Chara

Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained Avi Loeb continues to claim that 3I/ATLAS has many anomalous behaviors that lead to the conclusion that it “might” be an alien spacecraft.  He carefully hedges the probability that it is a spacecraft ...

I've summarized the truth about Loeb's 10 "anomalies" about 3I/ATLAS in one post.

Thanks to @deschscoveries.bsky.social @michael-w-busch.bsky.social @cometary.org and @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social for contributing their expertise!

Why are planetary scientists, astrobiologists and and SETI scientists so negative (pissed off, even) about Avi Loeb’s repeated claims that 3I/Atlas may be an invading alien spaceship?
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@askaniy.bsky.social

Screenshot of the NASA Exoplanet Archive overview page for HD 4113, a triple star system with three differently coloured stars (one of which has a planet, HD 4113 b).

Hey you. YES YOU. Super persnickety astronomer. You know who you are.

NASA Exoplanet Archive just updated our overview pages so the stars are closer to their actual colours, as per Harre & Heller (2021) and Cranmer (2021).

You're welcome. 😎

(You can thank @kevinkhu.bsky.social!)

Brown. Dwarfs. Are. Purple.

Fixing what really matters (to me) on the NASA #Exoplanet Archive since December 2024. 🤣 🔭

11/16（日）東方信州祭で頒布するオーロラアクリルスタンドの霊夢です

信州祭で頒布予定のアクスタイラストでいい霊夢の日🌷

#11月6日はいい霊夢の日

neck deep in the scarlet devil mansion so of course i can only think about the bar none funniest touhou post ever writ

“We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.”

Cassini NAC natural color view taken on 2011-04-25 19:34 UTC.

Distance to Rhea: 2.23 million km
Distance to Dione: 3.12 million km
Distance to Enceladus: 2.98 million km
Distance to Saturn: 2.75 million km
Phase angle: 67 deg

live.staticflickr.com/7257/7148482...

こいフラ

So Avi has been arguing 3I/ATLAS is weird, and a common rebuttal has been “weird compared to what?” - as in we only have 2 other ISOs to compare to. But an interesting thought is that if Oort clouds mix during stellar encounters, many of our comets may in fact already be ISOs in origin.

What about other planets? We applied state of the art techniques to evaluate the presence of any additional signal in the data, finding nothing. In fact, we could establish that no planets with m sin i larger than 2-20 Me (depending on period) are present in the system. #exoplanets 🔭

Likely the silliest use of decades high precision radial velocity measurements

Two Jovian moons Io and Europa eclipses the sun darkening Jupiter's sky. Volcanic plumes and sulfur halo can be seen around Io and water ice jets are erupting from Europa's crust. Also Jupiter's rings, solar corona and zodiacal light also glows in this darkened sky #SciArt #spaceart #Jupiter

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have.

Python foundation said no and rejected the grant.

If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

Will repeat my belief that even softer sci fi stuff could gain a lot by injecting some realistic space ship design elements, simply because the soft-sf "WW2 in space" aesthetic has gotten really fucking boring by now

I will say it doesn’t really seem like much of us are doing full blown feature work with it. Most the horror stories I hear of that level of usage are from product/sales people trying to get a team to adapt their features they “built” with AI into the production apps.

Thinking about it, I suppose that'd be the first time I really like a non-human premise of a story, then get turned off by how unenjoyable the humans in said story are. Weird that it happened twice.

I assume those cool black armors are no longer "cool"?

I remember reading about its premise and really liked how various different physical processes in that universe tends to give rise to life and intelligence. Then I read how humanity was in it and decided I probably should just try writing my own take on it instead.

Hope isn't enough. Boycott Microsoft, Amazon, EA, Activision, Facebook, Meta, anyone using AI. Support companies that employ humans and pay good wages. Buy from Indies wherever possible and give money directly to creators. Vote for progressive policies. There is no other way out of this mess.

For gamers who aren't in game dev, you should know that we are in one of the worst periods in game dev history in terms of industry stability and the reason you're not seeing that play out through products is because the average development window of games is 3-7 years so it hasn't reached you yet.

A promo image for Doc Vivi's "Your Role at my Evil Lab!" stream

VTUBERS! Drop your PNGs!

Ever been curious what role you'd play on a nefarious corporate research station in the outer Solar System?

Well, now's your chance to find out, because this Friday, I'll be ranking y'all based on what role you'd fill in my lab!

#vtuber #envtuber #vsky

At this point, publications that platform Loeb's comments, or feature him as the story lede (i.e., "Harvard Astronomer says....") deserve to be ridiculed and not taken seriously.

If you choose to look away from the hugely negative impact is having for the sake of clicks, then that's on you.

Disappointingly little media attention being paid to this alarming new study. Instead, we're hearing about Bill Gates "tough truths" [read b.s.] downplaying the climate crisis.
We are living in #DontLookUp

I feel like my experience of posting on the internet is 90% just shitposting, 9.9% attempts at actual science communication, and then 0.1% accidentally going viral big time and not knowing what button i pressed to cause it, but going along with the ride anyway I guess

I'm actually really doubtful on this. Estimating the uncertainty of even a simple ML model is a challenging problem. Doing it for an entire LLM? Good luck...

Machine learning has always struggled with model (i.e. epistemic) uncertainty estimation, and building it into LLMs will be very hard

I also show that wrecking ball planets comprise ~30% of the total cold giant planet population, and are lucrative direct imaging targets that contain vast potential for studying planet formation and planet-planet scattering scenarios.

The Dynamical Environment within the Habitable Zone of the Gaia-4 and Gaia-5 Planetary Systems Exoplanetary systems exhibit a broad range of architectures which, in turn, enable a variety of dynamical environments. Many of the known planetary systems do not transit the host star, and so we meas...

I'm excited to present my analysis of the Gaia-4 and Gaia-5 planetary systems, contained planets that I refer to as "wrecking balls". Unlike most other similar planets I have worked on, these have true mass measurements from RV+astrometry. arxiv.org/abs/2510.23792