Brian D. Wade
@astrobrian.bsky.social
Father, husband, and scientist. Interested in astrobiology, evolution, microbes, and all things space exploration. he/him/his
Phenotypically convergent adaptation to altitude via different genetic changes in Peruvian Andean and Tibetan Himalayan human populations — cool!
Genome Biology and Evolution@genomebiolevol.bsky.social · 5h agoZhu et al. provide novel evidence that polygenic natural selection may be acting to lower Andean hemoglobin concentration in a manner phenotypically convergent with Tibetan populations. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag164 #societyjournal #humanevolution
Vanderbilt’s Board Declares War Against Academic Freedom #academicSky www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Vanderbilt’s Board Declares War Against Academic Freedom
A new policy punishes faculty for speech the trustees deem strays from the core purpose of the university.
insidehighered.com
Liquid nitrogen might flow on #Pluto! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Evidence for Possible N2 Basal Flow beneath Pluto’s Northern Sputnik Planitia
Evidence for Possible N2 Basal Flow beneath Pluto’s Northern Sputnik Planitia, Stern, S. A., Umurhan, Orkan, Clow, Gary D., Anderson, Robert S., Howard, Alan, Singer, Kelsi N.
iopscience.iop.org
This is the highest-resolution view of the surface of the Sun. Ever. Taken by the NSF's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, features as small as 19 km across can be resolved. The wispy things are magnetic field boundaries formed by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. The island of Ireland for scale.
How can we study life’s deep evolutionary past? By bringing it into the lab! This @asm.org feature highlights our on-going efforts. Read how synthetic biology allows us to reconstruct ancient microbial systems, test hypotheses about early metabolism and explore how life and Earth co-evolved. 🌍
ASM@asm.org · 5d agoSynthetic biology is advancing how scientists study early microbial life. Their findings could revolutionize how we think about Earth’s earliest residents—and those that exist today. asm.org/articles/202...
How do some plants survive a nearly complete loss of cellular water? A new review by PRI’s Jenny Schuster and Robert VanBuren synthesizes decades of research on the evolutionary origins and cellular mechanisms underlying desiccation tolerance. #PlantScience Read more: doi.org/10.1111/nph....
🚨URGENT ADVOCACY ACTION - We can pause OMB's harmful rewrite of grant rules that insert political appointees into the funding process, but only if enough of us speak up THIS WEEK. 🚨 This is our best shot before senators leave for August recess. Send your letter: www.planetary.org/advocacy-act...
Advocacy Action Center
The Planetary Society is organizing a new space constituency that is educated, empowered, and loud.
planetary.org
Aperiodic reminder that Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus has a subsurface liquid water ocean that it's blasting into space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill.bsky.social)
“The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.” — Albert Einstein
Unusual asteroid unmasked! 🪨 Using our VLT in Chile & the Large Binocular Telescope in the US, astronomers have resolved the shape of (44) Nysa, a peculiar asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. They revealed a structure unlike anything observed before! 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/K. Minker et al. 1/2
Sunset on Mars. Photographed on 19 May 2005 by the Spirit rover.
Artists, writers and scientists urge UK government to save Jodrell Bank Observatory #astronomy #astroSky #scienceSky www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Artists, writers and scientists urge UK government to save Jodrell Bank Observatory
New Order and Simon Armitage among more than 100 signatories to criticise ‘foolish and shortsighted’ cuts
theguardian.com
"It's clear that there's a rampant dumbing down in progress in which not knowing things is considered a virtue. I don't throw my hands up in despair, but I do try to indicate that it's a very serious problem." - Carl Sagan
The 30 July 2026 Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a remarkable shot of the Sun photographed through a wildfire smoke-filled sky that turned the star a deep red. So I tweaked it to look like we're orbiting an M-class red dwarf star with a close-in system of rocky planets, like TRAPPIST-1.
