard #green #uk

Did you know The Liverpool Telescope, run by LJMU, has been supporting the European Space Agency’s GAIA spacecraft on one of its most important missions? The 12 year mission has revolutionised our understanding of the Milky Way galaxy we live in. ✨ Read more: www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/new...

10:15 GMT My sense of smell suddenly started to return - mid-drink. Which suddenly got more flavour. Otherwise, I still feel like shit. Week 6 of the perma-headache and severe fatigue. Week 4 of a cough. I won't mention chest pain or you'll tell me I'm having a heart attack... like 111 #melodrama

While RFK Jr. Made his remarks saying autistic life is a tragedy that destroys families, I sat right in front of him and made it a point to let him know he was wrong. My latest for @msnbc.com www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Scientists warn chemicals in pet flea treatments are killing wildlife

Dr Beasor has concluded her Public Talk on the lives and deaths of massive stars, as seen by Hubble. 🔭 Missed the talk but would still like to celebrate Hubble's 35th birthday with us? Dr Beasor will be repeating the lecture again at 6pm. Watch here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=MESZ...

The first multi-messenger detection of a gravitationally lensed cosmic explosion will have huge impact and unleash decades of novel science. Read the new #PhilTransA issue 'Multi-messenger gravitational lensing (Part 1)': royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/202... #astrophysics #cosmology

The American Astronomical Society is gravely concerned by the deep cuts to NASA science funding reported to be in the draft President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2026. Read more here: aas.org/press/aas-st... and take action now: aas.org/urge-nasa-su...

NEW: NOAA scientists are cleaning office bathrooms and reconsidering critical experiments after the Commerce Department failed to renew contracts for hazardous waste disposal, janitorial services, IT and building maintenance. By @lisalsong.bsky.social

This — and has been for a while — an all-hands-on-deck emergency situation for anyone who cares about the welfare of the world.

I've been "bed rest" for so long now (2 weeks) that I'm starting to feel like Charlie Bucket's granddad

All of the White House spokespeople right now...