what are we even doing here

It's particularly the case among the Americans who are paid to decide which news is important, and who despite everything still can't bring themselves to accurately describe the fact that the president is serially murdering people and our systems are unable to stop him

Sun rising due East. HAPPY EQUINOX TO ALL!

hubble’s latest images 🌌✨

Psychologists and psychiatrists call this "concrete thinking." It reflects an inability to engage in abstract thinking, and a strong propensity to think of all nouns as depicting physical objects. It's the first way children begin to understand how to describe the world with words.

“Fascism” isn’t a slur for politics we don’t like. It’s a precise word with precise meaning. And in the face of what’s happening right now in America, it’s the most honest one we have. I’ll lay it out as plainly as I can. 🧵

Just back from @librarycongress.bsky.social and NASA, where i hung w/ all but 1 of the Blumberg Chairs of Astrobiology past/present. @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social @dhbaron.bsky.social @dagomardegroot.bsky.social & other cool folk were mixing it up. fun! also we gave talks @ NASA HQ

Tomorrow! NASA HQ 3 PM. Free & open to the public.

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

The best potential proof that life once existed on Mars. 🦠

"There is nothing new under the sun. But there are new suns." - Octavia Butler 🧪

Here I talk with Neil Tyson about the cool rock we found on Mars that *might* have signs of ancient microbes! 🧪 youtu.be/kvcfO_-p6YE?...

Here I talk with Neil Tyson about the cool rock we found on Mars that *might* have signs of ancient microbes! 🧪 youtu.be/kvcfO_-p6YE?...

ASTROBIOLOGY AND… Life, The Cosmos & the Human Story Short talks by all the NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Chairs DC area folks - This will be an amazing event next Wednesday (9/17) afternoon at NASA HQ - open to the public, not live-streamed. Attendance limited. Please RSVP & attend! 🧪

Cute little ET discovered 10,000 feet down off the coast of California. (Remember “terrestrial” has two opposites, one of which is “marine”.) Meet the bumpy snailfish! 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...

Our description paper of v2 of the planet version of the GISS model, led by Kostas Tsigaridis, ROCKE-3D 2.0: an updated general circulation model for simulating the climates of rocky planets gmd.copernicus.org/articles/18/...

Great to see this paper come out, a lot of work by many people went into the development of this model.

i’ll be there, talking about the origin of life!

ASTROBIOLOGY AND… Life, The Cosmos & the Human Story Short talks by all the NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Chairs DC area folks - This will be an amazing event next Wednesday (9/17) afternoon at NASA HQ - open to the public, not live-streamed. Attendance limited. Please RSVP & attend! 🧪

5 years ago yesterday Reggae founding father Toots Hibbert left the stage of life on this Earth. He was a miraculous fountain of music, energy, rhythm, soul and universal love. I knew I could always count on Toots to lift me up, and I always will. His sound and presence will reverberate forever.

Well if they would like to denounce political violence....

In Florida alone, a 15% decline in vaccinations against measles over 25 years would lead to 1 million measles cases. www.cnn.com/2025/09/09/h...

[Detours to Youtube, watches “Growing Up with Europa” talk, returns to Bluesky] Say, that was pretty good!

LIFE ON MARS??!! I know you’re wary of overhyped claims of ET life. & we need to be cautious. As Sagan used to remind us, life should be the hypothesis of last resort. But this is one to watch. Legitimately a “potential biosignature” which demands follow up. 🧪 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Wow I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I gave this talk about Growing up With Europa for for the Clipper science team. It seems like the whole world has fallen apart since then. Yet Clipper is on its way and we’re still going to Europa baby! 🧪 youtu.be/o4ikNdkIs8A?...

Wow I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I gave this talk about Growing up With Europa for for the Clipper science team. It seems like the whole world has fallen apart since then. Yet Clipper is on its way and we’re still going to Europa baby! 🧪 youtu.be/o4ikNdkIs8A?...

