NEW lecture from my free class on the solar system on YouTube! Today are the planetary rings! 🪐 All about how they formed (and why Saturn has such cool ones), how they impact their environments, and LOTS of pretty pics 🤩
🔭🧪🎢
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeOq...
Actually not even needed bc MeerKAT saw the calibration failed and took a new observation. Whoop whoop
I kept a folder in my grad school days on my best errors that looked cool. :)
I don’t think most of those profs knew about JE, it’s more Krauss was in our dept at the time and invited them. But it does all cast a new light on casual sexism in physics and how some things were acceptable at the time (that I sure hope no longer are, but I’m also no longer 20 years old).
I just find it wild that something I’ve known about for 20 years is the front page of NPR. I was an undergrad then and the dept was abuzz bc half the profs went to “a fancy conference on a private island in the Virgin Islands.”
Swirls aside, what are we actually seeing here? Pretty much every single dot in the image is NOT a star, but a supermassive black hole (SMBH) millions of light years away, feeding on dust. The little "bow ties" (marked a few here) are SMBH launching jets of material thousands of light years! 🔭🧪
Looking at some radio data hot off the MeerKAT telescope today! MeerKAT is a South African radio telescope with a huge field of view for astro. I'm calling this one "Radio Starry Night" bc a calibration error off that bright source has made a lovely swirly van Gogh sky if I may say so myself.
🔭🧪
Mind there is one place I find outsourcing to AI works well for writing, and that’s for an initial pass for a memo for university admin. But I think that says more about those types of memos over writing as a skill. 🙃
I also just never get this because I *like* to think about my research, and I *like* to write, and do a lot of other things. I also take pride in things I do well.
Apparently tho I should just outsource all that to have time for the things I “really care about”?
It says this is only visible to logged in users. Not sure if it’s possible to change that on your side/ if you’re willing? Because right now it’s the only source on this that I’ve found- thanks
Yep the 9 year olds of 2016 are now college sophomores 😬
Just stereotypically pretty spring in Oregon things 🌈🌸
To quote a student from presentations last year, “and then there was GW170817, which happened a really long time ago in 2017…”
Was about to argue then realized it was like half a lifetime ago for her 🙃
I feel for my generation of teaching the big moment was when I realized I was having a convo involving calculus w a student born after 9/11
I mean to be fair what do you think that train in the pic is running on bc it sure ain’t electric 😉
Today one of my students said in a presentation that they wanted to get into astronomy since they saw a discovery about Europa “in 2016, when I was in 3rd grade” and my TA looked on in horror. Told her later “welcome to the first experience of how the students are definitely younger than you.”
The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.
There were a lot of things that were great about living in Canada, but the train system was definitely not one of them (outside the commuter trains in Toronto).
That and the cell phone policy prices. Still no good reason it should be THAT expensive!
My husband is so excited that our new solar panels are enough to charge our car for free right now
As a native Pittsburgher it’s entertaining to see what random local things they decide to bring into the show. (It is indeed super fun)
Saw ours on Monday in Eugene at my office.
“One swallow does not make a summer” but still happy to see them 😊
Joke’s on them, I started faculty last year so I’ll probably just never get a grant because there’s no money!
Something like “it costs us $X to publish an accepted article so if we ease the burden by also getting money for submitted we can do more open access.”
Which considering it’s a giant private company I really don’t believe their numbers
Oh it was real. Literally just different price points was half the survey. Got down to $99 too! A bargain!
Sign of the publishing times- Nature sent me a survey allegedly about open access for their publications. IRL almost all the questions were variants of “if we charged you $299 just to SUBMIT, how likely would you be to submit to our journal at this price point?” 🙄🙄🙄
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TFW you turn a corner and realize you unwittingly interrupted something
Nope, they unfortunately just refer you to the Oregon library network, we don't really fund our library in our city unfortunately.
Plus I'm 32w pregnant with twins, I wish I had energy to go to the library but that's not happening right now.
True but eventually I figure I will pay to not have to wait for the waitlist! Also, the Oregon library network sucks so it's never as easy as "they'll just buy more copies" here. Half the time they have no copies. 😭
Prob have millions of more people in the LA library system than we do in our state
I am gonna cry so hard when my Cambridge Minuteman library account expires. The Oregon library network leaves... a lot to be desired and doesn't even have titles half the time 😭
We'll see how it goes as we get closer to the midterms. I wouldn't be shocked if she's the first of a few, under the impression of "cleaning house" or some such
