Aww ... So someone who heard my outreach talk (likely at the @clubdiscordia last Thursday) chatted with someone else and suddenly I have an email in my inbox from someone teaching at an art/design school about using some of my illustration as examples in their course. 🥰 I love chance and things […]

I also got a few nice aurora photos last night before it totally clouded up!

Victorias "Deutschland-Tour": Berlin, 23. April, Deutsch: https://berlin.ccc.de/datengarten/116/ Berlin, 24. April, Englisch: https://chaos.social/@cbase/116432684370050227 Nürnberg, 29. April, Deutsch […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I was today years old when I learned that scientists from the 17th century had their own form of "preprints" to lay claim to ideas before they got them officially published. Galileo wrote in a letter to Kepler "Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur o.y.", in English "These are now too young […]

Sending peace.

Upside to 2am barn checks for the #babygoatcountdown: there were full-sky auroras! (It *finally* wasn't cloudy, yay)

Update. "How France’s #Mistral Built A $14 Billion AI Empire By Not Being American." https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/16/how-frances-mistral-built-a-14-billion-ai-empire-by-not-being-american/ #ai #datasovereignty #france #opensource #uspol #uspolitics

A journalist in Brazil asked me for a satellite light pollution map for São Paulo with SpaceX's awful million "AI data center" satellite plan. So, here you go. Compared with Starlink, which isn't visible at all from latitude 23 south on the summer solstice […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Wie cool ist das denn! Ein sehr schönes Review meines Buches auf astronomie.de 🤩 ▶️ https://www.astronomie.de/aktuelles-und-neuigkeiten/detailseite/schwarze-loecher-schwere-kost-leicht-verdaulich #astronomie #wisskomm

The Royal Tyrrell Museum is probably the best museum I've ever been to. Completely unapologetic, fully scientific presentations on evolution, Earth's history, extinction, and it even ends with a powerful statement on climate change. With the added bonus of […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Fantastic 2.5 year postdoc working on 🤩emojis🤩 ! Are you a #linguist with experience in running experiments in formal semantics & pragmatics? Please come join our lab and the @vicom#linguistvisual communication research cluster! Apply by April 28 - or contact me with questions. #emojis #linguistics #job […]

This whole thread. It's a love letter to the Fediverse.. https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116368379234020589 [email protected] - Dear Fedi friends, Next week I have the honor of doing a presentation advocating for the Fediverse in a really prestigious venue (I can't share more now, but I […]

Und der Vortrag in Stuttgart ist endlich auch offiziell auf der Webseite des Planetariums angekündigt 💫 ▶️ https://www.planetarium-stuttgart.de/startseite/entdecken/vortraege.html Freitag, 8. Mai 2026, 20:00 Uhr (In Nürnberg bin ich am 29. April, in Berlin am 23. und 24.) #Astrodon #wisskomm […]

"We’re focused on user privacy, and this means that we have very limited analytics to inform decisions. We also believe in community-driven design, and we want to be transparent about our thinking as we build new features. Our small team is counting on the insights from your experiences as you […]

Together with Clara Wanjura, we are delighted to announce the second instalment of our workshop on neuromorphic computing taking place 10-12 June at the @MPI_ScienceOfLight Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. 👉 Registration and abstract submission will be open […]

"Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service." https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-trump-administration-orders "They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a […]

Together with Clara Wanjura, we are delighted to announce the second instalment of our workshop on neuromorphic computing taking place 10-12 June at the @MPI_ScienceOfLight Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. 👉 Registration and abstract submission will be open […]

The Polar Climate Space: Our next hackathon/bootcamp on polar climate processes is now open for applications. Funded by European Space Agency - ESA's climate programe under the #esapisco project, and in association with the Horizon Europe project #snowpi, we are looking for talented ECRs and […]

It's not about numbers, but still, they play some role. Here a nice one for me: sometimes during the last week, I've passed the 4000 citations limit. #Astrodon #XraysAreTheBestRays

Mastodon is ten years old today! https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/1 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v0.1.0 https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110985808809440467 #mastodon #anniversary #fediverse #mastodon10 Years #decadeofmastodon

Oh, and here's one from just a few minutes earlier that is full of satellite streaks 😭

Lust auf einen Wissenschafts-Podcast? Echt mit meinem bayerisch-schwäbischem Dialekt & in bester Gesellschaft mit tollen Kollegen, die auch an schwarzen Löchern forschen, unter anderem @HasiProf 😊 Im Deutschlandfunk Kultur in "Zeitfragen. Feature" von Dirk Lorenz: "Das Gegenteil vom Nichts - […]

"People are always the ends, not merely the means. [...] When we employ a graduate student to perform some work, it absolutely must be because the graduate student will benefit from that work, not merely because that work needs to get done." 3/6 #Astrodon #astrophysics #science #academicchatter

"You can’t do science if you don’t live within a network of trust. You have to trust your coauthors, you have to trust the literature, and you have to trust the machinery and tools that you use." "A trusted partner is one that takes responsibility for their work." 5/6 #Astrodon #astrophysics […]

Light running in a circle. Live at Pascal del Haye's lab at @MPI_ScienceOfLight #physics

If you're ever thinking "oh my work will never come to anything" spare a thought for Robert Recorde of Tenby in Wales. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 He invented the equals sign (=) in 1557 (the year before he died) "to auoide the tediouſe repetition of theſe woordes : is equalle to" - and was promptly ignored for 61 […]

@ModernePhysik In der Wissenschaft gehört der Irrtum zum Alltag. Deshalb ist es wichtig, die Fähigkeit zu besitzen, Fehler schnell zu erkennen, und die Bereitschaft, Fehler schnell (sich selbst und vor anderen) einzugestehen. Dazu gehört auch, kein negatives […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

