Eric Mamajek

The results of the US Olympic women’s hockey, they have played 4 games so far. The US has scored 20 goals. Their opponents? ONE.

The US Women’s Hockey team is terrifying.

They have scored twenty goals in this Olympiad so far.

Their opponents?

One.

That plot always reminds me of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas commenting on the painting. To paraphrase:

"I Like This One. One Planet Goes One Way, and the Other Planet Goes the Other Way."

That said, when I’ve posted science content I often get 0-few likes. While there are people on here that sneeze and get 1000 likes for the thoughtful commentary. So I’ve certainly reduced my engagement here due to lack of audience and reciprication.

Great series of posts by @mattkenworthy.bsky.social on missing the golden age of social media posting on scientific conferences.
The enshittification of Facebook, then ennazification of Twitter/X, has led to dispersal of tribes to platforms like bluesky, but interest in posting seems to have waned

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

“This could have been an email”

The "Cosmic Owl," as photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Each "eye" is an active galactic nucleus, and the "beak" is a nursery of stars. (Image credit: Li et al.)

My nomination for today's #SuperbOwl.

The Cosmic Owl is two galaxies that crashed into each other, creating overlapping ring-shaped splashes of stars. It measures about 150,000 light years from side to side, or about 10^20 times the size of a Great Grey Owl on Earth. 🧪🔭

arxiv.org/abs/2506.10058

“Democracy dies…
no that’s it”
#WaPo #WashingtonPost

This image is a composite of artist's illustrations of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope pointing towards a lengthy collection of exoplanets against a background image of the Galactic Plane. The text says "2026 Sagan Summer Workshop" and the theme "Exoplanets with Roman Surveys: Microlensing and Transits July 20-24, 2026, Pasadena, California" followed by the hashtag #sagan2026.

⏰Time to Register for #sagan2026⏰

The hybrid workshop focuses on expected #exoplanet science from the @nasaromantelescope.bsky.social Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. Travel support requests for early-career participants are due 3/5. nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2026
🔭 #astrocode #instrumentation

Immigrants have paid more in taxes than they have received in benefits every single year for the past 30 years, according to new analysis from Cato.

Remember this the next time Trump and his racist lackeys call immigrants "freeloaders."

IRSA Newsletter: Issue 2026.1 Email from Caltech/IPAC ZTF DR 24, ISO SWS Atlas, SPHEREx Comet 3I/ATLAS and Spectrophotometry Tool Issue 2026.1 January 29, 2026 Zwicky Transient Facility Data Release 24 The twenty-fourth public dat

There's a new IRSA Newsletter - are you subscribed? myemail.constantcontact.com/IRSA-Newslet...

A full Moon is seen shining over NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher in the early hours of February 1, 2026. The rocket is currently at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as teams are preparing for a wet dress rehearsal to practice timelines and procedures for the launch of Artemis II. NASA/Sam Lott

NASA's Artemis II flight, which will send a crew around the Moon for the first time since 1972, has been delayed due to a hydrogen leak.

The flight is tentatively rescheduled for early March. 🧪🔭

arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...

How many children born will suffer and die preventable deaths due to dropping vaccine mandates?
How do these people sleep at night?
How do they explain their decisions to their kids?
And the “your body, your choice” rheteric is hypocritically rich here considering FL’s near-total abortion ban.

Asteroids that spin really fast There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – Hamlet One of the great privileges of astronomy is that there’s always something new and sur…

The Rubin Observatory has discovered some rapidly rotating asteroids. By rapid I mean crazy fast: half-kilometer objects with “days” shorter that 2 minutes. What the heck? How do they not fly apart?
tritonstation.com/2026/02/01/a...

Timeline cleanse featuring penguins frolicking in the snow at the Pittsburgh Zoo!

Feels like it was yesterday.
One of those days your mind records a lot of sights and coversations and feelings and they don’t seem to fade over the years.
Space is hard.
Humans are fallable.
Groups of humans especially so.
And too often
expertise and power
are anticorrelated.

There could be blave-a flows below the bluffs, heated by the MLT mechanism

Screenshot of an X.com post by The Associated Press (@AP) stating that dozens of immigrant families protested for better treatment behind fences at a Texas detention facility, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent after being detained in Minnesota. Below is a video thumbnail showing a crowd gathered outdoors along a fenced walkway; many people wear bright blue or red outerwear, and some hold signs.

After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.

What Americans Lose If Their National Center for Atmospheric Research Is Dismantled - Eos Five ways dismantling NCAR will cost the American people, and two ways to save it.

eos.org/opinions/wha...

Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days.

His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.

I think seeing our friend GvB happy, and Pats fans unhappy, is enough for me.

I’m sorry to strongly disagree.
#DeathbyLightning needs a sequel covering Chester Arthur’s presidency starred by Nick Offerman.
#Netflix make it so.

Rejecting Decades of Science, Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional

“a person’s right to refuse a vaccine outweighed concerns about illness or death from infectious diseases.”

Next, do a person’s right to drive drunk, or discharge firearms in public places…
🧪

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/h...

Dr Kareem Carr man: i wish to publish @kareem_carr Jan 21 reviewer 2: your paper is no good man: i'll do anything to improve reviewer 2: it's simple. you must read the work of the great scientist Pagliarini man: *bursts into tears* but i am Pagliarini Andre Pagliarini @apagliar Jan 21 a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini Jan 21, 2026 • 3:47 PM UTC

I just thought everyone should see this

Dark Energy Survey Year Y6 Results Day! This morning's arXiv announcement contained a number of papers related to the Dark Energy Survey Y6 analysis. There is also a Zoom webinar at 10.30 Central Time (16.30 GMT'; 13.30 in Greeland). Details can be found here. You can find links and abstracts to all the papers here, but I thought it would be useful to provide arXiv links to the latest batch here.

Dark Energy Survey Year Y6 Results Day!

This morning's arXiv announcement contained a number of papers related to the Dark Energy Survey Y6 analysis. There is also a Zoom webinar at 10.30 Central Time (16.30 GMT'; 13.30 in Greeland). Details can be found here. You can find links and abstracts to…

So then the inevitable future of the universe is endless eons of Hawking-radiation-evaporating Thani, and long-since irrelevant Avengers who were victims of the depletion of gas into stellar remnants and… redshift…
everything will either be event horizons or void.

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin’s autobiography is just amazing. Every astronomer should read it.

Here she is talking about her memories of Annie Jump Cannon.

“This means that the first giant organisms on the Earth’s surface were not closely related to anything alive today.”

Fantastic #SciComm thread and such fascinating science about early life on our planet!

🧪

NASA quietly ends financial support for planetary science groups The U.S. space agency will quit funding several independent science advisory groups this year

"This is such a strange decision with no clear rationale. None of it really makes sense.”