Dan Falk

The editors at @arstechnica.com had some fun with this one:

What do Albert Einstein, Johann Strauss, Quincy Jones, Michael Caine, Billy Crystal, astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, and astronaut Frank Borman have in common? They were all pi babies! Happy Pi Day everyone! 🥧 :) #PiDay

Also, Happy 147th Birthday to Albert Einstein, born #OTD in 1879. #science #history #histsci (I should re-do my earlier post about pi babies, which omitted him...)

Spaghettification, sure — but if the black hole is rotating, shouldn’t we consider the possibility of rotinification / fusillification? ⚫️🔁🤔

Desperately Seeking Space Friends | A review of “The Pale Blue Data Point” by Jon Willis | Literary Review of Canada Dan Falk reviews “The Pale Blue Data Point” by Jon Willis, a book on the existence of extraterrestrial life and our search for cosmic truth.

What can our own planet tell us about the possibility of life beyond Earth? I review Jon Willis's "Pale Blue Data Point" for @reviewcanada.bsky.social: reviewcanada.ca/magazine/202... #science #books

Submissions (< 10,000 words) invited for 2026 Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics. Topic Celebrating 300th anniversary of 3rd ed. Newton’s Principia.
www.duchateletprize.org
Winner will receive $1000, workshop & SHPS pub
Open to grad students & w/in 5 yrs PhD
Deadline September 1, 2026 #HPS

TIL that Clue is called Cluedo in the UK. 🔎

Or, at least, a relative of the creature that lives in that sand pit on Tatooine.

Wow! Well how about that….

#4 :)

Ha!!

Doctor measuring my pulse: "Whoa -- have you been eating sugar cubes out of the box again? Oh wait -- never mind -- I've been measuring in summer seconds, not winter seconds." (Also, Olympic events would be soooo messed up -- I like it!)

I feel like keeping the jump at a constant 2 seconds makes it too easy for folks. May I suggest that the interval change gradually over the course of the year (i.e. fractions of seconds)? 🙃

Challenge! Daylight Time "solutions," but each one has to be worse than the one before. I'll start: Instead of a one-hour switch twice a year, how about 4 forward jumps of 15 min each, at one-week intervals, in the spring, and 4 backward jumps of 15 min each, at one-week intervals, in the fall. 🙃

And the prize for fakest of all fake astronomy pictures (of which there are a zillion) goes to the pic of Jupiter *inside* the crescent moon. 🤔🧐🙄

Paul McCartney's decade of transformation: From Beatles breakup to John Lennon's murder Man on the Run shows McCartney's effort to define himself outside The Beatles' shadow: "Paul making this documentary was a way of coming to terms with that whole period," says director Morgan Neville.

Fun @nprfreshair.bsky.social interview w. filmmaker Morgan Neville, director of the new Paul McCartney doc, Man on the Run (runs 38 min):
www.npr.org/2026/03/04/n... @npr.org

The “every field” thing is so out there.

Fireball and sonic boom over Vancouver was likely meteor British Columbians took to social media Tuesday evening to share reports of a bright fireball in the night sky over Vancouver, and a house-rattling sonic boom.

Tuesday night brought a bright meteor / fireball to the Vancouver area, plus a loud sonic boom:
www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/ar...

Happy Proceed Forward Day! :)

Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”

Many of the scientists Jeffrey Epstein courted were already well-established and well-funded. So why didn’t they all just say no? Science talked with three who did just that.

Here’s how Epstein approached them, and why they refused to have anything to do with him. ⬇️ https://scim.ag/40qbXnv

Oh, I'm sure you're not alone. (When I did a very informal survey on the old site some years back, it seemed there was roughly an even 3-way split between year-long ST, year-long DT, and the status quo.)

Dawn Delight: Total Lunar Eclipse on March 3rd March opens with a spectacular total lunar eclipse. Our guide will help you make the most of it.

Lunar eclipse coming up! West coast folks will need to stay up late (totality begins 3:04 am PST); east coast peeps will have to get up before dawn, and the moon will set with the eclipse still underway (totality begins 6:04 am EST). @skyandtelescope.bsky.social
skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

B.C. to end time changes, adopt year-round daylight time | CBC News March 8 will be the last time most British Columbians have to change their clocks, B.C. Premier David Eby announced Monday.

British Columbia goes with Daylight Time year-round: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Wow. (F-15’s don’t even look like that.)

It’s so good!

Feb 28: How starfish move their tiny tube feet, and more… | CBC Radio Measuring rocket pollution, how calcium induced an ice age, unpacking dark matter and a listener question about freezing flows

I'm on Quirks & Quarks today talking about the mystery of dark matter -- the show starts at 12:05 p.m. local time, across Canada. You can also listen from anywhere via the show's web page, via the Q&Q podcast, the CBC Listen app, or Sirius XM. Enjoy! #physics #science
www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...

To maintain the cosmic balance, an astronomer on Ellesmere Island needs to be interviewed about whatever southern-sky events are happening this week. :)

Cool!! Will read with interest!

NASA announces sweeping changes to its Artemis lunar program | CBC News NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that the Artemis III mission, which aimed to put humans back on the moon, would no longer head to the lunar surface, but instead focus on testing spacec...

NASA alters #Artemis plan: Artemis III no longer a moon landing; instead they'll test docking equipment in low-Earth orbit. (Artemis II still scheduled to loop around the moon.) via @nebulousnikki.bsky.social www.cbc.ca/news/science... #NASA

Half the job ads on LinkedIn are basically "Help train the AIs that are going to replace you in a couple of weeks, and with luck the whole department also."