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Dr. William O. Balmer

@balmer.bsky.social
1.2K followers 286 following 221 posts

working class astronomer, science journalist, author. 51 peg b fellow at NW. phd from JHU. blogs from astrowill.page, cv at wbalmer.github.io

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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
No More Deaths | No Más Muertes @nomoredeaths.bsky.social · 17h
⚠️ Border wall contractors plan to remove thousands of sacred saguaros (ha:ṣañ) on sovereign O'odham land starting Monday — Indigenous People's Day. Tadai Me:i Camp calls supporters to join in prayer and protest on the Tohono O’odham Nation.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S DAY
OCTOBER 12, 2026
BORDER WALL CONTRACTORS ARE SET TO BEGIN REMOVING SACRED SAGUAROS AND OCOTILLO IN THE FIRST PHASE OF CONSTRUCTION ON THE TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION.
THE TADAI ME: CAMP CALLS FOR PUBLIC SUPPORT TO THE BORDER TO STAND WITH THE TOHONO O'ODHAM IN OUR FIGHT TO PROTECT O'ODHAM JEWED (LAND).
THESE ARE NON-VIOLENT GATHERINGS!
EVERYONE WELCOME
ALL ONK AKIMEL, KE:LI AKIMEL, AK-CHIN, HIA CED, TOHONO AND MEXICO O'ODHAM STRONGLY ENCOURAGED
PLEASE COME
PREPARED FOR THE
+
• -
+
ELEMENTS (HEAT/RAIN), COME HEALTHY, AND
ALL ELDERS, SINGERS, AND
SELF SUFFICIENT.10/10 - 10/11
GATHERING OF O'ODHAM SISTER
TRIBES AT TADAI ME:I CAMP
10/12 - Prayer to Action
SUNRISE
HIMDAG 'O WUD T-GEWKDAG (OUR
CULTURE IS OUR STRENGTH) GATHERING AT THE TADAI ME:I CAMP AT KO:LI KI:JIG.
9:00 AM
GEWKDAG HI:M (GO IN STRENGTH)
MARCH STARTING AT BASHAS PLAZA, BRING YOUR SIGNS AND WALK IN PEACEFUL PROTEST AGAINST THE DESTRUCTION OF O'ODHAM LAND.Camp is located at the San Miguel Gate, on South Indian
Route 19
Turn right at the "Entering
Prayer Camp" sign
Be aware of cattle and Border Patrol on your way down
If you are planning on staying at Tadai Me:i Camp, you will be required to check in with Camp Caretakers for safety checks and information before entering camps.
Be respectful of camp protocols
No alcohol, drugs or weapons. Zero tolerance.
IF YOU AIN'T PRAYING, YOU AIN'T STAYING!Tohono O'odham Nation Emergency Mobile Command will be stationed at San Miguel
Community Building
In case of emergency dial 911 or T.O.N. Dispatch at 520-383-6412
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · 09/10/2026
arstechnica.com
AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software
Study finds coding efficiency gains get "absorbed" by human review "bottleneck."
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Jayke Samson Nguyen @jayke.io · 10/09/2026
Hot off the press! Via the magic of differentiable forward modeling and of non-redundant masking on JWST we may have found a new exoplanet! One of the most challenging papers I've written, but I'm glad its finally out! Submitted to AJ, pending peer review. arxiv.org/abs/2609.10507
arxiv.org
A Candidate Innermost Fifth Planet In the HR 8799 System Revealed By JWST NIRISS Aperture Masking Interferometry
We detect a candidate fifth planet in the HR 8799 system, directly imaged with the JWST/NIRISS Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI). The detected source lies just above a $3σ$ contrast curve at a con...
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
untracked, wow!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
join me in the great lakes caliphate
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Andrea Mann @andreamann.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"By writing, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.“ LOVE this piece. www.historians.org/perspectives...
historians.org
How Writing Leads to Thinking (and Not the Other Way Around) – AHA
Writing is stressful. Sitting in my computer chair my neck and shoulder muscles almost immediately tense up as I dig around in my brain for the best phrase or even any coherent string of words.
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
AI makes children better at doing their homework but 20% stupider so it's impossible to say whether it's good or not
Using 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students in grades 7-12, we study how generative AI affects homework productivity and learning. The data combine monthly closed-book exams, high-school and college entrance exams, and homework scores and completion time across nine subjects. We exploit staggered AI adoption in a difference-in-differences design. AI adoption raises homework scores by 18% and reduces completion time by 30%, but lowers monthly exam scores by 20% within six months. High-stakes entrance-exam scores fall by 18 and 24%, with the full penalty emerging only after about two years. The losses are largest in social science subjects, followed by STEM and languages, and are especially large for junior students, high-achieving students, and boys. The learning losses are concentrated among roughly 80% of AI users whose behavior is consistent with homework outsourcing, as indicated by exceptionally short homework completion time coupled with high homework scores. AI users who maintain similar homework completion time as non-AI users experience small learning losses.
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Northwestern University admin accepting $35 million for the football program from MAGA donors Dick and Liz Uihlein while also shuttering the African Studies program and its 80-year-old history is a pretty good encapsulation of higher ed in the US.
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
John Aerni-Flessner @lesothojohn.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is an absolute travesty. Northwestern has, probably, the 2nd best library collection for African History/Studies in the USA (behind Yale and ahead of MSU, UCLA, etc). A self-inflicted wound that is absolutely, 100% unnecessary given the massive wealth of Northwestern--north of $15 billion.
thepurplewire.beehiiv.com
SCOOP: Northwestern moves to close Program of African Studies
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
oh man i gotta go next time!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
LFGGGGGGG
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
u got this!
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
helpful coverage from @elpais.com english.elpais.com/usa/2025-08-...
english.elpais.com
In the heart of the Miccosukee, the Native American tribe that shut down Alligator Alcatraz
The community found refuge from white persecution deep in the Everglades swamps centuries ago. Together with environmental groups, they succeeded in forcing the closure of the immigration detention ce...
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
my hope is 2-3 weeks, if i can swing it!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
gonna need your sydney recs
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Prof Stephen Serjeant @stephenserjeant.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Don’t trust LLMs with your literature searches. Horrible gender biases as found in this paper (from later in the thread below) arxiv.org/abs/2508.02740 🧪🔭
arxiv.org
Who Gets Cited? Gender- and Majority-Bias in LLM-Driven Reference Selection
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly being adopted as research assistants, particularly for literature review and reference recommendation, yet little is known about whether they introduce demogra...
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
awesome paper!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
where's that old sagan paper
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
thank you!!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
thank you so much!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Thank you!!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Thank you!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Thank you Sierra!!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
thank you so much Tad! that means a lot to hear :)
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
doctor time
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
thank you so much!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
it was the night before the thesis defense, and all through the house...
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
what do you evem write in a thesis guys (it's due in two weeks btw)
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
its so good
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
If you have a passion for science, work hard at your research, & get some lucky breaks along the way, you too can achieve your dream of a life dedicated to management & administrative issues.
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
you can read more about this in our press release from NASA here: you can read more at nasa's site here: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-redefines-dividing-line-between-planets-stars/ or read the paper, published in ApJ Letters this morning, here: arxiv.org/abs/2604.09785
science.nasa.gov
NASA's Webb Redefines Dividing Line Between Planets, Stars - NASA Science
Planets, like those in our solar system, form in a bottom-up process where small bits of rock and ice clump together and grow larger over time. But the
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
🔭🪐 my team took this image of 29 Cygni b, a super giant planet 130 light years from us, with JWST. we found some interesting clues that suggest that this planet (~15x the mass of Jupiter) accreted more than 100 times the mass of the Earth in carbon- and oxygen-rich material during its formation
Astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to directly image 29 Cygni b, which weighs 15 times Jupiter. They found evidence for heavy chemical elements like carbon and oxygen, which strongly suggests it formed like a planet by accretion within a protoplanetary disk, and not like a star through fragmentation.

Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was used in its coronagraphic mode, in which a wedge (indicated by the blue box) is used to block the light of the host star (labeled A and marked with a star symbol) to reveal the planet. This image combines light from three filters between 4 and 5 microns. The planet is brightest in the blue filter, then green, then red, so it appears as an off-white dot in the color composite. If carbon dioxide weren’t present, the planet would appear noticeably redder.

In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to 4.6 micron light.
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Jason Wang @thejason.wang · 13/04/2026
Super excited for @balmer.bsky.social to be joining us this fall! Welcome to the @heisingsimonsfdn.bsky.social 51 peg b family!
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
xkcd title text @xkcd-titletext.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Title text: "An old astronomer trick for distinguishing the Sun from other stars is to take multiple photos a few minutes apart and overlay them, making the Sun stand out due to its high proper motion." Alt text: explainxkcd.com/3219#Transcript
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
its joever
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
🤠 back to protoplanets. somehow we return to our roots
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
thank you!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
give me enough time in the control room and ill dig them the dark hole myself
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
waahouu!!
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
thanks! you too :]
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
got one
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
...!!! this would have been perfect to know for a brown dwarf proposal i submitted, that was accepted! we got time for direct imaging in the same filters instead... unlikely, but maybe there's a way to work together?
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/02/2026
In case you’re just waking up, the U.S. has teamed up with Israel overnight to start an illegal war of regime change, apparently on a presidential whim with no involvement of Congress, and they are already committing horrific atrocities.
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Suleiman Baraka in Gaza says this about his work: “I decided to fight the killing of the children by educating the children.... astronomy “is also a window for breathing freedom that we were denied for our whole life". I think this is the reason the world needs it. All of us need his example.
undark.org
In Gaza, Scanning the Sky for Stars, Not Drones
A Palestinian scientist's effort to bring astronomy to Gaza has begun to bear fruit, but steep hurdles remain.
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
needs a catchy limerick for memorization. periapsis in abstract, perihelion for the Sun, perigee for the Earth, and periastron for binary stars (inherited by exoplanets, which are really just very small binary stars), lil omega, a.o.p., the forgotten one, etc
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
that's an easy fix. just plot the upper 1 sigma uncertainty on argument of periastron on the abscissa, and the lower 1 sigma uncertainty on the tess input catalog stellar effective temperature on the ordinate. basically as informative as m or r vs P imo
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
we found the same with nircam last year! two independent instruments showing strong CO2 features and the power of JWST at high contrasts
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
woohoo a high throughput coronagraph in space 😀
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Reposted by Dr. William O. Balmer
The Onion @theonion.com · 06/01/2026
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant…
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks
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Dr. William O. Balmer @balmer.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
i think i heard so!
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