Great piece by astronomer and SETI leader Jason Wright on the endless, exhausting claims about 3I/Atlas by Avi Loeb. "zero planetary scientists give Avi’s claims any credence... because he’s demonstrably wrong" sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

Looking to start a PhD in Physics & Astronomy in 2026? The team @physicsuol.bsky.social have announced their STFC-funded projects on offer next year, spanning astrophysics, planetary science, and space instrumentation. Deadline: Jan 18th, contact us to learn more! le.ac.uk/study/resear...

The agency has already been irreparably damaged, capacity and culture destroyed, decades worth of experience shown the door. "NASA" is the strongest name brand in the world, a metonymy for our highest ideals as humans. It is being bulldozed by people who don't understand (or care) what we're losing.

I will also just remind you that NASA used to have a bunch of advisory committees that all would have raised the red flag on this... But we were all disbanded, along with most advisory panels, in the spring.

You might ask why... It seems to be two things. One, Project 2025 makes it clear the authors do not believe that government scientific capacity should exist. They are doing everything they can do to make that happen. And Goddard is in a blue state. They are making an example.

This is how you incinerate a field of science. 🔭🧪

We’re now watching the murder of space sciences in America. Unless someone can stop this, this is the beginning of the end. The brain drain will accelerate until there’s nothing left to stay for. 🧪🔭

EXPEDITIOUSLY AT LOUD VOLUME

It's motivated by AI slop being posted, but I would like to see this extended to other arXiv categories. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a...

“We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.”

Last chance to turn it off. On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default. To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

We've collected 65 individual exoplanet atmosphere composition measurements to look for population-level trends 🔭 #exoplanets To do this, we had to create a toolkit to standardize between definitions of . We call it ExoComp. (Yes, that's a Star Trek reference 😀).

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Alastair Claringbold ( @exoarcturus.bsky.social ) gave a great talk this week on Temperate Jupiters as a part of the BOWIE+ ECR Highlight Series. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmCD...

SAVE THE DATE! The 11th AAS Topical Conference Series (AASTCS): Exoplanet Atmospheres 2026 will take place in Denver. Join astronomers, planetary scientists & researchers from around the world for an in-depth exploration of one of the most dynamic fields in science today. More details soon 🔭

Do you know how many of 340 astronomy/astrophysics PhDs earned in 2024 were by Native Americans? Zero. Do you know how many of 323 astro PhDs earned in 2023 were by Native Americans? Zero. How many of 289 in 2022? One. 1 / 952 PhDs in 2022-2024 = 0.1%. (Data from NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates) 🔭

PhD opportunity here at MPIA to work with @paulmolliere.bsky.social !!

One of the terrible things about the conservative elites’ attacks on higher education is that they are giving their constituents the impression that the universe isn’t big, complicated, and fascinating — that it really does take this many people to work out how even a small fraction of it works

Fascism is such a fundamental attack on wonder and the human imagination and I think everyone should have the opportunity to let their imagination wonder as it wanders — doesn’t matter what you do for a living. Your mind matters! Your relationship with the universe is meaningful!

after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US. 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕. 𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

Are you someone who is interested in astronomy graduate school? This is a list of many/most departments and their expectations for admissions this year. Please feel free to spread it far and wide. If you are doing admissions and you'd like to update your entry, reach out as per the form!

I think for me the most compelling answer for "why fund basic research?" (and the one most relevant to the people doing the work) is that humans are curious and finding stuff out makes us happy and fulfilled. Science is a thing humans like. Life would be more dull and sad if we didn't do it. end/🧵

New paper alert 🔔 If you like eclipse mapping and are excited for the future opportunities that Ariel will provide, then check it out! (Bonus: writing an eclipse mapping proposal? We've ranked all the best eclipse mapping targets for both Ariel and JWST!) arxiv.org/abs/2510.03147

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

You know, this might be important. "Bayesian Model Comparison and Significance: Widespread Errors and how to Correct Them" www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.00169

Ohio State just advised all staff and students not to attend the SACNAS (Society for the advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) annual meeting of 6000+ scientists -- which is in Columbus, OH this year! -- saying it may be exclusionary, even though it is open to all.

Normalize submitting to arXiv after acceptance instead of on submission.