LIFE ON MARS??!! I know you’re wary of overhyped claims of ET life. & we need to be cautious. As Sagan used to remind us, life should be the hypothesis of last resort. But this is one to watch. Legitimately a “potential biosignature” which demands follow up. 🧪 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

The relevant scale here is a measure of how sensational the release is, and how likely to garner attention for he scientist involved, regardless of the rigor of the science. We refer to this as Likelihood of Ego Boost, or the LOEB scale.

The relevant scale here is a measure of how sensational the release is, and how likely to garner attention for he scientist involved, regardless of the rigor of the science. We refer to this as Likelihood of Ego Boost, or the LOEB scale. 🧪

Yeah I’m a civil servant and the people I work with are incredibly hard working, conscientious, smart, dedicated, principled, productive and kind. 🧪✊🏼🇺🇸🌎🪐🛰️❤️

One of the reasons so many of us scientists are here, and not there: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

8 years ago today I published this piece in The Atlantic. Still seems quite timely… On Hurricane Harvey, our limited but essential powers of foresight and orbital self monitoring, and how our technological interventions both endanger us and come to our rescue. 🧪 www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Colonial superorganisms breaking basic biological rules again. 🐜🧪

One of the reasons so many of us scientists are here, and not there: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

46 years ago today the magnificent ringed planet Saturn was visited for the first time by a spacecraft from Earth: NASA’s Pioneer 11. 🧪 🔭

The last 2 weeks have seen many articles clearly stating Trump has taken US into some state of authoritarianism, even dictatorship, some by indie journalists, but also, major international media. Today on 1A, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine & Spain’s La Vanguardia. 🧵 www.faz.net/aktuell/poli...

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

8 years ago today I published this piece in The Atlantic. Still seems quite timely… On Hurricane Harvey, our limited but essential powers of foresight and orbital self monitoring, and how our technological interventions both endanger us and come to our rescue. 🧪 www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Have I told you today that I love Jupiter? (Image from the incredible JunoCam) 🧪

How Gavin Newsom made Mike Johnson look like a Democrat. What that means for immigrants. Bipartisanship does not require surrendering in advance. A THREAD.

I had serious doubts about CDC Director Monarez’s willingness to stand up against RFK Jr.’s personal mission to destroy public health in America—I’m glad that I was wrong. If there are any adults left in the White House: we cannot let RFK Jr. burn what's left of CDC. FIRE HIM.

And as the New York Times editorialized in response to the scientific reports, this marked “the beginning of the end of Mankind’s grand romantic dreams.”

I mean 37 Earth years! Time flies…

Hail hail Chuck Berry & the Nerds! 27 years ago he rocked out for us at JPL for the Voyager 2 Neptune encounter - end of an incredible era of exploration. Voyager is still on its way out of the Solar System and we're still *trying* to keep exploring the planets! 🧪 🔭

63 yrs ago today: One giant leap for humankind-launch of Mariner 2 to Venus. First successful interplanetary craft. Taught us that Venus is hot, hot, hot due to runaway climate change. Beginning of an era of exploration... 🧪 🔭

Here Jason (@astrowright.bsky.social) elaborates on how Avi’s pseudoscientific and self-aggrandizing promotion of the idea that 31/Atlas is an alien artifact (never believable in the first place) have been definitively shown to be wrong. 🧪🔭 sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

This does seem to rule out that this is evidence for the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox, but still it’s pretty damn cool that we’re now observing comets from beyond the solar system! 🧪

This conversation between @ezraklein.bsky.social & @radleybalko.bsky.social is disturbing, informative, and important. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/o...

Impressive success for Starship last night. But with the “progress” Elon is facilitating on Earth, what are the chances that the first human on Mars will be a citizen of country with a democratically elected government? 🧪

From the folks who brought you Operation Warp Speed: Presenting Operation Self-Destruct Mechanism.