Peter Brown

Starlink-1066 re-entry on Sep 23 at 0605 UT imaged by satellite tracking cameras of a joint #Westernu and #DRDC project. Breakup is shown over heights 65 – 60 km. Any surviving debris likely landed in parts of NE Sask, N Man or Ontario. Analysis by @meteordoc. #starlink

This image contains the GeoColor and group energy density (from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper) products from GOES-19 at 16:24 UTC on 26 June 2025.

A bolide, or large meteor, broke up over South Carolina and Georgia earlier today, creating a fireball that was bright enough to be captured by GOES-19.

Photo of University College on Western's London ON campus. Western University Logo. Text: "Canada Excellence Research Chairs"

Join #WesternU as our next Canada Excellence Research Chair ( #CERC). The awards provide for international researchers to lead prestigious research programs at Western and contribute to Canada's excellence in research & innovation.

Application review begins June 4, 2025.

www.uwo.ca/research/cer...

For those who may have been looking for a change of scene to Canada: uwo.ca/research/cer...

Nature: Scientific Retractions - The Cosmic Tusk One of the most important and widely-read scientific papers of all time has been retracted, following complaints that are immaterial to it's conclusions.

Nature Scientific Reports has finally decided to retract the faulty paper that claimed a comet destroyed Sodom. The people behind the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis are hopping mad. cosmictusk.com/nature-scien...

Wow! Big meteor in Sydney. There are a few DFN cameras there, so we should soon know whether to expect any meteorites from that event. Was it over land?

Share with US students who had their offers of admission withdrawn for PhD programs:

Apply to Canada. Check out Canadian professors, and contact us. Our system works differently here, and we are all still, technically, able to accept students for Fall 2025.

Decameter-sized Earth impactors -- I: Orbital properties Numerous decameter-sized asteroids have been observed impacting Earth as fireballs. These objects can have impact energies equivalent to hundreds of kilotons of TNT, posing a hazard if they impact pop...

Today on the #arXiv :

Chow & @pgbrown2.bsky.social 2025, "Decameter-sized Earth impactors -- I: Orbital properties" - arxiv.org/abs/2501.03308

Surveying the largest Earth impacts of the past 30 years.

#PlanetaryScience in real time! The predicted fireball over Russia

Both techniques also agree about the composition of the object -- this little half meter asteroid was likely a regular run-of-the-mill ordinary chondrite, the most common kind of meteorite to land on the Earth today.

The #TeamAsteroid version of Farm-to-Table.

🔭🧪 #PlanetaryScience

Yes - a great idea.

As the Taurid meteor shower passes by Earth, pseudoscience rains down – and obscures a potential real threat from space Get past the fake science, and the Taurid meteor shower foreshadows what could, one day, pose a troubling scenario.

Graham Hancock and the Comet Research Group are full of baloney.

Just apply Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit to the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.
theconversation.com/as-the-tauri...

My department is hiring for a teaching scholar faculty position: please share! www.uwo.ca/facultyrelat... 🔭🧪