Kid got his first board game for his 4th birthday (candyland) and I’ve lost 14/17 games we’ve played so far. Little does he know I’m playing the long game: a decade from now he'll love board games for reasons he doesn't understand, and I will introduce him to Alchemists

fellas is it gay to check a box and save multiple lives at no cost to yourself? 🤔

On the destruction of New Zealand science peterkdearden.substack.com/p/on-the-des...

this right here is why New Zealand is going to lose a generation, or more, of scientific talent — and will probably also contribute to Luxon losing his job #nzpol

Turns out the promo image is me, but I'm giving a public talk about what we can and can't see in the sky for Matariki Week in Christchurch... Monday July 6, 730 pm -- tickets are free! www.artscentre.org.nz/whats-on/pub...

Well that’s not great!

What do we mean by 'thick disk' and 'thin disk' when it comes to the Galactic origin of interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS? Some musings from @astrohopkins.bsky.social, @chrislintott.bsky.social, @redshiftless.bsky.social and I ☄️🔭 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

🧪 🔭 Things like this seem necessary - otherwise the incentives are all in the direction of "send slop into the literature as fast as possible."

Reposting today for no reason in particular.

Physics bachelors programs at Bowling Green, Kent State, Ohio U, and Wright State will be eliminated! ⚛️🧪🔭

While the situation is grim at NIH, it's closer to catastrophic at NSF. They're just not able to move any money out the door. It appears OMB has them on lockdown. www.science.org/content/arti....

A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth theconversation.com/a-million-ne...

Due to a poor choice of headphone placement, my hairstyle for much of today may best be described as the "Londo Mollari"

Technically kind of true (the best kind of true)! Of course, speaking as one such nerd, not every cubic parsec is equally interesting (and you need about 55 more 9's 👀). 🔭

Number of photos or videos taken by my phone per day over the past 6 years.

Following extensive discussions regarding the nature of "tropical juice" over the past several days, the kid has deduced the existence of "temperate juice."

"Rocket launches already contribute to climate change and ozone depletion. Scaling them up to deploy a million aircraft-sized satellites would push upper-atmosphere heating and ozone loss far beyond previous estimates, with the steady burn-up of dead satellites compounding the impacts." 🧪🛰️🚀

New article out about what a million satellites could do to our atmosphere. It's bad. https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

Excellent piece from @astrokiwi.bsky.social @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy & Laura Revell. This one sentence is the crux of it all 👇 "There is no public mandate for a single company in one country to make changes on that scale to the planet’s atmosphere." Highly recommended. 🔭🧪

Alerts are flowing from Rubin Observatory! There will be a proper press release in the coming hours, please see all the details then, and meanwhile, your favorite alert broker probably has public data available to peruse *now*! We are up to well over 20k alerts after 20 min on sky 🔭

NSF Update Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit. Now by Directorate... 1/11

I have student projects available for all levels! Interested in simulating star formation and interactions with the star-forming cloud? Have a look at these! I work with students to align the project to their skills, interests, and academic level. 🔭✨#Astronomy rajikalk.github.io/html_pages/s...

death by preventable disease is an inevitable and even desired outcome of concentration camps. in every era of concentration camps people have died of typhus, which is a disease of privation and enforced crowding. this illness is intentionally inflicted

Pleased to say that Carl Bergstrom (@carlbergstrom.com) will be speaking at the University of Canterbury on 13th Feb! He is hosted by @tepunahamatatini.bsky.social come see him at noon in Jack Erskine 441!

Anyone else have this experience?

Brown dwarfs are "failed stars" - they never got enough mass to burn hydrogen in their cores, or at least not enough to supply the energy they radiate away at their surface. But what happens if you add enough mass to a brown dwarf to push it over that threshold in mass? Does it become a star? 🔭 🧪 🧵

Brown dwarfs are "failed stars" - they never got enough mass to burn hydrogen in their cores, or at least not enough to supply the energy they radiate away at their surface. But what happens if you add enough mass to a brown dwarf to push it over that threshold in mass? Does it become a star? 🔭 🧪 🧵

A little 3I/ATLAS update building on @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social's nice RNAAS from last week. Given its non-grav acceleration and the rate at which it's losing mass, you can work out its size. The answer: a diameter around 1 km, very typical for comets. arxiv.org/abs/2512.18341 🔭 🧪

Bit of a queue to see the corpse flower at the Botanical Garden in Ōtautahi

Ahead of 3I/ATLAS's closest approach to Earth (at nearly 2 au) tomorrow, here's our Elaine P. Snowden Fellow @astrohopkins.bsky.social on how we determined 3I's age 🇳🇿☄️🔭

A nice overview from our media folks of the theoretical and observational work our team has out so far on interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS ☄️

Meanwhile, we have a new student-led theory paper out on interstellar objects: how the planets of their home systems change what speeds they fly out into the Galaxy. Comments welcome! Albrow et al., submitted

The 3 y.o.'s top 5 cutest current toddlerisms: 5. oak: "oaka" 4. saturn: "satur-in" 3. broccoli: "bruggoli" 2. instead: "umstead" 1. beetroot: "beetfruit"

Why does outlook assume I'm starting a new sentence (and hence autocapitalise the next word) every time I use a full stop? Surely I'm not the only one who uses abbreviations in emails!

Ooh gross just discovered a bunch of youtube channels blaring about 3I/ATLAS using an AI-generated Brian Cox. The channel description says the videos are all AI, but the videos are clearly designed to make people think BC is actually saying these things..

Ohio State astronomy is still waiting to see what happens with the federal funding landscape before deciding whether to proceed. With programs that are still TBD, I recommend waiting right now because *application fees do not get refunded if they decide to cancel after you have already paid*!!

More hostility than I was expecting from a planter!

Incredible stuff happening on wikipedia

PSA to scientists: Google calculator appears to no longer do basic unit conversion correctly! n.b. the correct answer here is 223.4 Myr, a factor of about 60 larger than Google's answer. 🔭 🧪

Crew-11 lifts off from Florida on their way to the International Space Station. The heat signature from the launch could be seen from GOES-18.

Cumulus clouds swirl along the Gulf Coast. This mesmerizing view captured yesterday by GOES-19.

I wrote about Rubin again, this time about the telescope's capacity to find potentially dozens of interstellar objects. It's going to be wild, as one astronomer put it, "like old-fashioned astronomy: Find the thing, point telescopes at it, argue about it." www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

It's paper day! The first science paper with data from @vrubinobs.bsky.social's survey camera, the mighty LSSTCam, is a VERY quick turnaround of Rubin's observations thus far of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. ☄️ Chandler et al., submitted 🔭 A 🧵

I don't know about "the best," but my April Fool's rant is my personal contribution to this genre. arxiv.org/abs/2003.14327

It's paper day! We use our Ōtautahi-Oxford model of the Galaxy's interstellar object population to understand the origins of 3I/ATLAS, from only its velocity @astrohopkins.bsky.social, Dorsey, @redshiftless.bsky.social, @astrokiwi.bsky.social, @chrislintott.bsky.social & Leicester, submitted A 🧵🔭

It's my favorite time of the year: new black-footed ferret kits born at the National Zoo and the return of ferretcam! nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/blac...

Looks like a promising night for aurora chasing

As far as I can tell this month is just 8 deadlines in a trenchcoat.