With a dish 110 meters across, the GBT is a pulsar-hunting machine!

"What if we're wrong?"... one of the best questions to ask in science. 🔭🧪 What if the gravitational monster at the center of the Milky Way wasn't a black hole & was instead a dense core of dark matter? If true, it could explain many a vexing cosmic question. Source: doi.org/10.1093/mnra...

"Attempt No Landings There." Clarke "Multiply flybys? Sure!" NASA Europa Clipper arrives March 2031 to hopefully find habitable environs. New look at Galileo data raises hopes by confirming ammonia, another piece in the "potential for life puzzle." iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... 🔭🧪

"Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand." On subatomic scales, fleeting particle/antiparticle pairs appear and disappear in the nothin' of the quantum vacuum. In energetic proton/proton collisions at the RHIC, virtual particles transform into real particles.🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy birthday to Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto in 1930 (when he was 24 years old). 🧪🔭

Headline in a venerable science publication: "NASA quietly pushed the launch date of the Artemis II moon mission into March..." "Quietly" with a press conference, live video coverage, social-media posts, and updates to its homepage. Quietly like The Who's 1976 concert at Charlton Athletic Grounds.

Astronomers have discovered the most distant cosmic object to date: a weirdly luminous galaxy a mere 2% younger than the universe itself. If we put that in human terms, this galaxy would be like an 18-month-old toddler racing through puberty. 🧪 🔭Source: science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

I did catch them in 2002 (a while ago) yet recall seeing one every 10 seconds or so. Some were remarkably bright. I have yet to see a comparable shower, but hoping this might be the year.

ALMA discovery in 2015 popped up in my OneDrive feed. Still amazing! Einstein ring -- massive foreground galaxy focusing light from more distant galaxy to reveal details never before seen in a galaxy so remote, including phenomenally massive yet concentrated clumps of star-forming material. 🧪🔭

ALMA is so cool! Well, it does observe the cold universe. Here’s a glimpse of what the Sun will look like a few billion years hence. 🧪🔭

A brilliant story by @astrokimcartier.bsky.social! In Romeo and Juliet, Mab is the 'fairies' midwife,' delivering dreams and shaping fantasies. In planetary geology, she's equally mischievous, inspiring scientists' dreams about another rendezvous with Uranus. 🧪🔭

That's really cool, @philplait.bsky.social. So much left to uncover -- cosmically and culturally.

Bravos Blue Origin! New Glenn had a good day. Nailed booster landing... Next milestone, sending the twin Red and Blue ESCAPADE spacecraft to Mars. Nice to see some good news.

Soft drinks linked to increased and more-severe depression, especially among women. The connection? Sugary drinks unbalancing the gut microbiome. Vicious cycle: depression ⬆️ cravings for sweets, soft drinks changes gut, depression worsens. Unsweetened tea, plz. 🧪⚕️ jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Ice-nine of Cat's Cradle fame? How about Ice XXI! Sure, at 2 gigapascals (about 30,000 lbs per sq inch) for a mere microsecond (1 millionth of a second). So much more to learn about this deceptively simple molecule! @newswise.bsky.social 🧪 www.newswise.com/articles/wor...

COVID-19 vaccines save lives, but evidence is mounting that vaccines also protect against heart disease. A study in Nature Communications again shows lower rates of heart attacks and strokes after the first dose. Infections increase those risks. RFK Jr is a prat. 🧪🩺 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Inflation, the theory the infant universe went from miniscule to ginormous in tiny fractions of a second. New research suggests it may actually have been immersed in a hot bath of elementary particles. A testable “warm inflation” scenario. 🧪 go.aps.org/4qoeTfW

Interferometry, the interference patterns of light waves, is already used in astrophysics in radio telescopes and gravitational wave detectors. Existing technology might also detect the elusive “graviton,” the particle theorized to carry the gravitational force. 🧪🔭 res.cloudinary.com/apsphysics/i...

A new study suggests that – in the year 2032 – Earth will encounter a thick part of the Taurid meteor swarm. The cometary debris in the swarm could bring an increased risk of airbursts, or explosions in Earth’s atmosphere, in both 2032 and 2036. earthsky.org/space/hallow...