I realise on the fediverse this is maybe asking for a flaming, but yesterday out of sheer curiosity I tried Claude for a simpleish coding task that I'd been putting off (largely inspired by @hausfath 's latest on #theclimatebrink). The performance of Claude was seriously impressive. I am […]

Like other physicists, I regularly get mail from people who believe they‘ve proven Einstein wrong, or revolutionized physics in some other way. Recently, chatGPT et al. has been featuring in this, people citing it as proof they were right or copy-pasting their Q&A sessions. Yay. (Not.) 🔭🧪⚛️

By the way, if you have time and energy and farting in the general direction of the FCC sounds fun, instructions on how to post your own comment to the FCC on Reflect Orbital or 1 million new SpaceX sats are here […]

Viele Menschen denken bei Wissenschaft an komplizierte Apparate, Formeln, oder Leute in Reinraumanzügen. Aber das sind nur oberflächliche Aspekte. Die eigentliche Essenz der Wissenschaft ist eine Reihe von Methoden, den Irrtum zu vermeiden und damit zu […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

It's a problem that we only have one universe. It's very hard to do statistics with N=1. #Astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #cosmology

Mein Vortrag über 'wissenschaftliches Denken' -- wie die Menschheit über Jahrhunderte immer besser gelernt hat, den Irrtum zu vermeiden, und was uns das auch im Alltag helfen kann. Hier auf Video (vom 31. Januar 2026) […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Related: new technical paper on "The Pinnacle Architecture: Reducing the cost of breaking RSA-2048 to 100,000 physical qubits using quantum LDPC codes” This would be an order of magnitude improvement over the Google paper from less than a year ago. Some interesting advancements here, but also a […]

Mein Vortrag über 'wissenschaftliches Denken' -- wie die Menschheit über Jahrhunderte immer besser gelernt hat, den Irrtum zu vermeiden, und was uns das auch im Alltag helfen kann. Hier auf Video (vom 31. Januar 2026) […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Also I stayed up way too late, and woke up too early, and I have to give another talk tonight in Wellington: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/scps/about/events/astronomer-vs-the-billionaires-space-race But at least it's gorgeous here and this is my last night of rapid-fire consecutive talks before I head […]

One time a student* told me if I didn’t correct his homework and let him write the exam, I would hear from his dad’s lawyers. - But that’s not a threat, he’s just informing me * _exmatriculated_ student, who had already failed out of the program #academicchatter

Aspen Journal: Thursday and Friday, Feb. 5-6, 2026 The last two days of the Aspen winter conference on "Paving the Way to New Discoveries in Particle Physics" ended with some pretty interesting stuff. From questions about sources of ultra-high-energy neutrinos to implications for the Standard […]

Neue Konten auf der idw Instanz – wir wachsen! 🦣 @DPGPhysik @HRK_aktuell @CINTEUS @hszg @surveycircle Rund 40 % Wachstum seit 2024! Die #Wissenschaftskommunikation auf unserer Instanz wird immer lebendiger 🤗 Mitmachen lohnt sich! Wir laden alle […] [Original post on idw-online.social]

There are lots of satellites here in the southern skies too. But the stars behind the satellites are absolutely incredible! The Milky Way was absurdly bright! The Magellenic Clouds were so easy to see! WOOOOWWWWW

It is not too late to register for "Move Slowly and Build Bridges" at MacEwan University in #Edmonton #YEG https://libcal.macewan.ca/event/3981088 Speaker and panelists @rwg @chad#edmonton#yegdawn and Jordan Foster @avilewis

The second book is Astrotopia by Mary-Jane Rubenstein https://www.maryjanerubenstein.com/ This book explains why and how the billionaire techbros are using religious language: "The world is ending! The only way you can save yourself is to come with me to Mars!" And also hilarious! I didn't know […]

Wenn ihr in der Nürnberger Gegend seid und gerne was über schwarze Löcher lernen wollt - ich halte am 29. April einen Vortrag am Nürnberger Planetarium: https://bz.nuernberg.de/programm/planetarium/astronomie/vortraege/schwarze-loecher-schwere-kost-leicht-verdaulich-00960-20261 Eventuell gibt […]

"Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step toward becoming a Kardashev II-level situation" THIS IS IN AN FCC FILING NOT A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK I'M DEAD

Samstag, 31. Januar in #Erlangen. Vortrag zum Thema: "Wissenschaftliches Denken" Irren ist menschlich! Aber wie können wir den Irrtum vermeiden und die Realität erkennen? In diesem Vortrag von Florian Marquardt wird erklärt, welche Methoden in der […] [Original post on wisskomm.social]

#OpenSource #regulation incoming! The @EUCommission is about to ask for feedback for: * a strategic approach to the open source sector in the EU that addresses the importance of open source as a crucial contribution to EU technological sovereignty, security and competitiveness * a strategic […]

I know this is pretty small beer in the light of world events, but I was not expecting to have to write “risk of invasion by the USA” into the risk assessment for my fieldwork in Greenland in June.

5/5 This work was led by our PhD student Chengyu Fang, in a collaboration with several others from our group, as well as the groups of Jennifer Choy and Mark Saffman, and Argonne National Laboratory The work was supported by DOE Q-NEXT and the NSF

Today I learned that when iceberg debris - clear bits of ice diamond - reach the shore of the glacier lake, the waves playing with them make a lovely trickling sound, almost like music, while the ice glitters in sunlight, sequin-like.