My student Nathan has just put out a new paper that forms the final part of his PhD thesis - and it is a good one! A new tool for cosmology with cosmic voids, both an order of magnitude faster, and more accurate … 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2605.03779

The lunch option at our university canteen today is chicken katsu served with spiced cous cous, flatbread, and vegetable samosas. True commitment to international cuisine 🫡

They don’t say “fourth”, though. They say “force” - “the force” being a very important part - a pivotal part- of the world building of the series. Honestly, calling yourself fans and making such elementary mistakes, I’m embarrassed for you.

Large Scale Structure of the Universe: This is a map of the universe. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona, has finished its five-year survey. It observed more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and created a 3D map centere… Credit: NASA/ APOD

An exciting astronomy milestone was hit last night, as DESI completed its original 5-year survey mapping 40 million galaxies in the night sky! DESI continues operation, now aiming for an 8-year survey and ~60 million galaxies. 🔭🧪 #cosmology newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/04/15/d...

STFC chief commits to making no further cuts to postdoc funds Michele Dougherty also promises top-up funding for additional early career researcher positions after outcry www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

My five-year old daughter has for some reason started writing these little aphorisms that now randomly appear on our fridge. It's a mystery where she's getting the inspiration from, but I do enjoy reading them - and her spelling is delightfully inventive!

Kemi Badenoch! Roger Scruton! MattGPT! Bari Weiss! Rod Dreher! Jair Bolsanaro! Howard from the Halifax adverts! JD Vance? You hear me JD Vance? Your boy took a hell of a beating! Your boy took a hell of a beating!

You may think this is very very stupid but the plan is that hopefully Iran gets confused and responds by threatening to blow up their own nuclear enrichment facility. Something similar worked for Bugs Bunny. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn...

A new development: I've recently started receiving regular emails (once a week or so) from random people asking me for arXiv endorsements for their AI-generated, nonsense physics theory papers. I got crackpot emails in the past too, but never arXiv endorsement requests - not sure what's changed? 🔭🧪

Today is one of my favourite days of the year - the day I'm down at the cricket club prepping for the start of the season: hanging sightscreens, painting the clubhouse, erecting the marquee. All in the sunshine, with friends, and the promise of a happy summer ahead.

Almost certainly the best thing I was ever told about owls was when I met an owl handler at an owl sanctuary and he told me that the wild owls who lived near the sanctuary worried about the tame show owls there and sometimes stopped by to leave them shrews and mice as presents.

On my way home from a conference in the snowy Alps and lovely as it was, now that I'm back in England where blossoms are out on the trees and it is still bright until nearly 8 pm I have officially had enough of winter thank you very much.

the human body was not designed to know what the worst person in the world is doing every fifteen minutes

The future of UK Astronomy & Particle Physics is at risk from proposed 30% funding cuts that, if implemented, will be "genuinely catastrophic". Great to see this detailed BBC report on the issue by @pallabg.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️ #STFCcuts #SaveUKAstronomy 🗞️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Five year Astro career development fellowship in Oxford open for applications, broadly in survey astronomy including transients and cosmology. College teaching and research. Do think about joining us. Happy to answer questions! 🔭

Hahaha

The spending review moved >40% of all UKRI funding away from basic research, and into "strategic government and societal priorities" or "innovative companies". The budgets for all the research councils have been slashed. Clear message from govt is that bright young scientists should leave the UK.

These cuts would indeed be absolutely catastrophic. The UK has been a world leader in astronomy, we should not throw that all away

Did anyone watch the Alex Honnold live stream from Taiwan? I couldn't bear the thought of watching live, but quite interested in catching up on it now

So true.

I think it would be quite nice for me to be able to wake up in the morning and think about my plans for the day, and more broadly about my own little life, instead of immediately having to ponder the overnight actions of The Guy Over There

If you stare at this movie it looks like nothing is happening, but then you notice groups of lines appearing and disappearing. No, you're not on drugs - it's math.

If you are close to Portsmouth and interested in an evening learning about astronomy and our place in the Universe, come to our Stargazing public event! 28th Jan, free entry but booking essential. There will be lots of hands-on demos and public talks (including one by me). www.port.ac.uk/stargazing

The prize is the Lancelot M. Berkeley – New York Community Trust Prize and Daniel Eisenstein (on behalf of the DESI collaboration) is receiving it

Looks like we might have the first time AI directly solved an open Erdos problem: github.com/teorth/erdos... A couple times recently this appeared to be the case only to turn out to be a successful deep lit review by AI.

