Prof. Carl E. Fields 💥

what are some of your go to self care practices for managing the stress with the start of the academic year?

Carl Sagan: We’re all stardust

Evil Carl Sagan: We’ll all be stardust

3D full-GR simulations of magnetorotational core-collapse supernovae on GPUs: A systematic study of rotation rates and magnetic fields We present a series of fully three-dimensional, dynamical-spacetime general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulations of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) for a progenitor of zero-age-main-...

To kick off here on bluesky I wanted to share some recent work from the group. First off arxiv.org/abs/2504.11537, the first science paper produced with our new GPU-accelerated GRMHD code GRaM-X.

Mary K. Gaillard, 86, Physicist Who Probed the Subatomic Universe, Dies

Mary K Gaillard, a theorist who had a knack for telling experimental physicists where to look, died in her home on May 23 at 86.

Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...

graduating from the mesa summer school. carl fields pictured with mesa creator bill paxton.

junior scientist and made them feel seen and heard. thank you bill.

i still remember when i published my first paper, i received an email from bill simply telling me congratulations. as a young scientist looking for space in the field it meant the world to me. but that’s just who bill was, someone who uplifted junior scien

the MESA summer schools served as an amazing place for me to grow my network and as a scientist and become the expert in MESA i am today. engaging with bill at these were always enlightening and seeing someone engage with so many ideas with such an open mind and heart was an amazing role model.

it is no surprise to many that MESA has revolutionized the field of stellar astrophysics and even brought in many of our observational and experimental colleagues. but one of the biggest things about MESA was the continued and intentional efforts for open source and community driven software.

i have been reflecting a bit over the past 24 hours since learning of the passing of bill paxton (creator of the MESA stellar evolution code) and the impact the code, the community, and specifically bill has had on mine and so many other junior scientist.

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: 9780593701683 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle...

#Introduction: Theoretical physicist. Black Feminist theorist. Writer. I do: dark matter, neutron stars, & science studies.

Web: chanda.science
Newsletter: news.chanda.science
Insta: chanda.prescod.weinstein

Author of award-winning #DisorderedCosmos and now #EdgeOfSpaceTime, coming 4/7/26.

#iteachphysics folks, I'm working on putting up over a 15 years of open-source content for physics teaching.

Looking for collaborators!

Please follow @openphysicsed.org for updates or email me at: danny@openphysicsed.org

remember to breathe

they want you to stop, but you shouldn't

JWST’s Tiny Red Sources and the Big Questions They Raise

THIS EVENING, I'm talking about those mysterious "Little Red Dot" galaxies seen with JWST in a public "Deep Space Dialogue" facilitated by the Space Telescope Science Institute. Little Red Dots are super weird!

4:00 PM Pacific / 7:00 PM Eastern, live on Youtube!

www.stsci.edu/contents/eve...

my materials for my grad stars + planets class is online here: carlnotsagan.github.io/ast545sp25/.

there will be typos and some straight up errors. but most the material worked well for a 50m 3 times a week class. a lot new examples and reused from other folks materials.

congratulations, dr. phillips! i’m very proud of you, friend. glad i was able to hear about all the great work you’ve been doing this morning!

I successfully defended my thesis and am now Dr. Caprice Phillips (its got a nice ring to it!). So thankful for my advisors and mentors including Jackie Faherty and @ohdearz.bsky.social and friends who were here to support me. Im the 2nd Black women to get a PhD from my department. Full of joy.

Promotional poster for "Astronomy on Tap" on June 18, 2025, 7:30–9:30 PM at Michigan Wildlife Conservancy, Bath Township, MI. Features talks by Sona Chitchyan and Danny Caballero, plus trivia and raffle prizes. Dark space-themed background with stars and planets.

Hey #Lansing area folks,

I'm giving a public talk on the recent impacts on science education and ways we can advance science as part of @astronomyontap.bsky.social on Wednesday.

Please consider joining.

#SaveNSF

I see a lot of people talking about how "we just need to explain science more to the public".

The state Space Grant programs (one issued in each state) does incredible deep and wide outreach work - supporting education at every age and stage, nurturing science interest.

Tip for PhD applicants reaching out to prospective advisors: Don’t use an LLM to write these emails. It’s not a great first impression to express your admiration for a recent paper the faculty member published if that paper does not exist.

MPS budget

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

Almost $1300 to purchase my regalia!!! Lawd fix it! Renting the regalia is $330 dollars too!

If anyone is feeling generous I would appreciate it lol:
Venmo: @Caprice-Phillips 🥲🥹

Trump administration to crack down on Chinese visas, applicants, Rubio says Rubio said the State and Homeland Security departments will work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students in the United States, “including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Par...

The bipartisan framing of Chinese people as dangerous to the United States has been building up for years and has created this deeply racist and xenophobic opening for the Trump administration.

I stand with my Chinese colleagues and all of our Chinese students. 🧪

Marco Rubio: US to ‘aggressively’ revoke visas of Chinese students The announcement didn’t specify how many would lose the ability to study in the country.

Cancelling visas for Chinese students who’ve come to learn in the US is a retreat from the global stage.

It’s also a racist and authoritarian action.

www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

nope 😀

Shout out to all of the faculty and students who made it through this semester in particular. What a time to be teaching and learning in spaces that are directly under attack from people who benefited from having access to the same resources themselves.

very grateful for your help at the beginning of the semester! 🙏🏽

thank you 🙏🏽

final grades posted and the end of my first year as faculty.

Thanks for asking Lynne. A group of us called on scientists & orgs like AAAS, AAS, and APS to start actively defending academic freedom, which could have included educating their constituencies & lawmakers about the risks associated with these attacks. As educators, the least we can do is educate. 🧪

schematic diagram of an asymptotic giant branch star.

this is one of the best graphics i have found for the structure of an AGB star and i wish i had found it much sooner.

ref: link.springer.com/article/10.1...