Bruce Macintosh

Illustration of a girl in a lab coat with pigtails and flower hair clips pointing at a chalkboard filled with equations and doodles. She is teaching a pink flamingo and a brown potato-like character seated at desks. Caption at the bottom credits the image as a sample from I’M WORRIED, written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

The amount of research I do for each project depends on the project. I also enjoy doing deep-dives into obscure stuff. In blackboard equations for I'M WORRIED, for example, I added Bayes Theorem after consulting w/ my friend @bmacastro.bsky.social (relates to what Flamingo & Potato were discussing)

Technically you can get to Aslan's Country by train, as long as it's moving sufficiently fast when it hits you.

Awe cute! This should noticeably improve my month

One of those days when stock market investors who haven't developed object permanence rediscover to their amazement that the tariffs are still there because daddy opened his hands again and said "peek-a-boo!"

Now we have Nicole Wolff talking about impacts of correlated noise on retrievals of exo-Earth atmospheres. Direct images contain chromatic speckles that move radially outward with wavelength. They are a source of spectrally correlated noise coupling adjacent wavelength bins. #HWO25

This talk and Rodrigo-Ferrer Chavez talk following it were really excellent - probably the most exciting high-contrast-imaging talks I've seen so far at the meeting.

Ok, turns out “an adorable floof dog wearing goggles” is exactly what I need at the end of a long day.

Maybe they’re evaporating.

Just what one wants when giving a high stakes plenary talk.

@bmacastro.bsky.social talking at #HWO2025, saying he's neither inspiring (not true) nor optimistic (maybe true) and that he thinks we can really find habitable worlds with HWO. When he started out, factors of millions between imaging capability and the needs for finding Earths #exoplanets #astrosci

Now we have Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social introducing us to the power of directly imaging exoplanets. Unfortunately it's like trying to spot a single bioluminescent algae next to a lighthouse (more accurate contrast than the oft-quoted firely, apparently!) #HWO25

Precisely what an extraterrestrial stealth ship equipped with advanced active diffusion camouflage would do.

(Not that LIGO isn't awesome too of course!)

Someday we'll get physical samples from them - that's about as non-electromagnetic-spectrum as astronomy can get :)

(Isotope ratios, thermal histories, probes of orbital dynamics in early solar systems...)

These interstellar objects are amazing - I think the discovery of interstellar objects in our solar system is at least as exciting and scientifically transformative as the discovery of gravitational waves - and the way this sucks attention away from the people who really do the work is infuriating.

In the world we live in today, it's very encouraging to see this. There's a lot of strongly supportive language for science in the report. Thanks to all the many scientists and citizens who tirelessly advocated before Congress for our future.

Language is also extremely supportive of Habitable Worlds Observatory ($150M), keeping LIGO open, other astro2020 priorities, etc.

Bill requires NSF to advance both TMT and GMT into final design - "The Committee remains strongly supportive of a two-hemisphere, U.S. Extremely Large Telescope program [...] NSF shall immediately advance both USELTs into final design review, at no cost to the Federal Government. "

Senate CJS bill is passed out of committee, with strong support for NASA and NSF (basically flat budgets) and strongly supportive language for many facilities.

www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

Given the mass and separation distribution of other satellites in the solar system the probability of the Moon existing is <10^-2, so it clearly must be alien technology.

I'm a little overwhelmed, could you send the direct link?

ART! ART! ART!

DOE and NSF Statement on the CMB-S4 Project Scientific research using data from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) continues to be a priority for the DOE, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, providing crucial information on the fundamental nature of matter and energy in the universe. As recommended by P5 and Astro2020, DOE and NSF have been partnering on funding the design and development of a proposed next generation project, CMB-S4, with precision instrumentation at two sites, the South Pole and the Atacama Desert in Chile, dedicated to detecting primordial gravitational waves that would confirm the model of the Universe with a Big Bang followed by a period of rapid Inflation. DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project. DOE and NSF will continue to partner with the CMB science community to explore the potential science that can be achieved with limited upgrades to existing experiments to further this important U.S.- led research.

From a source: "DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project."

CMB-S4 was one of the top priorities of the P5 report. Last May NSF had already announced its intent to pull back from the mission; there was hope DOE would continue with just the Chilean site.

Marketplace is one of the very best public radio programs right now, in part because of @kairyssdal.bsky.social 's willingness to actually use the world "lie" when Trump administration people, well, lie, about objective facts. I'd support them even without the cool hat.

I've visited this building for reviews or policy meetings, and it was quietly inspiring to walk through halls with the black hole images from the Event Horizon Telescope, or the LIGO echos of black holes, and see incredibly hard working staff. Depressing as hell that they're getting kicked out.

The other half of this: *you* need to become the person in the room fighting for people who aren’t there.

Technically I am closer to personally developing a nuclear weapon than I was when I was twelve.

Talking in succession at HWO25 is going to be so much fun!

Speaking of which, we should figure out a fall visit date so I can be a guest ranter.

I’m assuming you’re just saying this to troll @markmarley.bsky.social