Spontaneous and indefinite blinking in upconverting nanoparticles for ångström-precision multicolour super-resolution imaging #microscopy #scienceSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Spontaneous and indefinite blinking in upconverting nanoparticles for ångström-precision multicolour super-resolution imaging - Nature Nanotechnology
Compositionally engineered, spontaneously blinking upconverting nanoparticles enable multicolour super-resolution imaging with a single excitation source and achieve localization precision down to 0.6...
nature.com
Meet a giant and its buddy! This video takes you to the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, where our VLT has obtained the clearest image yet of what likely is a companion star orbiting it: Betelgeuse B. The discovery of Betelgeuse B solved a century-old mystery. 🔭 🧪 1/2
The blade that lay against King Tut's mummy for three thousand years turned out to be extraterrestrial — its metal matches the composition of meteorites, meaning the boy king was buried with a weapon forged from iron that fell from the sky #meteorites spacedaily.com/d-the-blade-...
The blade that lay against King Tut's mummy for three thousand years turned out to be extraterrestrial — its metal matches the composition of meteorites, meaning the boy king was buried with a weapon ...
Ancient Egypt's most prized possession wasn't mined from the earth—it came from the cosmos.
spacedaily.com
The Great Lakes’ most emblematic fish could be consigned to history books #GreatLakes #InvasiveSpecies #fisheries www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
The Great Lakes’ most emblematic fish could be consigned to history books
A delicacy for centuries and a key part of Native tradition, the lake whitefish has seen its population crash. Researchers know why … but stopping it is another matter
theguardian.com
Perseverance's #Mars sample tubes were built to be among the cleanest objects humans have made... #astrobiology spacedaily.com/t-perseveran...
Perseverance's Mars sample tubes were built to be among the cleanest objects humans have made, because their job is to preserve ancient Martian chemistry — and one untreated fingerprint would have exc...
A single human fingerprint contains 300 times more organic material than Mars's most precious cargo is allowed to carry—and NASA's engineers had to invent new ways to keep these tubes pristine enough ...
spacedaily.com
A butte, named Tolhuaca by mission scientists, up ahead of the Mars Curiosity Rover. Imaged using MastCam this past weekend on Sol 4966. flic.kr/p/2srD6xq
The conclusion of a century-long quest 😲 Our VLT obtained firm evidence that Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the Orion constellation and one of the most famous stars in the night sky, is not alone! 🔭 🧪 1/4
Exciting new research from the Reguera Lab! Turns out that small changes in the environment make a big difference in the Geobacter cell envelope! Read more below!
Gemma Reguera 🌎@microgem.bsky.social · 4w agoLatest from my lab‼️ We show how cation chemistry controls the structure of the Gram-negative cell envelope and provides reciprocal control of piliation and vesiculation. In Geobacter, this impacts extracellular electron transfer and biomineralization. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The first woman to fly in space was not a test pilot or a scientist but a young textile worker, and in 1963 Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth alone for three days, longer than every American astronaut combined had managed by then #HumanSpaceflight #space spacedaily.com/m-the-first-...
The first woman to fly in space was not a test pilot or a scientist but a young textile worker, and in 1963 Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth alone for three days, longer than every American astr...
The Soviet Union sent a textile worker to space while America was still figuring out how to get its test pilots past the stratosphere.
spacedaily.com
Watching our cosmic neighbourhood 👀 Three of our ATs at Paranal enjoy the view of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. The Small Magellanic Cloud and the lowest part of the #MilkyWay appear here bathed in green airglow. Discover what that is: 👉 https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2630a 🔭 🧪
A family portrait from deep space, captured by Rocket Lab-built spacecraft on their way to Mars. The ESCAPADE twins snapped these stunning shots of Earth and the Moon from 363,000+ miles out, capturing both visible and thermal infrared light.
Only the 4th known transmissible #cancer in animals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer - Nature
Whole-genome sequencing analysis of tumour and matched non-tumour host tissues of the brown bullhead catfish reveals a type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer.
nature.com
A solar eclipse. On Saturn. By Titan. Photographed from Earth. 📷: AJ Smadi (StardustAstro/Correct_Presence_936)
