Kim Bakkers

Dr. Jessica Werthmann and Dr. Fritz Renner receive one of ten Ig-Nobel Prizes for their study “Dutch Courage.”

“Dutch Courage” study wins the Ig Nobel Prize
uni-freiburg.de/en/dutch-cou...
"[..] they investigated whether a small amount of alcohol can improve pronunciation in a foreign language."
#ignobelprize #language #langsky

A Deep SETI Search For Technosignatures In The TRAPPIST-1 System With FAST - Astrobiology The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is one of its five key science ob...

A Deep SETI Search For Technosignatures in the TRAPPIST-1 System with FAST
astrobiology.com/2025/09/a-de... #astrobiology #exoplanet #astronomy #SETI

Hopeful Hint of an Earthlike Atmosphere on a Distant Planet

After nearly a decade of saying which JWST result I was most excited about, it's here:

JWST SPECTRA OF THE HABITABLE TRAPPIST-1 PLANETS!

TRAPPIST-1 E!!!

IT'S ... A FLAT LINE!

BUT NOT AS FLAT AS IT COULD BE!?

IS THERE AN ATMOSPHERE?!?!?

WE STILL DON'T KNOWWWWW.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...

Thanks for sharing this Vijaya Nath

The Blast air purifier stands in a brightly lit primary school classroom with children’s artwork displayed on the windowsill. A pricing example overlay shows options for schools to buy or lease air purifiers, with costs broken down per pupil.

📣LEASE or BUY air purifiers for your school!

✨ Schools can now get clean air in every classroom with our new monthly subscription plan – £0.70 per pupil/month for a school of 15 classrooms.

Get in touch: sales@airbon.co.uk

👉 bit.ly/3UPil4Q

Why scientists are rethinking the immune effects of SARS-CoV-2 “Immunity debt,” a theory to explain the global surge in non-covid infections since pandemic restrictions were lifted, is increasingly being challenged by emerging evidence. Nick Tsergas reports Myco...

Pretty striking for the BMJ to run this piece.

“[Immunity debt’s] explanatory power has faded as the number of non-covid infections has kept rising each year.”

Don't forget to look up tonight! 👁️ 🌃

The annual Perseid meteor shower is reaching its peak, with the ideal time to see it from midnight until 5.30am tomorrow.

⤵️

How Airports Could Help Aliens Spot Earth - Astrobiology Radar systems used by civilian airports and military operations are inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced alien civilisations, new research shows.

How Airports Could Help Aliens Spot Earth
astrobiology.com/2025/07/how-... #astrobiology #SETI #Technosignatures

AI systems are built on English – but not the kind most of the world speaks AI models too often produce a monolithic version of English that erases variation.

#AI systems are built on English – but not the kind most of the world speaks
theconversation.com/ai-systems-a...
via @theconversation.com
#english #language #langsky

Astrobiologically Interesting Stars Within 10 Parsecs Of The Sun - Astrobiology The existence of life based on carbon chemistry and water oceans relies upon planetary properties, chiefly climate stability, and stellar properties, such as mass, age, metallicity and Galactic orbits...

Astrobiologically Interesting Stars Within 10 Parsecs Of The Sun
astrobiology.com/2025/05/astr... #astrobiology #astronomy #stellarcartography

A New Sky The JWST is the most expensive and powerful telescope astronomers have ever constructed. Its launch in 2021 started a new phase in our exploration of the cosmos, with the observatory's golden mirrors ...

Right, everyone! On WEDNESDAY I am giving the last of my @greshamcollege.bsky.social lectures, a story of golden mirrors & little red dots. Free tickets in person or online here: www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/new...

Study begun pre-COVID finds remote work increased sleep by 1/2 hr/night, decreased commute by 4.5 hr/week replaced with work, family & leisure and led to healthier eating. Remote and hybrid employees report higher job satisfaction and well-being. farmingdale-observer.com/2025/05/16/s...

Is Artificial Intelligence The Great Filter That Makes Advanced Technical Civilisations Rare In The Universe? - Astrobiology This study examines the hypothesis that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence

Is Artificial Intelligence The Great Filter That Makes Advanced Technical Civilisations Rare In The Universe?
astrobiology.com/2024/04/is-a... #astrobiology #evolution #SETI #AI

Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

OK, this is wild.

