#AbreOSigiloFlávio (upon request from a very scared Brazilian astronomer whose work I have covered).
Stephen Luntz
@sluntz.bsky.social
Science writer and (non-government) election administrator.
Changing water clouds have been detected in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf 7.5 light years away, the first time this has been seen outside the Solar System. www.iflscience.com/varying-wate...
In my mind the defining feature of Trump II is that is ✨actually✨ a kakistocracy. RFK Jr and Russ Vought have very little in common politically, but they do share one essential quality: they are absolutely the worst person alive for the jobs they have.
Nick (derogatory) ✨@slothropsmap.bsky.social · 2w agoThis is right. Trump II is the worst administration in our history because Trump has no ideology beyond "evil" and is too lazy to govern, so he hands his power to whoever wants it. Every flavor of evil shows up, and each one gets the job where it can do the most damage.
I know the main headline here is PQ back in power and possibly a referendum to follow, but the 1a headline is absolutely that first past the post is not a great fit for politics in Quebec (and other provinces) at the moment.
One evolution's great dividing points was between the reptiles and the amphibians, with the reptiles eventually giving rise to mammals and birds. Fossils around this point are much in demand, but we've reading this one wrong based just on encasing rocks' surfaces www.iflscience.com/fossil-long-...
Fossil Long Hailed As The "World’s Oldest Reptile" Turns Out Isn’t Actually Reptilian At All
What do you do when your entire identity is snatched away from you? Probably not much when you’ve been dead for 345 million years.
iflscience.com
Still kind of inconceivable how many people died or will die because of the death of USAID. And the world’s richest man did it almost as a joke
Elephants not only self-medicate using plants favored in traditional medicine, but apply them to their calves, including a remarkably sophisticated recipe for an immune-boosting smoothie www.iflscience.com/wild-african...
Wild African Elephants Found To Self-Medicate And Feed Their Calves Immunization Smoothies
Those famous memories come in useful when a member of the herd is sick.
iflscience.com
Do you have a painting or drawing by Lawrence Bragg? The Nobel Prize-winning scientist appears in the 1927 Solvay photo alongside Einstein and Marie Curie; he was also a keen painter. I’m planning an exhibition about his life and times in 2027, the centenary of this picture.
While I share Alfredo's frustrations, I think he has the wrong beef here. Rather than being angry with people who got to see the last two Milky Way supernovae, he should direct his rage at the galaxy for not giving us another show for 400 years, like the rest of us do. One a century? hmph.
Dr Alfredo Carpineti@drcarpineti.bsky.social · last mo.In which Alfredo has beef with people from the late 1500s. www.theastroholic.co.uk/catch-a-supe...
if we're gonna do stupid utilitarian math then USAID saved more lives than every war-related death since WWII combined
In trying to allow people with disabilities to say everything they want, the team have learned that verbal and non-verbal communication aren’t always simple complements for each other. www.iflscience.com/brain-implan...
I wrote about how distinctive, and often puzzling, many of Saturn's moons are. Despite this, everything other than Titan and Enceladus gets little attention, with low prospects of a mission to explain the mystery any time soon, even though it could test for Enceladus life at the same time.
IFLScience@iflscience.com · 2mo agoThe whole system is packed full of quirks and oddities that we've yet to fully understand or explain. www.iflscience.com/two-moons-of...
I get a bit speculative at the end here, but it's possible Australians only speak English because an optical illusion made James Cook feel like a failure.
IFLScience@iflscience.com · 2mo agoWe don’t get to see it very often, but that makes it even more important when it happens. www.iflscience.com/what-is-the-...
I just discovered astronomers have a program for calculating the interior of exoplanets' composition based on the data we can measure and it is known as MAGRATHEA and that makes me so happy.
Bernie Sanders needs to stop insisting that the US government should own 50% of the money-losingest corporations the world has ever seen and start talking about how they will *not* get a government bailout when their investment bubble bursts. 22/
Labor, the Liberals & One Nation will join forces to pass the biggest cut to a gov program this century. Labor’s legislation will rip $38 billion from the NDIS by decade’s end. 241,000 disabled people could lose access within five years. These aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet.
