Physics, as if it weren’t frightening enough already.

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

Terrible news about Rob Reiner.

Ah, so there was a program continuously writing an error message to a log file. Over 10% of my disk space.

It’s curious that my wife’s campus had a major IT outage due to hardware failure, and within days the same thing happened at mine. Well, as they say, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

I'm happy to report that "Scenario 2" won't be necessary, as NASA has just communicated to us that SciX funding will continue in 2026 (albeit at a reduced level). Therefore, we will not be forcing astronomers to leave ADS, but rather develop a plan that allows a longer transition.

Well this is worrying. NASA has maintained funding for ADS but not SciX (a broader database). In response, management is planning to *close* ADS in Feb 2026, forcing all users to switch to SciX. ☄️🔭 Funding info: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0... Transition plan: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0...

Wilhoit’s Law for universities: “There must be athletics programs that budgets protect but do not bind alongside academic programs that budgets bind but do not protect.” “The [CU athletics has] a $27M deficit… needing $11.9M in university support” www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/202...

it intensely angers me every time I open a book PDF in Acrobat and the software reminds me that I’m reading a Long Document and gee, wouldn’t I prefer a summary instead I am not a first grade child who requires the easy-reader version of big kid books, demon machine

In the era of LLMs, what does learning look like? What happens when are overconfident in our understanding due to AI sycophancy? Is it even useful to use LLMs for education without outsourcing our thinking? New blog post: jwuphysics.github.io/blog/2025/12...

Snow! But not enough for a #UDel snow day.

NASA has completed the construction of #NASARoman! Last month, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the observatory in Maryland. After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations in summer 2026: https://go.nasa.gov/48EqnE8 🔭 🧪

This letter is a clear attempt to get Trump angry enough to intervene, and is thus a pretty clear signal to the entertainment community of what kind of company Paramount plans to run. I know people dread a Netflix acquisition of Warner Bros.; this would be worse. deadline.com/2025/12/para...

Jared Isaacman's 2nd nomination hrg before the Senate Commerce Committee should start shortly. Here's his opening statement: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil... He's one of two nominees this morning. The other is for a Dept of Commerce position. Watch at: www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/11/chai...

As an alum: Do not permit this or anything like it, #Caltech. And require far better management at the Institute.

Enjoying 1491 but a bit put off that his description of the battle of Marathon seems completely wrong.

Years ago Adam Showman described to me his long term plan to better understand brown dwarf variability by adding more cloud physics to his GCM. Thankful today to be part of team led by his former student Xianyu Tan growing and expanding the vision with this new paper. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Europe passed the US in ground-based astronomy long ago and now we’ll see the same in space.

This is an incredible image of comet 3I/ATLAS, taken by Satoru Murata ICQ Comet Observations group on 16 November 2025 from western New Mexico. Structure within the major dust tail from the comet is clearly visible, together with two smaller jets trailing the nucleus and maybe even an anti-tail.

Funny to see Caltech campus reimagined in A Man on the Inside

These personal attacks have no place in a gentleman’s game like Ivy League football

What a story from my congressional district.

Here are the #I/ATLAS releases from varied NASA/ESA missions. Having worked with such telescope & spacecraft data for 40 years, my perspective is: no surprises. It's a comet; its differences from Solar System comets are intriguing but every comet is different! science.nasa.gov/solar-system...

The writers bringing in Mark Sanford is a bit too much fan service.

lol this actor on Bridgerton thinks that not eating between breakfast and lunch is "intermittent fasting." I've tried that diet too! So far no results but it's only been a few years.

Aaron Judge MVP #NYY

Astro PhD applications for Edinburgh are open! Deadlines are: * 24 Nov: Career Development Scholarship (for students of Black heritage) * 5 Dec: Bell Burnell Scholarship (for all URM students) * 5 Jan: all applications Come to beautiful Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Applying is free! 🔭🧪 ifa.roe.ac.uk/phds-jobs-fe...

Thrilled to announce our new Springer Nature paper is now live! We’ve tuned into a massive stellar storm on the radio! 🌟📡

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

A little less than a year ago, a large team of cosmologists reported evidence that dark energy (which drives the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe) evolves over time. This made a huge splash but has also been viewed with healthy skepticism. Today they report that evidence has weakened. 🧪

Very sad to hear of the passing of the great Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese #cinema #film #screen #legend. #RIP #TatsuyaNakadai

Where is our candidate from? Appomattox! #DeathByLightning

Yeah, no one knows the New Jersey state motto is “Liberty and Prosperity”. Congrats Mikie Sherrill!

We watched Seven Days in May (1964), especially interesting after seeing A House of Dynamite (2025) last week. ( Also, I confess to being surprised that the 1964 film also features video calls between the President and the leading general. )

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

Great series. One more year of baseball until the greedy owners destroy it with another lockout.

If you're in line to bat at Game 7 of the World Series STAY IN LINE

Boom! #MLB

Happy #Halloween

I have set internal goals of the ability to fly using the light of your yellow sun by September of 2026, and a full set of superpowers by March of 2028. I may totally fail at this goal, but given the extraordinary potential impacts I think it is in the public interest to be transparent about this.

There’s no c̶r̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ sleeping in baseball

Jack DeJohnette, just one of the deepest musicians ever, and a personal hero. Here is my obituary for NPR Music.

Very sad news, so sorry to hear of the passing of the great jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette. We saw him perform with Keith Jarrett and Gary Peacock at Carnegie Hall years ago. He was amazing, so talented, such a loss. youtu.be/r8sGze47z_w?... #RIP #JackDeJohnette #jazz #music #legend #jazzsky

RIP Jack DeJohnette (1942-2025)

not just useless - they're profoundly stupid, confusing (weak) correlation for causation, when there's plenty of actual data & insights they could have used instead

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Call For Papers: #CFP #Film ‘Stars and Screen’ #Cinema and #Media #History Virtual #Symposium, May 16, 2026 Proposals Due: February 1, 2026 starsandscreen.blogspot.com/2025/10/call... #CinemaStudies #MediaStudies #FilmStudies #conference #CallForPapers #CinemaHistory #MediaHistory #FilmHistory

That was an exciting Game 7. Now beat the Dodgers.

The University of Arizona announced Monday it won't agree to the proposed compact, and instead submitted a statement of principles to the government.