Cosmologists! We have a faculty job going here in Oxford - happy to answer questions. Brief version is that this remains a great & collaborative place to do science and the students are superb. 🔭 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOP628/a...

The Nobel Prize, widely considered the ultimate indicator of important science, has often gone off in weird directions due to politics & personalities. Like that year when an obsolete form of color photography beat out quantum physics for the physics Nobel. 🧪 physicsworld.com/a/nobel-priz...

By the way, although it is a bit late, if you know a cosmologist who would like to use our cosmology chains and other data, they can now get them following the instructions here: www.desi.lbl.gov/2025/10/06/d...

A special issue splash in Physical Review today on our DESI results: promo.aps.org/desi_dr2 Which also contains a Featured in Physics viewpoint on the status of cosmology following DESI, by Matteo Viel: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Lecturer A had amazingly found a way to use AI that would take even longer and be more work than just doing things without it.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of the great BB King. I was reminded of this and so also remembered this lovely short film of him in London in 1972 (which you can watch on the iPlayer if you're in the UK: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023jmg)

Regardless of everything else, Oblique Seville is one of the very best names. #TheAthletics

My wife is out with friends, so I'm watching season 3 of The Test - and my word that episode about the first Ashes test in 2023 is just amazing TV. Absolutely brilliant.

All illusions that russia wants only Ukraine — or that it would stop after getting the Donetsk region — should be gone after this blatant attack on Poland. russia seeks to restore its borderless empire. Ukraine's security is Europe's security. Time to choose to defeat russia.

I will be on The Sky at Night on BBC4 tonight, talking about dark energy and the expanding universe. Here's a little clip from the conversation: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

A little piece of free career advice for any astronomers: do not enter a scientific collaboration with anyone from the University of Florida astro department.

Great news that as a collaboration we in DESI have been awarded the Lancelot M. Berkeley-New York Community Trust prize for meritorious work in astronomy for 2026! The citation specifically references our two BAO cosmology papers, which are very close to my heart 💜

What a great little documentary, that I was totally unaware of until today

In her first race in over a year since winning Olympic gold, 🇬🇧Keely Hodgkinson sets a new 800m world lead by almost TWO SECONDS in 1:54.74!! 😳#SilesiaDL Just .13s away from her PB and the 9th fastest time in WORLD HISTORY! #trackandfield

I tried using an LLM to help with a tedious but not too complicated coding task today, and was genuinely surprised how poorly it worked. In the end I realised it was wasting rather than saving time, so I wrote the code myself. Brief description to follow in the thread below. 1/

Fourth location is the Kobayashi Maskawa Institute at Nagoya University, where I will give a seminar that is also part of an HSC medium band workshop. Nagoya is nice but also very hot and humid, 40C yesterday 🥵

Third conference location is Saitama in Japan, at the RIKEN institute where I gave a talk today (this photo is from dinner afterwards). I also learned that the special long-flowering sakura varieties growing near here were genetically modified at the particle accelerator in the lab at RIKEN 🤔

No one is ever allowed to say test cricket is boring ever again

We had a good discussion session yesterday in Benasque about the DESI data and evidence for evolving dark energy, ending with asking people if they agreed with John Peacock's quote in the Guardian saying he would bet £1000 on it. More even split than I expected, but a plurality disagreed.

Second conference location of the week is Benasque in the Spanish Pyrenees. I had a nice chat about cosmology with Oliver Philcox and Antony Lewis while hiking up a small hill above the town this morning.

I'm in Durham today, having just given a talk at the PASCOS 2025 conference. This kicks off a crazy three weeks of travel for me, covering 4 separate conferences...

Sorry but personally if a miniature horse woke me up from anesthesia by banging out nonsense on a miniature keyboard it would send me into a liminal space between life and death from which I would never return

At first glance this is very, very good news for NASA and other agencies. I think that many missions zeroed out by the White House decree are reversed here. Still a long way to go but this is an excellent sign. I'm sure many others will chime in on this.

I love observing how phonics teaching works on the brain of a 5-year-old - she's got the building blocks to go and be creative, and the end result isn't really any stranger than standard English spelling.

The NSF and DOE have cancelled the CMB-S4 programme, which was the highest priority recommendation of the Particle Physics Project Prioritisation Panel (P5), recommended for construction even in the worst budget scenario. www.science.org/content/arti...

So good to see him back, just great for cricket. There's nothing quite like watching a really fast bowler

Oh Jofra ❤️

You know, sharing screenshots of antisemitic garbage being churned out by an actor/by a shitty chatbot/whoever does not improve this place at all. Sharing garbage to dunk on it is still sharing garbage, and I'm going to suggest that our Jewish chums really don't want to see your RTs of it.

We took the kids to the Vitality Blast game today where they got to actually meet Ellyse Perry! As well as go out on the pitch for the toss and be interviewed "on TV". Big shout out to Rhianna Southby for being very nice to them at the start, and for batting well to get Hampshire the win.

This is the reason why England produce some very memorable Test results, and also always finish in the bottom half of the WTC rankings.

I think this astro analogy sums up something important for me. I've been trying to use social media *without* building this radio telescope, and Twitter insisted on building one for me regardless. Things are more manageable on Bluesky, but you have to be on guard on any social media.

India's selection decisions make no sense to me. I'm going to predict they get hammered in this game. #ENGvIND

School cancelled today because of safety concerns with the heat 🥵 It is 23C outside though, and there's a lovely breeze. Hmmm.

My kids' school wants us to send them in tomorrow dressed in outfits "inspired by" the 1960s and 1980s respectively. How is that not just homework for parents? And also, I have no direct experience of 1960s outfits in general and even less of what children wore in the 1960s! Very cross about this 😡

Whoa... With the new software (so pretty soon) the #arxiv order will be randomized. No more race to rhe first to submit on a given day! #Astrodon #eas2025

My parents have landed safely in Dubai. One more flight to go ...

Well today is not a good day to have family members on board flights crossing the Middle East ... www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn...

Is @dannychambers.bsky.social the first UK MP to publish in @nature.com?

What was that thing Gooch said about the world's best bowler at one end and Ilford 2nd XI at the other?

A bit late to this, but - today is the birthday of Paul McCartney, surely the greatest living Briton. A life to be grateful for, if ever there was one.

Fantastic camera angle for that catch by Webster

I had a fantastic day at Lord's today, an enthralling day of cricket with very high quality fast bowling from both sides. The last time I was at Lord's was Steve Smith's debut Test match, 15 years ago!

Very proud of my wife, who has just run her first ever marathon - BigSea Trails in Dorset - up and down some crazy hills and along beaches. The nutcase! ❤️

A great episode of The Life Scientific with @astroroyalscot.bsky.social - I tried to have it on while my girls were in the room and was very gratified to hear them asking some questions about it, so they must have been listening a bit too!

In the Observer today, an article about dark energy and the future of the Universe - featuring quotes from Jim Peebles, @astrokatie.com, Neil Turok and me. (I doubt any of us endorse the sub-editor's choice of headline though.) observer.co.uk/news/science...

Loch Coruisk, Isle of Skye #Scotland #IsleofSkye #Cuillin www.damianshields.com

Somehow (I can't remember how) I have switched off all AI summaries on Google searches, so I had to get my wife's phone to verify that this is true (it is)

So I just learned that if you Google "I'm a small baby deer, where is mother?" the AI will reassure you and treat you as in character.