Even with all we have discovered, the universe has the capacity to amaze us. In this case it's the most distant example of something we only discovered last year, a black hole surrounded by dense hydrogen shining 100 billion times as bright as a typical star www.iflscience.com/object-brigh...
We’ve Just Discovered A Brand New Object At The End Of The Universe – Meet A “Black Hole Star”
People raised their eyebrows at the physicist whose paper on stars with black hole cores was inspired by Soundgarden, but maybe he was onto something.
iflscience.com
Had a chance to win some great publicity making it look like he's human, but decides to break the law instead in order to confirm he's incapable of empathy.
Michael Love@elkmovie.bsky.social · 3mo agoI’m on a small-ship Alaska cruise with my son; our boat rescued a stranded vessel last night and apparently we did that after the Coast Guard radioed Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht - which was closer - and they repeatedly refused to respond. (There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this)
You can read this for the science, or just enjoy the video for its hypnotic beauty. www.iflscience.com/highest-reso...
Highest Resolution Images Of The Sun’s Surface Reveal Vortices That Could Explain Explosive Solar Activity
The work could help resolve two of our biggest questions about the Sun: the original cause of solar storms, and why its upper atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface.
iflscience.com
Did someone place an M-specific curse on Democract Senate prospects so they would screw up Maine, Michigan and Montana (in entirely different ways), while barely putting a foot wrong in the rest of the alphabet? (Not sure if any curse could cost Massachussets in this cycle).
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 3mo agoIf things stay this close, regardless of who wins, we're kind of in the zone of maximum intra-party recriminations. So that's... interesting, let's say. That's interesting
Ok, I admit I misjudged Meta. Their target market, people with low vision aside, isn't *just* stalkers and child molester wanna-bes, it's also people on a crusade to promote racist consipiracy theories.
Michael@michaeljsc.bsky.social · 3mo agoActually quite angry reading this. I know it’s a bit passé to talk about “why don’t politicians crack down on people not using headphones on the bus” but I think we do need to reckon with platforms that incentivise people to completely disregard the norms of civil society and get away with it.
There's probably a little truth to the Iliad (and maybe the Odyssey), with evidence Troy fell around the right time, with an epic drought having brought down many civilizations. For the first time climate scientists have evidence of what caused that drought www.iflscience.com/at-the-time-...
At The Time Of The Odyssey, Mediterranean Civilizations Collapsed And A Climatic Coincidence Explains Why
If Elon Musk is serious about making a “historically accurate” Odyssey film, he should include multiple climate disasters.
iflscience.com
It's the first strong evidence of an object of this kind, but is it a moon, a planet or a category in between - that decision is up to us.
IFLScience@iflscience.com · 3mo agowww.iflscience.com/super-weird-...
Given her government's behavior she thinks it's totally implausible that carbon dioxide emissions could change the Earth's climate, but she thinks a much smaller amount of water can cause the Earth's poles to flip.
Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 3mo agoA government official in Australia says the Northern Territory needs data centres to use lots of water so......the Earth's axis doesn't flip
Wow. This assessment is not just generally true, it really is brought home by the document concerned (not the tweet above this in the thread leaves out the "million", ie it was 2.7 million people whose lives they were trying to ruin.
Yell In a War@jelenawoehr.bsky.social · 5mo agothis example is an EXCELLENT insight into two things: 1. why the opinion "we should run government like a business" should be treated similarly to the opinion "we should kill and eat more human infants" 2. how even a single node of friction in a system can halt a more powerful person's evil plan
One of the most transformative but seemingly mundane acts of progressive governance at any level is letting caring and competent civil servants actually do their jobs.
Yes this story comes with an important environmental message, but if you want a break from the awful in the world, just learning these creatures exist and looking at their little faces and their leaps into the unknown should do that www.iflscience.com/greater-glid...
Greater Gliders’ Gliding Skills Are Overrated, Although The Researcher Maintains “They’re greatest in my heart”
We should save them for their ecological value and their resemblance to furry flying carpets, not because of any Olympic-standard gliding skills.
iflscience.com