Dr. Teddy Kareta

Congrats, Professor!

reading "the nemesis affair" by the first author of this paper david raup at a key stage in graduate school was really impactful on the way that I think about how science works -- plus it's just a great book

"periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past", raup and sepkoski, 1984 in pnas

giving my students a fun lecture on what did in the dinosaurs tomorrow which means it's time to refresh myself on all the fun ideas which were super super wrong

Aerial satellite photo labelled in bright yellow letters: 1. Ziggurat of Silent Infrasound 2. American Abacuses 3. Prophecy Trench

IMINT #52971 from GPS III-SV05 (ACCM)

1. Ziggurat of Silent Infrasound
2. American Abacuses
3. Prophecy Trench

really want to hear the PA GOP explain how this problem could be fixed with additional efficiency measures, futzing around with management, and austerity

got to see DEVO & the B-52s a couple nights ago as a belated birthday present from my fiancée -- really, really great.

do you think the secretary of defense has to go to the liquor store at 11:48 AM himself during shutdowns? or is that particular aid deemed critical?

I am indeed picking our extra credit movies this semester to span a range of answers to the two classic film criticism questions: "is this movie secretly about Gender?" and "how often is there a claymation gory jumpscare?"

kind of shocking how this movie looks good both as a 4K restoration at a theater and also as seen on literal old tape

The Thing 1982 VHS : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive VHS

archive.org/details/the-...

I'm giving out an extra credit assignment this week for my gen-ed "Life in the Universe" class to watch "The Thing". the exciting thing about the thing is that the thing is available (the whole thing) on the internet archive as a scanned-in VHS, scan-lines and screwy audio and all -- it's amazing.

the fact that so many people frame autism as “a problem that needs to be solved” is a constant reminder that being “not normal” isn’t acceptable to a large amount of the world. it’s the same reason there’s a trans panic right now too. they think people are defective

this is the solution to the male loneliness epidemic I am 100% serious

the photo shows a (delicious) cappuccino next to the David Roberts book "Escalante's Dream"

getting back into just a little bit of research after a month of teaching: what a treat. there's a kind of strange and pleasant dissonance from telling your students "this is what the solar system is like and how it works" and getting back to your office and thinking "yeah but was any of that true?"

Hayabusa2’s Final Target is 3 Times Smaller Than We Thought - Eos It also spins twice as fast as previous estimates suggested. A spacecraft touchdown will be challenging, but not impossible.

Hayabusa2’s final target is really, really small. And really, really fast. That presents both a challenge for a touchdown attempt and an opportunity for asteroid researchers.

eos.org/articles/hay...

happy to have helped some with "Catastrophic disruption of asteroid 2023 CX1 and implications for planetary defence" by Auriane Egal et al., out today in Nature Astronomy (and here on ArXiV: arxiv.org/abs/2509.12362)

robert redford and john denver looking at little too happy coming out of a movie theater with coors cans in hand

and here I've been putting my ziggurat proposals through the earth studies programs instead of CDAP

How an Interstellar Interloper Spurred Astronomers into Action - Eos Valuable lessons from previous interstellar objects allowed scientists to develop a more rapid response when the third one arrived in July.

“If you're studying interstellar objects, you're sitting cleanly at the division between planetary science and traditional astrophysics.”— @teddykareta.bsky.social. 3I/ATLAS’s longevity will enable broad, transdisciplinary participation from scientists of all backgrounds.

How an Interstellar Interloper Spurred Astronomers into Action - Eos Valuable lessons from previous interstellar objects allowed scientists to develop a more rapid response when the third one arrived in July.

When the third interstellar object was discovered in July, years of careful preparation helped astronomers quickly jump into action to observe our new cometary visitor from the get-go. eos.org/features/how...

[ancient egyptian standup comic] see guys from the upper kingdom, they observe funerary rites like THIS. but us guys from the lower kingdom, we observe funerary rites like THIS. See this guy knows what I’m talking about [pointing at man with the head of a bird]

a picture from my office which shows my new woodblock print from the artist louis bicycle of a turtle on a racetrack with the text I KNOW I'M A SLOW LEARNER BUT I THINK THIS IS A TORTOISE AND THE HARE TYPE OF THING above and below it. other wall decorations also shown.

science has been way more about listening to my peers than it was about solving a diff eq fast

reading, learning, writing crappy code that doesn't even work yet, talking with colleagues -- that's all "work", and equally if not more important than writing papers or doing analysis or giving talks. it's a brain job, and if you're thinking, you're on the clock.

a few of the students have started to laugh at my goofy jokes. progress.

unbelievably funny. seems like he had the scientific outlook of your average crank who emails professors with their "theories" combined with the tenacity and work ethic of other mid-1800s luminary eccentrics like james mcneil whistler.

found out [through continuing to read 1493 by Charles Mann] that Charles Goodyear went from broke to ultra-broke by borrowing $130,000 in 1850s money to create two all-rubber rooms at world's fairs as some sort of pro-rubber publicity stunt. he accepted an award for the second from debtor's prison.

a cartoon astronaut / superhero flying away from a stylized version of Percival Lowell's drawing of Mars

in trying to dig up outdated (in an interesting way) movies, cartoons, and books about aliens for my classes this semester, I grabbed this screenshot from the Disneyland episode "Mars and Beyond" (1957) which summarizes my recent career move