Sera Markoff

Orange fluffy cat lying belly up, staring off into space looking a bit stunned

Just watched Marty Supreme and this more or less sums up how we feel #caturday

Kudos to @hogg.bsky.social for his new paper on arXiv that is stimulating a lot of discussion around the value of astrophysics and also the discourse around #LLMs. I think even non astro people will find this interesting! 🔭🧪

arxiv.org/pdf/2602.10181

Happy #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience! 🧪🔭Here's a nice highlight using a photo from our collaboration meeting last summer in Berlin.

UK ‘could lose generation of scientists’ with cuts to projects and research facilities Researchers say best scientists are taking posts overseas because of lack of job stability at home

Glad to see pushback picking up in the media about the proposed massive cuts to UK particle/astro/nuclear physics 🧪🔭. Everyone understands that tough choices have to be made, but not investing in your future is a surefire way of, well, not having much of one 🤷‍♀️

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

😂

I have officially transitioned from Dutch to British!

Very cool results! And that is some amazing visualization software…is it open source? 😁

I've lived/worked in two others so this isn't unfamiliar 😂

Expert Comment: Cuts to fundamental research will hurt the UK’s Chris Lintott, Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford’s Department of Physics, responds to the news that University funding for astronomy and physics research will be cut by almost a third.

Great commentary on the recently announced budget cuts to physics and astronomy in the UK, by @chrislintott.bsky.social

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-02...

Photo of the singer Ezra Fuhrman with her band on stage at the Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam. She’s holding the mic singing in a blue dress and the lights behind her are reddish and diffusing out in a starlike pattern through a bit of haze.

In a dark world at least there’s Ezra Fuhrman #secretlivesofscientists

Photo of 7 bars/boxes of variations on Dubai chocolate plus a bag of white chocolate and orange peel covered dates!

Meanwhile just returned from a fantastic conference at NYU Abu Dhabi on Cosmic Collisions. And I return bearing gifts. These are for my next group meeting, where we will be conducting a serious taste test of #Dubaichocolate to put the original Fix brand to the test!!

I had never thought of black holes in terms of 'evil vacuum cleaners' but that image is now stuck in my head.

You’re welcome 😂

Revolutionary imaging of black hole aims to prove they are not ‘evil vacuum cleaners’ Newly appointed Cambridge professor says feat would accelerate scientific knowledge by an order of magnitude

Thanks to @hannahdevlin.bsky.social from @theguardian.com for the article about our first ever #BlackHole 🔭🧪 movie campaign 🎬 with the @ehtelescope.bsky.social, coming soon to a telescope near you!

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Exclusive: US gets first $500 million Venezuelan oil deal, holding some proceeds in Qatar The details shared with Semafor mark an initial milestone in the administration’s plan following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro.

The main bank account holding revenue from the Venezuelan oil sales is located in Qatar.

“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

www.semafor.com/article/01/1...

NSF building on Eisenhower Av. HUD now owns.

Destroying the NSF mural in the foyer. Of the Eisenhower building.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone.

The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets.

We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

So excited to see this news, Debora’s work is amazing!!!

Snow-covered Amsterdam This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 6 January 2026, shows Amsterdam in the Netherlands blanketed in snow.

So you've probably heard about snowpocalypse in the Netherlands this week but check out this image of snowbound Amsterdam from above via @esa.int's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission! 🔭🧪

I can see my house! 😂

www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

If you're a multi-messenger astrophysicist 🔭🧪 with a particular interest in gravitational waves and neutrinos, please consider applying to our open faculty position within @grappainstitute.bsky.social at the University of Amsterdam. It's a great place to work, and AMS is a great place to live!!

Thx! I'm moving a bunch of stuff over in a few days!

Thx! I live in the Netherlands but was on a limited time visa so this would make life easier (and cheaper, no renewals...) 😂

Just submitted my application for permanent EU residency, wish me luck!!

If you're a VLBI radio person 🔭🧪 and keen on imaging #blackholes and their jets, please consider applying for a postdoc position in my new research group at the @cambridgeastro.bsky.social @cam.ac.uk!

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Congratulations to @kazuakiyama.bsky.social on this amazing achievement!

Very happy that my EHT colleague (and Deputy Project Scientist) is joining me in the UK, and we'll be collaborating already via his successful Royal Society Faraday grant "TomoGRAV"!!

we've all been there 😂

Two side by side photos, on the right is the aisle of a liquor store showing a trail of destruction left by the raccoon breaking (and apparently drinking) bottles, on the left is said raccoon, passed out splayed on its belly in a bathroom.

I know this is lowbrow but seeing the photos from a new story of a raccoon that trashed a liquor store and passed out in its bathroom has me LOL. This raccoon has it going on.

a black hole cake would be cool though....

Photograph of an amazing work of art cake, a cylinder (clearly multilayer inside) sort of metallic grey with speckles for the night sky, and covered in some multicoloured spheres likely signifying planets, with a golden pedestal on top saying "Anton Pannekoek Institute" and a telescope dome, like a 3D version of our logo!

Our @api.uva.nl institute holiday party was yesterday and fellow faculty member Daniela Huppenkothen (I don't think she's on here?) is an amazing cake maker...behold what she crafted!

The antidote to loneliness might be recognizing how much others care Young adults consistently underestimate how empathetic their peers are, a new study finds. But there’s a simple and scalable fix.

I love this study 🧪, because I really think people are in general more empathic than we give them credit for!
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...