Therapist: The paper figure monster is not real, he can't hurt you. Paper figure monster:
Vincent MacKay
@vincentmackay.bsky.social
Postdoc at MIT, previously University of Toronto, McGill You can mostly trust my posts on: 🌌 cosmology 📡 radio telescopes 🎹 piano 🎼 music theory ...take everything else with a grain of salt. Fr/En | He/Him | vincentmackay.github.io | Somerville, MA
Dark matter's existence is not controversial and the evidence is overwhelming. We don't know what it is, but it's not just some weird speculation, it's really there. Also the big bang is not a point from which everything expanded, it's just the idea that the universe used to be real hot and dense.
M. Nolan Gray 🥑@mnolangray.bsky.social · 4mo agoWhat's something that experts/practitioners in your field universally agree upon, but that remains a "hot take" among the general public?
Here are pictures of owls taken with a 127 mm (5") telescope and my phone camera. Those guys just hang out there all day. Next post night time pics.
The kind of paper I wish someone shared with me when I was learning GR and cosmology
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 10mo agoThis is such a great paper arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph...
Yeah... I’m a physicist, not a coder, and I’ve wasted way too much time on broken Python envs or slow code in the past. Now, I can just ask the robot to fix it and move on to the science. Because of all the harm they cause, I hate how well LLMs work for some tasks.
Hank Green@hankgreen.bsky.social · last yr.There are a lot of critiques of LLMs that I agree with but "they suck and aren't useful" doesn't really hold water. I understand people not using them because of social, economic, and environmental concerns. And I also understand people using them because they can be very useful. Thoughts?
I could've saved the Planck team a whole lot of trouble by just saving the COBE map in jpeg a bunch of times
Ethan Siegel@startswithabang.bsky.social · 2y agoThe CMB: The most important discovery in cosmic history There are as few things in the Universe as important, or as maddening as the CMB. As Homer Simpson might say: it's the cause of, and solution to, all* of cosmology's problems! (* - YMMV) bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #astro #science
Devastating for scientists and their research, and everyone who benefits from that research. I’m not sure if everyone outside academia is aware that a delay or “pause” in grant funding often means the researchers themselves are lost from the field, along with their expertise.
Nsikan Akpan@monscience.bsky.social · 2y agoNIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research. Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions
This is one of the most incredible JWST pics so far imo
Dr. Jessie Christiansen@aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 2y agoOh come ON now. This new JWST image is just ASTOUNDING. I feel like I’m falling looking into it, and that I would fall forever, and that I would enjoy it. NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)
JWST fully solves the mystery of “Little Red Dots” How did those "Little Red Dot" galaxies get so bright and abundant so early on? It isn't just stars at work, but an active and _overmassive_ black hole, too. bigthink.com/starts-with-...
JWST fully solves the mystery of "Little Red Dots"
The discovery of ultra-bright, ultra-distant galaxies was JWST's first big surprise. They didn't "break the Universe," and now we know why.
bigthink.com
This is too good not to share in English too: Ravel's heiress is his brother's nurse's brother's second wife's daughter from another marriage. www.thetimes.com/world/europe...
Vincent MacKay@vincentmackay.bsky.social · 2y ago
Aurora progression! what a show it was :) #aurora #northernlights #alaska
I hope all the new bots that started following me in the past week will enjoy this picture of the moon that I took with my phone and a 127 mm telescope
If you start Wicked now, at 11:59:59 she'll go ooh aohaoooh
This weird JWST trick lets us “see” dark matter By using color inversion plus galaxy/cluster light models, scientists can find "excesses" of light. Remarkably, they help trace out where the dark matter is. bigthink.com/starts-with-...
This weird JWST trick lets us "see" dark matter
It's not only the gravity from galaxies in a cluster that reveal dark matter, but the ejected, intracluster stars actually trace it out.
bigthink.com
From least to most impressive: - partial lunar eclipse - comet - meteor shower - partial solar eclipse - northern lights - other planets through telescope - jupiter or saturn through scope - moon through scope - annular solar eclipse - milky way (in its own category:) - total solar eclipse
Jasmine 🌌🔭@astrojaz.bsky.social · 2y agoastronomy things people should see in their lifetime: - lunar/solar eclipse - the milky way - meteor shower/comet - northern lights - planets/moon through a telescope
35 years ago today a gunman walked into an engineering classroom at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, separated the women from the men and killed 14 of them. It was the ultimate manifestation of the gender-based bias and violence we still face in STEM today. We must never forget. 👩🏻🔬 🧪
(future employers please don't read) this is very accurate
Seven Machina Rasmussen@toomanyspectra.bsky.social · 2y agocan I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no
People who use wavenumber instead of wavelength: who hurt you? 🪐✨️🔭
People talk about wickeds marketing budget, but the boys must be huge
Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Radio astronomer: The cup adds 5 kelvins to the system temperature...can we make it out of teflon? Maybe drill a few holes in it? And get rid of the water?
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 2y agoOptimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Cosmologist: The cup is dusty or full of gravitational waves
What is common knowledge in you field but shocks outsider? Usually, the further things are, the smaller they appear...but if they're reaaally far, they start looking bigger again.
Nadine Borduas-Dedekind@nadineborduas.bsky.social · 2y agoWhat is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? The ozone hole over Antarctica only occurs in the spring.
Relatable but also: I’d like to talk a little bit about this headline, which is, in my opinion, an example of dysfunction in science reporting today. (Since there’s no alt text, headline reads: “This Black Hole Is Eating So Much Matter that It Defies Known Science”, from 404 Media) 🧵
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 2y agome since tuesday
Haven't had time to read the paper (I have a ton of questions!) but this looks cool. First time I read "Baryon Acoustic Oscillation" in the singular form. Fun stuff!
Daniel Pomarède@pomarede.bsky.social · 3y ago🔭 Discovery alert! A spherical shell-like structure 1 billion light-years in diameter named Ho’oleilana is discovered in the distribution of relatively nearby galaxies. We posit this is the 1st observation of an individual Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO). doi.org/10.3847/1538...