🔭 It's paper day! Today I'm sharing the latest in a series of papers looking at the weather on other worlds, in this case bringing you the weather report from a nearby T-dwarf, SIMP-0136. 🪐 🧵 to follow...

Dr. Anjali Piette of the University of Birmingham gave a wonderful talk on connecting sub-Neptune atmospheres to their interiors as a part of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series. The video is now available on Youtube. #exoplanets #astronomy www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrT...

As a part of the soft launch of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series in July, Dr. Michael Radica gave a talk on how we discern the three dimensional structure of exoplanet atmospheres from observations. The video is now available. #exoplanets #astronomy www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOw7...

As a part of the launch of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series, Dr. Ryan MacDonald (@distantworlds.space) gave a great overview of our current understanding of rocky worlds thanks to JWST. The talk is now up on Youtube if you're interested. #exoplanets #astronomy www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN3y...

We observed the habitable zone planet TRAPPIST-1e with JWST to search for an atmosphere. You've seen the headlines, now let's dive into the science! 🧪 THREAD (1/N) #Exoplanets 🔭

For the last two years, I've been paying for the Astronomy feeds hosting myself. It has been a privilege to grow our community here, but I also shouldn't keep doing it for free 😅 That's why I'm delighted to announce that we now have a donations page on Open Collective! 🔭☄️ #astrophotography

I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪 The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs. That is *pure fantasy*. Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.

I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management. medium.com/@steve.desch...

@bot.astronomy.blue signup

Avi Loeb has gotten US Rep Luna to write NASA admin Duffy with a demand to repurpose Juno to rendezvous with 3I/Atlas. This is so far out of line I don't know where to start.

If you want know all things #HabitableWorldsObservatory then follow @drjovian.bsky.social for the next two days as she posts from the #HWO25 meeting in Washington DC. Thanks Jo for keeping us posted ☺️

This is very cool.

My student Abubakar Fadul's most recent paper is now on arXiv! He found evidence of ethylene glycol (aka antifreeze) and glycolonitrile in a protoplanetary disk. If confirmed, these will be the most complex organics seen in a disk! 🔭🧪☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2507.14905

Happy to share the first paper from the SPACE Program, led by my student Angelique Kahle! she observed a hot little sub-Neptune, HD 86226c (Rp = 2.3 Re; equilibrium temp = 1300 K). arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13439 The spectrum is *really* flat ! here's the amplitude compared to other gaseous planets.

The dark forest hypothesis ("The galaxy seems quiet because #aliens fear being attacked if they are noisy.") is stupid. A thread apropos of absolutely nothing, totally.

Kodak, when confronted with the rise of digital photography, went big on investments in…film. Which is why you don’t hear about Kodak anymore. In a related dynamic, the United States, when confronted with the rise of clean energy, went big on investments in… oil.

My paper with Tom Evans-Soma and Nathan Mayne on magnetic drag models is now accepted and up on the arXiv. For a quick summary, look at the PDF of my Exoclimes poster that I shared last week. www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.08511

We all need to be more thoughtful about where we put our money. If you're giving $10/month to a left-wing podcast/streamer/etc. who has limited expenses but makes $100k+/month from donations, you can probably safely divert your money to ProPublica, etc., and get better results for your money.

It is with great pleasure that I share MAXMINDS 2.0, a new Max Planck program to support scholars in danger of displacement by war or natural disasters, and who have limited access to resources and institutional support. If you know affected scholars, please share. www.maxminds.mpg.de

Excited to be at Exoclimes (@exoclimes.bsky.social) this week! Come find me at poster 139 🪐 I'm building a retrieval framework to help make sense of variability in brown dwarfs and directly imaged planets. Come say hi, and we can nerd out about variable atmospheres 😊

As I sit at Exoclimes listening to a Zoom talk from the UK, I thought I'd share this again. When choosing where to host international meetings, we need to consider the ability of attendees to get visas in a timely manner.

Since many people can't make it to Exoclimes, here is my poster looking at the geometry of magnetic drag models in hot Jupiter atmospheres. There are many caveats about the applicability of these models, but they're a first step in including dayside coupling. www.duncanchristie.net/s/exoclimes_...