Hannah Richter

@mbkplus.bsky.social @karenswilcoxphd.bsky.social

In red states, many academic researchers feel fear–and resolve State-level mandates prompt changes and small acts of resistance at universities

Trump has brought a national chill to U.S. science. But what about state actions? 🚩🏛️

For @science.org, I spoke with researchers across disciplines, career stages, and geography to find out how being a red state researcher can stoke fear, and acts of resistance 🔬🏳️‍🌈: tinyurl.com/4yf8pf62

A hyperlocal story for @eos.org about a vulnerable population in the path of climate change🌡️

@bassisjeremy.bsky.social @drnaomio.bsky.social @helen-amanda.bsky.social @mathieu-ice.bsky.social

Antarctic glacier shows fastest retreat in modern history Tides and glacial earthquakes caused record ice loss at Hektoria Glacier

Glaciologists are "kind of like one of those crime shows…‘Who Killed the Ice Shelf?’"

A record-breaking glacial casualty gets unraveled today in @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti...

This Ecologist Lost Her Grant for Studying Diversity—of Insects The federal trawling of grants for misaligned priorities has brought in bycatch

What's worse than getting your grant cut by the Trump administration? Getting it cut by accident. ❌🪲 Thank you to this Louisiana Tech ecologist for letting me share her story in @sierramagazine.bsky.social: www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ecolo... #trump #ecology #nsf

To Find Critical Minerals, Look to Plate Tectonics - Eos A study of “weird” Australian rocks suggests stores of niobium rose to the surface during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia.

Where are critical minerals hiding? Plate tectonics might hold clues.🧪⚒️

New research from Chris Kirkland @curtinuniversity.bsky.social + colleagues; input from Zachary Murguía Burton @ Montana State. Story by @hannah-richter.bsky.social. eos.org/articles/to-...

To Find Critical Minerals, Look to Plate Tectonics - Eos A study of “weird” Australian rocks suggests stores of niobium rose to the surface during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia.

90% of the world's niobium comes from a single operation in Brazil 🪨 ⛏️ . More might be hiding in the scars left by an ancient supercontinent breakup.

Read my first story for @eos.org: eos.org/articles/to-... #criticalminerals #mining

Missing wind from Milky Way’s giant black hole finally found Astronomers may have glimpsed a long-predicted wind of gas blowing out from Sagittarius A*

For essentially every supermassive black hole that astronomers have studied, they've spotted powerful winds blowing out from the event horizon to shape the surrounding galaxy. Except for the one in the Milky Way. 🌟 ⚫ 🌬️

The case may now be closed. @science.org tinyurl.com/5y99b7az #space #astronomy

@tanyaofmars.bsky.social @caseydreier.bsky.social

NASA Faces Government Shutdown, Funding Fears Rise While civil servants are furloughed or working without pay, funding for NASA remains uncertain.

The world's premier space agency isn't exempt from the U.S. government shutdown. "You can't just sit in your lab and think that this doesn't impact you, because it's very clear now that it does,” says one planetary scientist. 🏛️ ❌ Read more in @skyandtelescope.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/26e5h4d2 #nasa

A ‘solar bump’ could help data centers recover wasted energy Solar water heaters could recoup 8% of the electricity needs of AI computer farms

Cooling 1 data center's electronics and venting the heat 💻 = 40,000 U.S. households' energy 🏠. New research suggests a way to waste less power with the help of solar—even as the U.S. moves away from renewables.☀️🔌 #solar #ai

@science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

The Ig Nobels are science’s most lighthearted event. This year is ‘not typical’ Amid Trump research cuts, visa restrictions, and international conflicts, some winners sit out the celebration of whimsical science

The 2025 Ig Nobel-winning research was as wacky as ever. But wars, visa restrictions, Trump's border and research policies, and even an all-too-frequent airplane incident kept nearly half the winning teams from traveling to Boston @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Inside NASA’s Wild Space Mission to Defend Earth Against a Planet-Killing Asteroid A mighty, cosmos-altering rocket could be the only thing that saves humanity from extinction.

I got to tell the inside story of NASA's historic DART mission for Popular Mechanics and Apple News+. 🛰️☄️As one source put it, “The probability is low that an asteroid will hit us. But at the same time, it is the only natural disaster that we can predict and act against.”🌍 tinyurl.com/2xvskbuh #nasa

Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Might Have Weird “Space Rainbows” Scouring old data from NASA’s Cassini mission revealed puzzling atmospheric stripes that could help probe Saturn’s icy moon.

