Carl Rodriguez

Project A119 - Wikipedia

Honestly the whole nuclear Moon idea was a lot cooler in the 50s

Gonna text this to some HEP friends with the words “Moon DUNE?” and no other context

…what?

"Do you have a syllabus yet?"

Right up there with "how's class prep going?"

It's possible to be extremely good in your field, well-liked, and respected, and still strike out (I know many people who have, who I thought would have made great professors). But if you look at all that chaos and luck and politics and conclude "no it's a black guy's fault", you're just a racist.

Reading the article, I think it's even more embarrassing: it sounds like Cornell had an open search, which he applied to and was rejected from. The target-of-opportunity search (as they're often called) was actually SEPARATE from the search that rejected him.

Oooof

Ok it can stop being Too Damn Hot now.

I’m not sure what’s more likely: that there really is a conspiracy and they’re failing spectacularly to contain it, or there isn’t one, but they’re flailing so badly it looks like a coverup.

Either option requires an almost stupendous level of incompetence!

I knew a pop synth guy who claimed exactly this without irony.

Ah ok; so at that point you're inclined to stick with Nature Astronomy since it's already gone through review with them, as opposed to withdrawing and resubmitting to something like ApJL.

I've never submitted to them either (wasn't planning on it at the moment). I guess I was curious how many of the Nature Astronomy papers are referred from the main journal vs people submitting directly. Or to put it another way, how many people actually elect for Nature Astronomy over, say, ApJL?

Ok yeah that’s kind of what I assumed. Do you know if they do that before or after peer review?

So what's the deal with Nature Astronomy? Do people typically submit to Nature, it passes peer review, and then they're like "actually we don't feel it's appropriate for Nature but how about Nature Astronomy"?

Current mood

CAREER proposal asking the important questions

It's so good!

Accurate description of my home state, but at least our corruption is entertaining as hell. Only yankee politician I've ever seen even approach that level is Eric Adams.

Wonder how long until some millennialist types decide God is speaking to them through ChatGPT.

GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot}$ On 2023 November 23 the two LIGO observatories both detected GW231123, a gravitational-wave signal consistent with the merger of two black holes with masses $137^{+22}_{-17}\, M_\odot$ and $103^{+20}_{-52}\, M_\odot$ (90\% credible intervals), at luminosity distance 0.7-4.1 Gpc and redshift of $0.39^{+0.27}_{-0.24}$, and a network signal-to-noise ratio of $\sim$22.5. Both black holes exhibit high spins, $0.9^{+0.10}_{-0.19}$ and $0.80^{+0.20}_{-0.51}$ respectively. A massive black hole remnant is supported by an independent ringdown analysis. Some properties of GW231123 are subject to large systematic uncertainties, as indicated by differences in inferred parameters between signal models. The primary black hole lies within or above the theorized mass gap where black holes between 60-130 $M_\odot$ should be rare due to pair instability mechanisms, while the secondary spans the gap. The observation of GW231123 therefore suggests the formation of black holes from channels beyond standard stellar collapse, and that intermediate-mass black holes of mass $\sim$200 $M_\odot$ form through gravitational-wave driven mergers.

Big black holes

arxiv.org/abs/2507.08219

I’m not sure tbh, but compared to the success rate of say AAG (15-20%) or ATP (10-15%) 5% is really low. Like getting to the point where I’m not sure it’s worth having students apply for it

Not updated in NSPIRE yet annoyingly; one of my students sent it to me

nspires.nasaprs.com/external/vie...

Jesus a 5% acceptance rate for FINESST this year is brutal.

Not gonna lie I didn't know those were a real brand

Picture of Ralph Wiggum at a computer with text that says "I'm a particle physicist"

Me writing about stellar streams and dark matter:

That would require actually going into work

Lol just realized I misspelled "Omega Centauri" in this.

New paper, led by Northwestern grad student Elena González, looking at the promising intermediate-mass black hole candidate identified in Omega Centaury (the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way, and most likely the remnant core of a disrupted dwarf galaxy). 🔭🧪