Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

NetZero also sets the stage for additional, net-removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by future generations, down to at least 350 ppm to stabilize the Greenland ice sheet. This will need continued global effort for centuries.

ClimateBook@climatebook.bsky.social · 2d ago

This thread highights a subtle and difficult messaging problem. Achieving netZero will not reverse the impacts of the current climate, which has been heated up by historical CO2 emissions. It is too late for that. The point of netZero is to prevent the future situation from getting even worse. ..

Seems like we are entering yet another needless global disaster that is going to make life harder for everyone world-wide in the blind pursuit of short-term profits. 🙄

Critical Sizes of Satellite Constellations

The precipitous growth of commercial space activity, largely from the development of satellite constellations, threatens to produce a runaway orbital debris population. National regulators are attempt...

arxiv.org

I see @xkcd.com got ahold of my to do list: xkcd.com/3278 (Adding to my status as 'Most Distracted Astronomer', I'm actually working on a surprising number of these) 🔭

Vera Rubin Observatory

xkcd.com

Oh, nice! The K-Pg impactor was most likely a CO (Ornans-type) chondrite. Works well with Ni, Cr, PGE, organics constraints as well as "the" fossil meteorite from the K-Pg boundary!

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.@arctomet.bsky.social · 3w ago

The origin of Cretaceous-Palaeogene impactor revealed by nickel isotopes | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This was the only result at #Exoplanets6 that I saw get a spontaneous round of applause from the audience: THE FIRST ROCKY PLANET IN A HABITABLE ZONE* WITH EVIDENCE** OF AN ATMOSPHERE!!! *Of an M dwarf, which are the only such planets currently accessible **If it's real, its' a weird one!

Space.com@space.com · 3w ago

Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone www.space.com/astronomy/ex...

It is so cool and incredible to be alive at a time when humans can do fact-based world-building of near-by extrasolar planetary systems! The four sub-Earths of Barnard's Star are likely to be airless and lifeless rocks with only about half the Earth's radiogenic heat production. 🪐🌔🔭😎

The Barnard’s Star planetary system: stability, composition, and evolution of four sub-Earth exoplanets

ABSTRACT. Barnard’s Star is the nearest single star to the Sun ($1.8\, \text{pc}$), and hosts four recently discovered planets. The star also has well-char

doi.org

This clever map shows us what time it is across the world, which regions are awake, working or sleeping, all rotating in sync with the Earth. Go to the source where the image only rotates by 3.75 degrees every 15 minutes to remain up to date. Source: buff.ly/tyQ2Z3g

Eye- and brain-wow! I did not know that but it makes sense.

John C. Baez@johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 4w ago

Mark Ham wowed the world with this picture. But then someone wowed me even more by pointing out that the moon always has the same phase when it's in a rainbow! (1/2)

Meanwhile on Mars: Curiosity Rover checks out this interesting rock located just in front of one of its six wheels. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk #Curiosity #MSL #MarsRover #NASA #Science #Space #Exploration #Solarocks #Mars #JPL #Meteorite #MeteorWrong

Super-technically, all birds are dinos but not all dinos are birds. It was mostly non-birds that were killed by that stone. However, hyper-technically, the Chicxulub impactor was likely also the one stone that killed the most (actual) birds, as many lineages disappeared along the other dinos...

Jonathan McDowell@planet4589.bsky.social · last mo.

There's occasionally still some worthwhile insights at the other place

The moment we've all been waiting for is finally here… On June 29, 2026, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially began the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)! 🔭🧪☄️🌌 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/action-...

Ich erinnere daran, dass wir das stabile Klima des Holozäns (der letzten 10.000 Jahre) längst hinter uns gelassen haben. Ich forsche seit den 1990er Jahren zum Paläoklima. Ich kann nur dringend empfehlen, jetzt eine Notbremsung bei der fossilen Energienutzung zu machen! Für unsere Kinder. Bitte.

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf@rahmstorf.bsky.social · 2y ago

Das stabile Holozän-Klima, in dem Homo Sapiens die Landwirtschaft erfunden & Städte gebaut hat, haben wir in atemberaubenden Tempo hinter uns gelassen. spiegel.de/wissenschaft... Was wir jetzt tun, bestimmt für die nächsten Jahrtausende unser Schicksal. #Europawahl ist #Klimawahl.

Why "getting behind on AI!" isn't as bad a thing. It might save you a lot of money. No need to rush into that house of cards right now. Let it crash first (as it inevitably will), then see what is still standing when the dust settles.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · last mo.

Ford has rehired hundreds of senior engineers after replacing them with AI backfired and has cost the company billions of dollars. AI adoption is blamed for Ford being the most recalled automaker in the U.S. with 51 recalls covering over 11 million vehicles in the first half of 2026 alone.

Kaib & Reymond (2026), arxiv: I am fascinated by close stellar encounters. Imagine, another sun-like star passing us at "only" 6000-10000 a.u. (which works out to 0.09 to 0.15 light years)! Only 6-10 times further out than the aphelion of Sedna. And we missed it by 2.5 million years.

A Potential Signature of HD 7977's Passage Among Observed Long-Period Comet Orbits

It is generally presumed that the tidal field of the Milky Way's disk is the main perturbation that has driven observed long-period comets (LPCs) from the Oort cloud into the inner solar system. The t...

arxiv.org

When you use genAI to create an "illustrative" title image for your article but you obviously don't have any clue why it's both ugly and very wrong... Cancelled my @sciencex.bsky.social subscription. No love for truth, no money from me.

