The application for the ESO Summer Research Programme 2026 has just opened! It‘s a six week programme in Garching close to Munich where pre-Ph.D students can work on a hands-on project. Working at @eso.org is a fabulous experience, so please help me spread the word ✨ 🔗 eso.org/sci/meetings...

Happy Hanukkah to our friends who celebrate. Rachel Posner, a rabbi’s wife in Kiel, Germany, took this photograph in 1931 -- a potent reminder that fascism must be fought in every generation, even if it's wrapped in an American flag and a red hat.

Christ the swarm is out! Now fly & come here my cattle. In the Lord’s peace; in the protection of God; come home in good health. Sit, sit, bees, St Mary impels you. You have no furlough. Do not fly into the woods. Neither will you escape me nor will you elude me. Sit... still; work God’s will. 2/

Wat ik me ook afvraag als ik dit zie: voor wie is dit bedoeld? De 8460 mensen die op de Libertarische Partij hebben gestemd? Of is er een onaangeboord electoraat dat graag wil dat heel Nederland overgaat op de dollar?

firefox AI and slop disablers from tumblr for the people from local hero mckitterick. Tried it on my end and the browser is significantly faster now (copy paste-able in the alt text)

Walter de Staplecat, Simpkin IV, Teabag, Balthasar and Benny D Cat take the stage as we meet the college cats of Oxford. And, of course, Magdalen’s Ozymandias. Read on for our photo special. (Includes a cat map.) oxfordclarion.uk/college-cats...

Avi Loeb's calculations about 3I/ATLAS are 100% wrong because he has never understood that dust in the tail(s) responds to solar radiation pressure. Solar wind shapes the ion tail. But the radiation pressure is about 1000 times larger than the solar wind ram pressure, for particles that feel it.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

We are 35 people away from hitting 3000 sign ups for Kickstarter notifications on this project! Have you signed up?! rollandplaypress.com/highrollers A High Fantasy Campaign Setting, with Dragon Nobility, Magical Dimensional Dungeons, & so much more! #dnd #ttrpg #dnd5e @highrollersdnd.bsky.social

Bit of shameless self-promotion on a Friday afternoon: there's a cool new paper on the arxiv today, by Gavin Coleman and myself, in which we look at the evolution of the trend between disk mass and external UV irradiation from nearby massive stars, and what it tells us: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04410 🪐🔭

Modern astronomy has, of course, progressed a lot since then: we now have peer review and (distributed) time allocation duties instead of corvées.

Open Sesame! The ELT doors have moved for the first time. This was no small feat, as each door will weigh 650 tonnes once completed. The ELT dome & its doors will guard the telescope from the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert. https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2544a/ 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/ACe

In #NatureAstronomy präsentiert ein internationales Team die erste 3D-Temperaturkarte eines Exoplaneten. Mithilfe von Beobachtungen durch #JWST wurde bei #WASP-18b eine Atmosphäre mit unterschiedlichen Temperaturzonen enthüllt. Analysiert und interpretiert wurde diese unter der Leitung des #IWFGraz.

Fantastic article in which actual experts on AI and higher education cut through the nonsense surrounding the infinite garbage engines and expose a system captured by the techbro sales pitch. "A general ban is necessary, but nobody dares to say so."

Very cool work from Monsch et al. on the arxiv today, on a recently-discovered protoplanetary disk seen very nearly edge-on. It has weird, wispy structures and asymmetries - far more dynamic than we normally imagine disks to be! And, of course, it makes for beautiful images. arxiv.org/abs/2510.11819

GOOD NEWS ! "A team of musicologists has unearthed the printed score of a previously unknown Purcell song, as well as the original manuscript for various keyboard compositions." #baroque #music www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

We bail out banks. We bail the steel industry, the water industry, airlines and hotels. The UK higher education sector directly employs nearly 1M people. It's the envy of the world and benefits almost every area of UK society. But apparently it can go burn.

1/ 🔭 Astronomers have discovered 'The Cliff,' a distant object that may hold the key to understanding the mysterious 'little red dots' observed by the James Webb Space Telescope #JWST. These could be supermassive black holes, not galaxies! #Astronomy #JWST

Really cool work from Jenny Frediani, in the XUE collaboration led by @maclart.bsky.social - a protoplanetary disk with way more CO2 and less H2O than expected. Read the whole paper here: www.aanda.org/component/ar...

A very hungry planet! 🪐 What appears to be a ripple in space is actually a newborn planet, eating its way through its dusty cradle around a younger version of our Sun 🌞 Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2534a/ 🔭 🧪 #exoplanets 📷 ESO/R. van Capelleveen et al.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it. TERRY PRATCHETT

In Avi's latest he finally figured out why spacecraft would have dusty comae! It almost feels like he read @deschscoveries.bsky.social's complaint about how lazy his "it's aliens" claims have been lately and decided to up his game.

