Brett McGuire

My iPhone knowwwws! Look at this auto-album just for me at #AAS243!

My fellow faculty members in christ or whatever, run if you aren't going to proofread your own recommendation letters, at least run them through ChatGPT so it catches things like this gem:

"She is undoubtedly the two students in my class."

Hope y'all have a rockin' Thanksgiving!

It's me!

Come be my colleague at MIT!

Astrochem Coffee Catch our latest episode directly below. Find other ways to listen, get all the papers and info from our episodes and catch up on those you missed, and find links to other useful resources all via t...

Interested in the astrochemistry literature? Join us each month for Astrochem Coffee, a new podcast providing recaps of the most recent science, a few deep dives, a little bit of history, and some bad jokes. The first two episodes are out now on your favorite podcatcher app.

coffee.astrochem.net

The energies/geometries these give aren't necessarily as good as the 'gold standard' ones, but Kelvin narrowed in on which ones give the best rotational constants specifically, quite well.

Ha! Well, can never completely blame the user if B3LYP gets it wrong ... DFT is sneaky that way.

What about having them use the recommended best theory/basis set from Kelvin's paper? pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

There's a recommendation for best low-cost.

I'm even in the National Radio Quiet Zone at Green Bank - so I didn't see it until I found a hardwire connection with my coffee and couldn't sort out if I was still dreaming or not!

According to the MIT News article, his first plan of the day is his 9 a.m. class =). Sounds about right!

We also take a look at a number of related species, and discuss their -CN related chemical pathways (a speciality of co-author Ilsa Cooke!)

Astrochemical Modeling of Propargyl Radical Chemistry in TMC-1 Recent detections of aromatic species in dark molecular clouds suggest formation pathways may be efficient at very low temperatures and pressures, yet current astrochemical models are unable to...

First traditional #astrochemistry modeling paper out of my group, led by the incredible Alex Byrne and his postdoc mentor, Ceci Xue! Check out what we know (and more importantly what we've learned we still don't know!) about the chemistry of propargyl!

arxiv.org/abs/2309.07341

NASA Hubble Fellowship Program logo

The 2024 Announcement of Opportunity for the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (#NHFP) is now open! Interested scientists within 4 years of their PhDs should apply by Nov. 2; recommendation letters are due Nov. 9. Ask me if you have any questions!
nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/fellow...

A black and yellow garter snake sits coiled on a railing with leaves in the background.

Danger noodle giving me side eye on my walk today!

My DragonCon panels have all been locked in! Come stop by and chat cool space science with me if you're around!

The 100 m Green Bank Telescope stands in the distance in front of the Appalachian Mountains. Grass and a white barn sit in the foreground.

Hello, gorgeous! Great to see you again in person. Still looking fantastic as ever 😉. (Green Bank Telescope!)

RT only if you are NOT becoming more conservative as you grow older.

My first conference talk as “Dr. Scibelli” !! 🥹🎉✨ I feel so grateful to be doing what I love, detecting cool molecules in space 😭💕 #astrochemistry #IAUTraverseCity

Hey, Bluesky: I know TONS of solid scientists who would love to be on the platform to recreate what we had with SciTwitter. They would very much like some invite codes.

A circular metal and glass swirl stands in a garden with purple flowers.

Modern art Red metal beams arranged in a triangular pyramid shape.

Some fun artwork greeting us on the University of Michigan campus for the first workshop on our large ALMA COMPASS program studying chemistry in space!

A pink lily

The first flower I grew myself in my new yard!

I recently moved my D&D group's Slack history to Discord and re-discovered the text of a journal my players found in the house of an insane, undead arch druid guarding the pathway to an ancient city that they sought. Maybe I'll try posting it here bit by bit as a way of breaking in BlueSky =).