This Neptune-sized world orbits backwards, hinting at a hidden giant's influence

Imagine a world the size of Neptune, but instead of following the orderly path of its neighbors, it is racing headlong against the flow of its own solar system. In the case of the exoplanet TOI-1710 b...

sciencex.com

Quick, someone call Alanis Morissette...

Grantham Research Institute at LSE@granthamlse.bsky.social · last mo.

We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.

ETH und ZHAW bestätigen: Ein Mix aus erneuerbaren Energien, Speichern und einem Stromabkommen mit der EU sichert unsere Versorgung – und ist günstiger als neue AKW. Wir müssen umsetzen statt lamentieren.⚡🇨🇭 📺 srf.ch/play/tv/tage... #Energie #Versorgungssicherheit #Schweiz

Günstiger Energiemix ohne Atomkraft - Tagesschau - Play SRF

Eine neue Studie zeigt, der günstigste Energiemix der Zukunft könnte ohne Atomstrom auskommen und stattdessen auf erneuerbare Energien, Importe und Energiespeicher setzen. Umstritten bleibt, wie die S...

srf.ch

Perhaps not "ever" but certainly for any forseeable future (who knows, perhaps there is even an Earth-sized world in the Oort cloud? Or free-floating somewhere near-by the solar system?). Venus gets little love compared to Mars, although it could tell us so much more about our place in the universe.

Paul Byrne@theplanetaryguy.com · 2mo ago

Your reminder that, while everyone is rightly focused on the Moon these days, Venus is the only other Earth-sized world we will ever visit. And if we truly want to understand why our own planet is habitable, we must explore the one that isn't.

😲 Up is down, war is peace, and the ice giants are now magma ocean worlds! 😉 But wow, that would be very interesting! 🪐

Ice Giants Revisited: Uranus and Neptune as Magma Ocean Worlds

Uranus and Neptune are commonly interpreted as volatile-rich "ice giants", an assumption that underpins most interior models. Here we show that their observed radii, bulk densities, gravitational harm...

arxiv.org

A Deep Search for Exomoons around WISE 0855 with JWST: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... -> interview with first author: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe7U...

A Deep Search for Exomoons around WISE 0855 with JWST

A Deep Search for Exomoons around WISE 0855 with JWST, Wilson, Mikayla J., Limbach, Mary Anne, Skemer, Andrew J., Vos, Johanna M., Miles, Brittany E., Rowland, Melanie J., Vanderburg, Andrew, Schneider, Adam C., Morley, Caroline, Kotten, Brooke, Householder, Andrew, Lupu, Roxana, Mang, James, Freedman, Richard

iopscience.iop.org

To keep meteoriteorbits.info up to date, I regularly search for new falls & orbits. Nothing new this time, although I found an article about Drelów, a new L6 from Poland, which fell on February 18th, 2025. Unfortunately, no published orbit, yet. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨Funding for 2yr postdoc w/ me & @geocron.bsky.social on landslide-tsunami-jökulhlaup project, but (this is the ridiculous part) I need to select someone NOW or I lose the $. If you're NOT in Canada (can be any nationality) and interested, send me your CV and transcripts by midnight MT, June 12. 🧪⚒️

We are in the Age of Humans - the Anthropocene. Our new article (open access) shows how even with a moderate future emissions scenario, global temperature will still be elevated by 3-4°C in the year 3000! Lifetime of our CO2 in the air is that long. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

We Are in the Anthropocene—Now What?

The Anthropocene's enormous consequences are of long-term nature, the slow pace of recovery currently under-appreciated among the public The smallest unavoidable residual emissions (e.g., from fo...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

A primordial black hole? In this economy? You better (maybe) believe it. Story by me in @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-...

A primordial black hole nicknamed ‘Phoebe’ may help solve the mystery of dark matter

A blip of light in the outer reaches of the Milky Way might be a bizarre black hole born at the beginning of time itself—and the long-sought solution to the mystery of dark matter. Astronomers are cal...

scientificamerican.com

I made this animation showing a small impact on the Moon, the resulting crater and the effects of the debris cloud passing Earth. Done originally in response to the now ruled out 2032 impact on the Moon of the small asteroid 2024YR 4, the possibility of Lunar impacts remain. vimeo.com/1197048261

A horrible reminder on why we need to continue to support Ukraine. I hope that their strenth and resolve will be the anvil upon which the Russian colonial empire finally breaks apart. Slava Ukraine! 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦

Kate from Kharkiv@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is not a movie about meteor showers before the apocalypse; this is Russia bombing Kyiv last night. A city with several million people in it - children, the elderly, and normal families just like yours.

Today in "not a simulation"...

ESO@eso.org · 2mo ago

Taken with our VLT over a period of four years, these images show the rotating disc of gas & dust around the young star AB Aurigae. Features like “twists” signal the places where #exoplanets could be forming 🪐 More: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2622a/ 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/A. Boccaletti et al.

And then of course it goes into the "science" category... 🙄🌔

Michael Brown@mjibrown.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Not interested in super moons, micro moons or blue moons. They basically are all full moons and are either identical to or only marginally different from regular full moons. The main function of defining these various full moons is to provide filler content for 21st century media.