Loeb: we must stick to the facts, not judge things based on public opinion. Also Loeb: Look at how many likes and messages my ideas get! I must be doing it right.

Blatantly AI-generated images of Anne of Brittany in a @sport.nos.nl discussion of today's Tour Femmes stage, which have now vanished into nothingness (sadly, before I could archive them). Modern French flags in quasi-historical illustrations kind of gave it away (as did the art style).

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for. Stop using WeTransfer.

Really cool paper from Alvaro Ribas, @mvioque.bsky.social et al. on MP Mus, where Gaia astrometry and ALMA imaging at 3mm both point to a young Jupiter-mass planet embedded in the disk at ~1-3 au 🔭 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The major large satellite constellations are still too bright, reports a new paper. arxiv.org/abs/2507.00107 Almost all Starlink, BlueBird, Qianfan, Guowang, and OneWeb satellites impact astronomy, and most are above the limit where they are visible to the naked eye too.

Ich bin zutiefst berindruckt von der Solidarität der Menschen hier in Graz. SK Sturm organisiert Blutspenden: sksturm.at/n/blutspende... Gestern war schon eine Blutspendeaktion. Umliegende Restaurants haben die Helfer und Angehörige vor Ort versorgt... Menschlich sein in schlimmen Zeiten.

Gewone mensen die zomaar andere mensen van de weg halen en uit hun auto trekken. Heel "begrijpelijk".

Ready for the latest K2-18b drama? Madhusudhan is claiming *even stronger* evidence of DMS after analysing both near-infrared and mid-infrared JWST data. But another study finds no evidence at all. Read on for a quick update on everyone's f̶a̶v̶o̶u̶r̶i̶t̶e most newsworthy exoplanet. 🧵 #exoplanets 🔭

Deze geweldloze sukkel heeft een column geschreven. www.mareonline.nl/opinie/laat-...

I vote we just let these companies set up some AI universities, with AI students, staffed by AI profs, assessed by AI? And let the rest of us get on with actual human pursuits of scholarship and learning?

Hello everyone! I’d like to advertise a recent paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.04699. Led by Lavinia Delfini, we use the Gaia XP spectra to derive accretion rates for 145 975 candidate YSO Hα emitters all-sky within 500 pc. We find a percentage of accretors of 70% at 2 Myr and 2.8% at 10 Myr.

We are hosting the 2025 UK & Ireland Discs meeting at the University of Hertfordshire (8-10 September). Topics include discs of all sorts, but especially protoplanetary discs and white dwarf debris discs. Abstract submission deadline is 15 May: ukidiscs.github.io/discs2025/ 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

Since Trump took office, his family has made $2.9 billion in crypto. Again, this is a level of corruption so cartoonish, so obvious & on the surface, that it seems to have stunned everyone to silence.

Happy #exoALMA day! www.exoalma.com

It's too soon to tell, but we would not be surprised if this story started getting media attention soon. Researchers at the University of Zurich used AI-based accounts to try and manipulate users without seeking consent or informing the community. www.reddit.com/r/changemyvi...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Nice Feynman quote at Breakthrough Discuss conference on life in the Universe: ‘Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.’ 🧪

Apologies again for politics, but just sent this to my MP if anybody needs inspiration.

𝗡𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲. K2-18b is back in the news, now with a bold claim that biosignature molecules (DMS and/or DMDS) have been 'detected at 3σ'. Most exoplanet astronomers are extremely sceptical about these claims, let's see why (1/n). 🔭🧪🪐 #exoplanet

Ignas Snellen from Leiden University not pulling any punches in the Volkskrant: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This goes way beyond what I consider responsible science communication." (my translation)

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... 🔭 🧪

Deze minister @eppobruins.bsky.social ontwikkelt zich steeds duidelijker als academische vrijheid hatende en wetenschap slopende bewust liegende pseudo-PVV'er. Hij mag 'ja' tegen deze baan gezegd hebben, het veld zegt 'nee' tegen hem. www.linkedin.com/posts/remco-...

Shared some (highly skeptical) thoughts on today’s “habitable planet” #K218b news. Thank you @npr.org for the responsible reporting on this topic!

This really is an extinction level event for NASA's science programs. arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

In between this insanity and the Dutch minister of science education's recently-approved and likely illegal budget cuts for universities, it's hard not to see a trend of Europe's politicians fundamentally (and willfully?) misunderstanding what universities are for.

My student Abubakar Fadul's FIRST EVER paper has been accepted and is on arxiv today! In an ALMA Band 7 spectral scan of the FUor V883 Ori he identified 27 molecules, including several never before seen in this protoplanetary disk! arxiv.org/abs/2504.06005 🧪🔭

Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded econ.st/3YbbFjq