Somewhere, over the space rainbow...🪨🌈 @skyandtelescope.bsky.social skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne... #space #nasa

Don’t blame the algorithm: Polarization may be inherent in social media In simulations, AI-generated users of stripped-down social media without content algorithms still split into polarized echo chambers

Is BlueSky toxic? Maybe - but there's no algorithm to blame. Read more in @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

NASA Budget Cuts Could End U.S. Exploration of the Outer Solar System The U.S. planetary science community is sounding the alarm about plans to discard a nuclear technology that has powered dozens of NASA missions over the past 50 years

"Like trying to build a house without a two-by-four" - Trump leaves NASA missions on the table, but guts the fuel needed to get there. Read my first story for @sciam.bsky.social : www.scientificamerican.com/article/trum... #nasa #trump #space #astronomy

Trump Cuts Could End U.S. Exploration of the Outer Solar System The U.S. planetary science community is sounding the alarm about plans to discard a nuclear technology that has powered dozens of NASA missions over the past 50 years

The U.S. planetary science community is sounding the alarm about plans to discard a nuclear technology that has powered dozens of NASA missions over the past 50 years

Trump Cuts Could End U.S. Exploration of the Outer Solar System The U.S. planetary science community is sounding the alarm about plans to discard a nuclear technology that has powered dozens of NASA missions over the past 50 years

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: While the Trump administration is ordering NASA to build a lunar nuclear reactor, it's also proposing cuts that'd end NASA's nuclear-powered exploration of the solar system. Will Congress push back? By @hannah-richter.bsky.social

www.scientificamerican.com/article/trum...

Congress’s NASA and NSF Budgets Counter Trump, Fund Science The House and Senate bill drafts keep NASA near current funding levels, but the Trump administration is nevertheless readying the agency for heavy cuts

More budget chaos—and an "aggressive interpretation of executive authority"—before the scientific futures of NASA, NOAA, and the NSF are settled 🛰️🔬☁️. Read my update today in @skyandtelescope.bsky.social: skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne... #trump #nasa #science #noaa #nsf #congress

How hydrogen-leaking ‘fairy circles’ might form Understanding the origins of mysterious seeps could help prospectors extract natural hydrogen fuel

An important step to using clean, natural hydrogen fuel⛽ ? Figuring out how it rises tantalizingly close to Earth's surface in "fairy circles"🪨. Read about a new theory in @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti...

Proposed NOAA Budget Kills Program That Was Designed to Prevent Satellite Collisions Trump’s first administration helped establish the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). His second administration wants to dismantle it.

Trump’s first administration established a program to prevent satellite collisions. His second administration wants to dismantle it. 🛰️ 💻 "We will see, frankly, a more dangerous space environment," said an industry leader. Today for @skyandtelescope.bsky.social: skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

UV-C light kills nearly everything—except this unusual organism Built-in Sun protection might be a blueprint for surviving in space

When exposed to UV-C, the most radiation-resistant life form on Earth died in less than a minute. Not so for a hardy black lichen known as Clavascidium lacinulatum. It just kept going and going, even when scientists continued to blast it for moths. Really cool story by @hannah-richter.bsky.social

UV-C light kills nearly everything—except this unusual organism Built-in Sun protection might be a blueprint for surviving in space

UV-C light is a go-to sterilizer for hospitals and labs. 🦠🔬 Why can this dark desert lichen survive a "mind-blowing level of UV-C harshness" - and could it provide clues to life on other planets? 🌱 🪐 Today for @science.org #astrobiology #biology www.science.org/content/arti...

“Shattering” NSF Budget Proposal Threatens Gravitational Wave Science One of two Nobel Prize-winning Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) sites is on the budgetary chopping block.

The Trump admin has called for shutting down 1/2 of the Nobel Prize-winning LIGO facilities that detect gravitational waves - a sign they "probably didn’t have a deep understanding of the science behind LIGO." Read more in
@skyandtelescope.bsky.social #trump #nsf skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

Amid U.S. Science Funding Cuts, Europe Seeks Top American Talent European nations and universities are pledging more than $850 million for international scientists, as U.S. chops federal science spending.

Abazajian "can't help but draw comparisons to... the Soviet Union when it collapsed." Sky & Telescope Magazine covers the enticement of Europe of US scientific talent ⚛️ 🧪 🔭 - great article by @hannah-richter.bsky.social for @skyandtelescope.bsky.social skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

Great chat with the fantastic @hannah-richter.bsky.social on the proposed USA funding cuts & the impact on global science for Sky & Telescope magazine 👇🏾

(Thank you @samayanissanke.bsky.social @abazajian.net)

Amid U.S. Science Funding Cuts, Europe Seeks Top American Talent European nations and universities are pledging more than $850 million for international scientists, as U.S. chops federal science spending.

For a UCI cosmologist, America's science perils remind him of his childhood in the Soviet Union, when top scientists fled the collapse to pursue opportunities elsewhere. Will Europe be the next landing destination? #trump #science @skyandtelescope.bsky.social skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

Thanks to @mmacgreg.bsky.social @theplanetaryguy.bsky.social @caseydreier.bsky.social @georgewhitesides.bsky.social