William G. Lamb 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

An orange cat in the bottom left watching the television on the right. The room is decorated with a bookshelf in the center covered in Christmas lights and garland. On the TV is Kat Abugazaleh’s livestream

WiggleWorm is FASCINATED by the Heater Meter! 😻 @katforillinois.bsky.social #catsforkat

we tried really hard

(Also, apologies for being so quiet recently. I am a non-citizen in a country that is monitoring my social media 🙃)

...which we didn't expect! We plan further work to understand it better.

What does this all mean? We should model Fourier coefficients of the GWB, not PSDs! By modelling PSDs, we assume Gaussianity, which we have shown to mismodel the statistics of the astrophysical GWB.

Happy reading! 📖 (4/4)

...under-estimate the tails of the distribution.

Additionally, we found that finite observation introduces a covariance term in our statistics. While small, it may be significant enough at the lowest frequencies for high amplitude sources. This is also a source of non-Gaussianity... (3/4)

At low frequencies, the Gaussian approximation is fine. But at frequencies with few sources, we really need to stop assuming Gaussianity!

We find that Poisson variance (aka "shot noise") drives non-Gaussianity when there are very few sources. Modelling this region as Gaussian can... (2/4)

I'm very excited to announce our latest paper! 🎉
arxiv.org/abs/2511.09659

We investigate the Gaussian assumption for an astrophysical gravitational wave background in a pulsar timing array 🌊

Note: our result can also be generalised to LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA and LISA astrophysical GWBs too!

🔭☄️🧪⚛️ (1/4)

Me, taking a selfie holding up the peace sign with my fingers and wearing a tshirt that shows a ufo with beans coming out below it in pride colours

Astronomer here.

Can confirm: Aliens are queer AF.

👽 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Silly @texasdemocrats.bsky.social — y’all should know you’re only allowed to skip town to block votes when you’re covering up for powerful pedophile rings, not when you’re trying to save democracy.

We’re starting to think it was never about protecting kids

Three stunning and shaming paragraphs, by Rachel Wolf of Public First, in @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Welp, don’t you dare shill on astrobites…

Over 2,000 senior staff set to leave NASA under agency push The losses could endanger the administration’s plans for landing astronauts on the moon and Mars.

ALL CAPS

THIS IS CATASTROPHIC FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND ASTROPHYSICS ...

GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC, NOT JUST FOR AMERICANS 🔭🧪

www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

I am one of those younger astronomers, lolololol 🌊

a cartoon character with a pirate hat says " roll call " ALT: a cartoon character with a pirate hat says " roll call "

Happy #BlackSpaceWeek to all those who celebrate!! As per usual, we’re starting off with our roll call.

If you’re a Black person who does Space-related things, introduce yourself and tell us what cool things you do using the hashtag #BSW2025

"And you may not realize it, but many important astrophysics observatories and programs are funded not by NASA, but by the NSF. Figure 4 shows the cuts to some of the biggest. Of particular note is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which operates two locations in the U.S., one in Washington and the other in Louisiana. LIGO found the first detection of gravitational waves, opening up a whole new era of multi-messenger astronomy. This budget request would shut down one of these two locations, which drastically reduces the usefulness of the observatory. Having two detectors makes it much easier to separate out signals from the noise, and having more than one detector allows us to place the region in the sky where the signal could be coming from."

Reporting by @astrobites.bsky.social on the impact of the proposed US budget on astronomy

astrobites.org/2025/06/02/b... by @skylargrayson.bsky.social

🔭🧪⚛️☄️

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy.
Details found here👇

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

The Panel appreciates the significant budget uncertainties facing NASA, SMD, and APD. The Panel recognizes the particular gravity of this report relative to those reports in the recent past. The Panel nevertheless strongly believes that each mission under review continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science in a cost-effective manner and would do so if allowed to continue operations into the next extended mission cycle. This belief remains true if missions had to be extended with reduced capability, reduced community resources, or both. Cuts to community resources or capabilities will reduce the science output of these missions, but the missions remain viable and productive. Furthermore, many of the most insightful science results arise from combining the observations of more than one mission in NASA’s fleet, leveraging complementary capabilities.

The 2025 #NASA astrophysics senior review report is public. "Every mission received the highest possible rating for... scientific return", & are "producing important, impactful science in a cost-effective manner". Some important screenshots: assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/...

Fund astronomy, not genocide. You can help save cosmic science for future generations. This figure by Skylar Grayson shows how much the univese we will be cut off from studying using...

🚨 ACTION ALERT 🚨

Good morning!! It’s easy in these times to feel like the problems are big and we are small. Trump is relying on us to give in to that feeling. But there are steps we can take — in coalition.

Please help us save cosmic science ♥️ 🔭🧪⚛️

more of my thoughts on this here:

NASA, the NSF, and scientific research as a whole is under attack under the guise of “money-saving” that will actually explode the deficit and US debt, all while ruining society’s understanding of the world around us and cost people their livelihoods. Read this overview of the proposals 🔭☄️🧪

A screenshot of the number of people involved in NSF activities being reduced from 330,100 to 90,000.

TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR, THE PROPOSED NSF BUDGET CUTS NEARLY A QUARTER OF A MILLION PEOPLE FROM NSF ACTIVITIES. FOR INSTANCE, JOBS.

NRAO is listed as being hit with a 34.2% cut. Funding to the Green Bank Observatory would be cut by 68.6%, which would be absolutely cataclysmic.

"Why should my tax dollars go to fund your astrophysics research?" A thread. 🔭🧪

Brushing aside how absurdly little of the federal budget goes to science (according to the Planetary Society NASA accounts for only 0.3% of federal spending), the benefits of funding astronomy fall into two camps. (1/n)

There is zero ZEROOO doubt in my mind that AI cults are going to be huge. I don't mean, like, "I LOVE AI SAM ALTMAN IS SENPAI" I mean like, "I have used AI to tap into the deep secrets of the ancient, forgotten texts that tell the future and it tells me that /you/ have been /chosen/...to follow me."

Target-rich environment, this speech.

1/n

share this post if you think cats are cute... [pic of cutie pie cat] or you are having a physical & mental breakdown

Then die
t.co/2tcDvU4yDr

My sympathy and support for all the international students and postdocs at Harvard. I can only imagine how scary this must feel. Stay strong. And if there's anything I can do to help those in compbio, please reach out. All of us need to rally to help them out. 1/

This is especially important: “We call upon our fellow institutions of higher education in the United States to declare their willingness to facilitate the immediate co-enrollment of Harvard’s international students, including formal acceptance of transfer for immigration purposes.”

🤷🏼‍♂️