In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them.

It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*.

What the HELL?

1/

Spit science: why saliva is a great way to detect disease Saliva testing makes diagnostics cheaper faster and easier.

Saliva testing makes diagnostics cheaper faster and easier.

Why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine | Aeon Essays Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages

Extraterrestrial tongues - Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages
aeon.co/essays/why-a... #SETI #Astrobiology

A world war 2 guernsey registration form

Occupation orders for Guernsey issued by the Nazis in ww2

front page of the channel islands monthly review newspaper from ww2

a wish to return form filled out by a guernsey evacuee

We're delighted to bring you 1.7m Guernsey records, online for the very first time, offering an unprecedented glimpse into British life under Nazi rule - in collaboration with the Bailiwick of Guernsey Digitisation Partnership.

Find out more about this groundbreaking project ⤵️
bit.ly/4j8KAFV

Dragonfly Astrobiology Mission Passes Critical Design Review - Astrobiology NASA’s Dragonfly, the first rotorcraft designed for science exploration on another planet, has passed its Critical Design Review.

Dragonfly Astrobiology Mission Passes Critical Design Review
astrobiology.com/2025/04/drag... #astrobiology #Titan #Dragonfly #NASA

Colon cancer is on the rise around the world. This new report concludes that early-life exposure to gut bacteria that produces colibactin, which is mutagenic, may be contributing
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The editor of Astrobiology.com & NASAWatch.com - Keith Cowing will be on Bloomberg Radio & YouTube between 12:20-12:35 pm EDT today to talk about the discovery of a biosignature in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system. Proof of life? No. Interesting? Yes. Very. #astrobiology #astronomy

A bright disc of purplish, white and gold lines encircles a black ellipse-shaped area, that looks like a hole in space. A ball of shining material pierces through the disc; an eruption of bright white-to-gold rays encircles the small hole in the disc provoked by the passage of the shining ball.

⚫️💥 From boring to bursting - a giant black hole named Ansky has woken up with repetitive, extremely powerful X-ray bursts.

Puzzled scientists are on the case, monitoring Ansky with ESA's XMM-Newton and other telescopes.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

🔭 🧪

Last week we did Crunchie and Galaxy bars in pancakes 🥞. This week it's Wispa Gold. This is a definite winner.

Why is it that the cake mixture tastes nicer than the baked cake. I always think it's a shame to bake it off.

A pancake with a melted and crushed up crunchie bar inside

Trying new pancake 🥞 fillings. This one was crushed up crunchie bar. Very nice.

Results from NASA's First Radio Telescope on the Moon: Terrestrial Technosignatures and the Low-Frequency Galactic Background Observed by ROLSES-1 Onboard the Odysseus Lander - Astrobiology Radiowave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath instrument (ROLSES- 1)

Results from NASA's First Radio Telescope on the Moon: Terrestrial Technosignatures and the Low-Frequency Galactic Background Observed by ROLSES-1 Onboard the Odysseus Lander
astrobiology.com/2025/03/resu... #astrobiology #SETI #technosignature

Microlightning In Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life On Earth - Astrobiology Life may not have begun with a dramatic lightning strike into the ocean but from many smaller “microlightning” exchanges among water droplets from crashing waterfalls or breaking waves.

Microlightning In Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life On Earth
astrobiology.com/2025/03/micr... #astrobiology #originoflife #biochemistry

My dog would eat anything at all, any veg...except olives. If I dropped an olive he'd spit it back out and walk off with a look of disgust!

Wordle 1,361 2/6

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Four tiny planets are orbiting one of our nearest stars Astronomers have revealed new evidence that not just one, but four tiny planets are circling around Barnard's Star, the second-nearest star system to Earth.

Dueling press releases today for two exciting nearby #exoplanet system updates! 🪐🔭

GJ 3998: a super-Earth in the habitable zone added to this system with two previously known planets!

www.iac.es/en/outreach/...

And Barnard's star: three new sub-Earth-sized planets added to this nearby M dwarf!

Interested in taking your interest in Astronomy to another level? Why not try one of our introductory courses in astronomy, cosmology, or the connection between the Sun and the Earth. studyastronomy.com #astronomy #distancelearning