I just received a message from a colleague that a proposal we had been working on was “tabled” at a meeting. I hope that this means it was brought up and considered, but there is a nagging worry that it could also mean set aside.
Andrew Jaffe
@defjaf.bsky.social
Astrophysics, cosmology, Bayesian inference, parenthood, politics, rock ’n’ roll, & more. Professor at Imperial College. andrewjaffe.net He/him/his The Random Universe—available now! https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300250503/the-random-universe/
First solo trip to NYC in more than a decade, visiting the Simons Foundation Flatiron Institute for their Learning The Universe meeting.
2026 Simons Collaboration on Learning the Universe Annual Meeting
2026 Simons Collaboration on Learning the Universe Annual Meeting on Simons Foundation
simonsfoundation.org
New post: The Talk I Gave on September 12 More 25th anniversary thoughts and recollections. I was heading off to Durham, in the north of England — my first big talk now that I had started my permanent academic job. I arrived toward the end of the first day of the conference: September 11, 2001.
Twenty-five years ago, I moved from San Francisco to the UK, from a fellowship at Berkeley to a permanent job at Imperial College, London. A lot has changed since then. I was 35; now I am 60. It was two weeks before 9/11; the world hasn’t seemed as open and free since.…
25 & 60 – Andrew H. Jaffe
andrewjaffe.net
Due to a booking mishap (mine) we are beset by the horror of an extra night in Southwest France.
I’ll be in New York 14–19 September. If anyone knows of a seminar slot, a podcast, a bookshop, or a living room that might want a cosmologist talking about probability, epistemology, and The Random Universe — I’d love to hear from you. Very short notice, entirely shameless.
NASA’s Roman Telescope Leaves Earth to Chart the Stars The latest great space telescope, targeting the history and evolution of the Universe and planets around other stars, launched by NASA in collaboration with astronomers around the world.
NASA’s Roman Telescope Leaves Earth to Chart the Stars
By Katrina Miller
nytimes.com
“From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” — a childhood favorite I’ve just finished reading with my kids, a bit younger than Claudia & Jamie in the book — was as wonderful as I remembered. Whenever we go to a museum they’ll be scouting out places to sleep, and secrets…
Jasper Johns’ “Slice”, a mashup of the CfA galaxy redshift survey, spied on a visit to the Guggenheim Bilbao. I recognised the pattern of dots — famous among cosmologists — from across the room, surprised to see it amongst Johns’ usual flags, targets, crosshatches, and numbers.
Being an atheist and born Jewish, and only having walked the last 20km of the Camino de Santiago, I was surprised to feel so moved by our arrival at the Cathedral.
“I never got to be an astronaut, but I did get to be part of the Planck Satellite team.” —Me, interviewed by Brian Clegg on PopScienceBooks about why I do the science I do, and why I wrote The Random Universe.
Andrew Jaffe - Five way interview
Andrew Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College, London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Co...
popsciencebooks.blogspot.com
The problem is having so heavily relied on gouging foreign students to begin with. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
UK universities face ‘financial crisis’ amid collapse in international students
Higher education figures call on Labour to reverse tax on fees and warn institutions at risk of ‘going under’
theguardian.com
The Random Universe in Physics World: A masterful and refreshing take… I found the book’s thesis – that uncertainty is not a hindrance to knowledge, but an opportunity to learn (and learn more) about the world – simultaneously liberating, humbling and empowering. — Chrysi Malouchou Kanellopoulou
Knowing through uncertainty: probability and the evolution of our cosmos – Physics World
Chrysi Malouchou Kanellopoulou reviews The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help us Make Sense of the Cosmos by Andrew H Jaffe
physicsworld.com
It’s wonderful when the front page of the newspaper is about astronomy instead of, well, almost anything else.
The full image of the sun looks like a disc, but you can see the shape of the ongoing partial eclipse due to the imperfect optics of my phone camera.
Who else is off to Spain (or Iceland, or Greenland, or… ) for the eclipse?
Thomas Bayes proved we can never be 100% certain of anything — but that probability tells us exactly how to learn anyway. That’s the core of my SXSW 2027 proposal, from the physics of the cosmos to the beliefs we live by. Vote here (free, 30 sec) — closes Aug 23.
PanelPicker | SXSW Conference & Festivals
PanelPicker® is the official SXSW user-generated session proposal platform. Enter ideas and vote to help shape Conference programming for SXSW and SXSW EDU.
participate.sxsw.com
Exactly two years ago, we were on the first day of our sabbatical year, starting in Indonesia but with extended stays in Tsukuba, Japan; New York City; and Leiden, Netherlands. We’ve been back almost a year but I still think about our year abroad every day.
Peter Coles points out, I fear with some justification, that the recent STFC cuts to high-profile fields of physics like astronomy, cosmology, and particle physics might have as much (or more) to do with internal conflicts and jealousy within physics as with financial issues.
Astronomy Envy
In 1998 the Department of Physics at the University of Nottingham was struggling in both research and undergraduate recruitment. To remedy the situation it decided to add a new group in Astronomy. …
telescoper.blog
This is only of niche interest, but it’s great to be at the Sterrewacht group at the University of Leiden, drinking from an old-school early-90s vintage CITA (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics) mug.
This White House paper marks a huge change to US science funding, trying to pick tech winners, alongside its efforts to align science with its right-wing ideology. For a party supposedly against communism, they are doing their best to reproduce some of the worst excesses of the soviet state.
Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities
By Christopher Flavelle and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
nytimes.com