Sucks that U.S. science is getting the “East Wing” treatment.

public.nrao.edu/news/astrono... It’s not easy to make a star. Gravity wants to pull stuff in. Young stars want to blast stuff away. Magnetic fields might tip the balance in favor of starburst. 🧪🔭

A few friends showed up in Williamsburg, Virginia. #nokings

So much to discover… if only NASA science weren’t being dismantled to pay for tax cuts on 3rd yachts.

news.agu.org/press-releas... Thank you AGU—my professional home. My first job post grad school in 1990. 🧪 @agu.org

Some advice when talking to science deniers: Be nice, it’s unexpected. Be calm, don’t feed outrage porn. Listen, you won’t change their mind about science, but you might change their mind about you. Don’t rise to the bait of “then how do you explain?” It’s fishing for unsatisfactory relies. 🧪

Is there ever a shred of evidence that the assassination/murder of 11 humans (not bound for the U.S.) was justifiable under ever the most tenuous and oblique interpretation of national security? Just another abomination and abuse of power for Republicans to shrug off as they worship plutocracy.

The relationship between the people of Hawaiʻi and astronomy on Maunakea has been complex. I have witnessed both missteps and sincere efforts to be respectful and find common ground. Hopefully this is a welcome development. 🧪🔭

Webb and ALMA: When proposed, these telescopes were touted for their ability to combine observations, uncovering otherwise hidden mysteries of the universe. Multiwavelength astronomy rules! @thenrao.bsky.social 🧪🔭

Had a brief chat with my dentist today about Rosalind Franklin, Joselyn Bell Burnell, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and other under-recognized women in science. Photo 51 changed our understanding of biology, medicine, chemistry, evolution, etc. etc. 🧪 🧬 www.sciencehistory.org/about/press/...

Mazel tov LIGO.

My mother slept like a squirrel on crack. My father could sleep on bricks. Mother developed dementia; Dad's sharp mind outlasted his flagging heart. Correlation? Perhaps more than that. Sleep-meister Rob Britt tells the story. 🧪😴 medium.com/wise-well/st...

Love the lede. Pretty much what I posted last week. “Doomed” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Source: The New York Times share.google/yyn4mCDJBKA4...

While driving to work last week (at 4 a.m., one has ample time to think), I wondered about human evolution and autism. It appears I wasn't the first to consider this connection. medium.com/@ceblue65/th...

GRBs, the most energetic events in the universe, astound and confound. Breaking news... follow for updates.

Not science. Not politics. I just learned that one of my favorite songs, Veronica, by Elvis Costello, was co-written by Paul McCartney. (p.s. daughter's middle name is Veronica) www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-rF...

The whole universe displayed in a logarithmic map spanning about 20 orders of magnitude. On the left, Earth-sized scales to the largest cosmic distances on the right. (Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi). 🧪🔭 Tip-o-the-hat to @startswithabang.bsky.social medium.com/starts-with-...

I’ve registered. Looking forward to be disheartened.

I remember the opening words of LIGO's press conference. "We did it. We detected gravitational waves." Since that time, multi-messenger astronomy has exceeded our wildest dreams. But there's no immediate shareholder value in scientific revolutions. The dream shatters. 🧪🔭 medium.com/starts-with-...

Genuinely hoping Virginia follows suit.

ESO makes the coolest astro images.

Stepping away from existential dread, more amazing findings from pristine bits of Bennu that were returned to Earth: it is made of fragments from a larger body destroyed by a collision in the asteroid belt -- some of the material likely originated beyond our solar system. Fund Science. 🧪🔭

I may have gotten a little carried away on my recent screed to my congressional representative…

My grandfather was a Pa. coal miner. He died of black lung. Streams were so polluted, children would swim in them to get ride of poison ivy. Mine tailings were/are as high as natural mountains. My father worked at a coal power plant. He died of cancer. Fly ash stripped his car of paint, yearly. 🧪

This truly is what the sky looks like in Chile. The mirror design of the ELT is similar to #TMT, a collection of 1.44 meter hexagonal segments polished to individual prescriptions with nanometer precision - a technique developed for the Keck telescopes on Hawai`i. 🧪🔭

We will fail. Why? We lack a leader, a cynosure, and a vision of unity that commands action. Our thousand micro rallies “feel good,” but the enemy of democracy has grown beyond these tactics. Franklin knew this. #resist #unite 🇺🇸

💯 “Researchers should not have to endure death threats or public attacks when they engage publicly and try to combat misinformation” @michaelemann.bsky.social & @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social www.americanscientist.org/article/supp...

I signed with the message: “I want my children to live. This is in opposition to RFK Jr’s agenda of quackery and snake oil.”

Well, that’s another example of it never being about the children.

www.newswise.com/articles/cou... Always intrigued by the challenges in “untangling” the causes of Alzheimer’s. There are still major gaps in understanding the role of lithium in brain function in general. Wonder if RFK Jr 🤡 could use a few metric tonnes of the stuff. 🧪🧬🩺