I got a few of these this year, and yeah, probably don't do that. But absolutely never in any circumstances email to say "I saw this position you advertised and I'd like to apply, but can you please change the project to something else I'd rather work on instead?" 🙄

The US is more dangerous to the stability of the world and democratic states than China and just as dangerous and hostile as Russia. This is the realist position.

I've always liked Khawaja - one of the most interesting people in world cricket IMV. I'm glad he gets to call time on an excellent career on his own terms. www.espncricinfo.com/story/usman-...

Brydon Carse - I guess no option but for him to play this game, given Archer is out. But why is he still opening the bowling?!

I just became aware of an astronomy paper from a large collaboration where the lead author appears* to have asked an LLM to help inputting all co-author names in the arXiv metadata ... ... and guess what, the LLM made up a bunch of names. Out there on the arXiv with fictitious authors 😬 🧪🔭

Were classical statues painted horribly? buff.ly/fS78ULM It is often suggested that modern viewers dislike painted reconstructions of Greek and Roman statues because our taste differs from that of the ancients. This essay proposes an alternative explanation.

Brydon Carse is extremely lucky to be playing this game, and I suspect he won't be in the team for Melbourne. Pretty dreadful first few overs there for England.

Two men meet in the carpark of a Leeds hospital. They sit on a bench and start chatting. One of them has a bomb in their backpack and the other must talk them out of using it. A mindblowing and entirely true story that reads like a thriller. as.ft.com/r/13756c02-0...

What is also interesting is how much less I pay in tax today than someone on the same nominal income did 3 or 5 years ago. Perhaps not surprising the state can't afford to pay for anything.

Just attended a really great colloquium by Brodie Popovic about this paper 🧪🔭 UK colleagues: Brodie is now a Marie Curie fellow at Southampton, and would be a great addition to your seminar schedules.

Good Lord

I thought the most interesting thing about the interview Stokes gave today was that it is the first time I've heard him or McCullum admit that something in their approach isn't working. #TheAshes

I got home from work today to find my kids writing out Christmas cards for all their school friends. The 7-year-old has been signing them off "Yours sincerely"

It is nice to see this - and I hope it is reflected in UK Space Agency budgets and long term stability of funding here too!

Timetable discussions for next term with my (lovely) colleagues are sadly bringing home the reality that my five-year research fellowship ends on Dec 31st and I'm going to have to start a new phase of my academic life ... 🧪🔭

the thing that scares me about Labour HE policy is that because I work in the sector I can see how absolutely insane it is, which makes me wonder just how terrible their policies are in all the other sectors I’m in less of a position to engage with critically out of lack of knowledge.

England are determined to keep batting like it's a T20 I see ... #theashes

Apropos of nothing in particular, two cosmology questions for my followers: - in the first figure, are the black or blue contours in better agreement with the pink ones? - in the second figure, are the black or blue contours in better agreement with (w0,wa)=(-1,0)? 🔭🧪☄️

Two very interesting papers about dark energy on the arXiv today, both very relevant to the ongoing interest in possibly evolving DE as suggested by the DESI results 🔭🧪 Here's the first and potentially more explosive one: arxiv.org/abs/2511.07517

This morning was an epic sunrise in the New Forest. Really nice to get out there with some gorgeous conditions. When there is a low lying mist my favourite place is an old train line which was closed 60 years ago. #EastCoastKin #Scape #Treescape #Horse #Photography #mist

despite not having vocals, 'kind of blue' is actually the first kind

There are three types of jazz: smoky voiced female vocalist sings song that sounds like it’s about sex but is actually about racism; 9 woodwork teachers on a stage shout “chase that tiger” while somebody hammers a piano; man has a heart attack whilst trumpet playing and falls downstairs.

Aren't languages wonderful? Here's an example of Deutsche Bahn not only borrowing from English but also "verbing" a noun in a way that Calvin and Hobbes would respect!

I went for a long morning swim in the sea today, on the day the clocks went back. The sea was the Sea of Crete rather than the Solent, which made it less of an achievement but much more pleasurable!