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Corey S. Powell

@coreyspowell.bsky.social
9.9K followers 1.1K following 2.6K posts

Fascinated by things very big, very small, and beyond the limits of the human senses. Founder of OpenMind: www.openmindmag.org Creator of the Invisible Universe column: invisibleuniverse.substack.com

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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 19h
"Yeah call me when it's my day"
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Geoff Brumfiel @gbrumfiel.bsky.social · 23h
The IceCube neutrino detector has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics. The Trump administration has proposed slashing its budget in half in 2027.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 23h
The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Francis Halzen, who figured out how to turn a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a neutrino detector. The resulting IceCube experiment is now studying extreme events across the universe. 🔭🧪 www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...
Francis Halzen, winner of the 2026 Nobel prize in physics Schematic of the IceCube experiment in Antarctica
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Debra's Astrophotography @debraceravolo.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Even though Saturn is 1.26 billion kms from Earth, this beautiful planet was as close to Earth as it gets this year making it appear big and bright. This is called opposition, which happened last night (October 4th). I used my 16 inch telescope. #astrophotography #astronomy #saturn
Planet Saturn at opposition on October 4, 2026. Rings are brighter than usual because they are reflecting the Sun's light while at opposition. Taken with a 16 inch telescope.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is your periodic reminder that humans are clever & are capable of great feats of discovery. We can solve huge problems when we set our minds to it, too. Here, seeing neutrinos from the bottom of a Canadian mine: 🧪 snoplus.phy.queensu.ca/geo.html
The expected geo-neutrino energy spectrum at the SNO+ detector in Sudbury,  Ontario.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
We can't touch the deep interior of our planet, but we can now see it in the "light" of neutrinos emitted by radioactive elements. Early results suggest our Earth is intriguingly lopsided. 🧪 www.quantamagazine.org/neutrinos-fr...
Lateral variation of mantle geoneutrino signal predicted for a “thermochemical piles” model. Early results seem to confirm this model.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The birth of Earth's Moon would have created a similar debris cloud around the Sun 4.5 billion years ago. We might be seeing analogous catastrophic moments of destruction & rebirth around other stars right now. (Art by Chesley Bonestell, one of my favorites.) 🔭🧪 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
"Earth is Born": Cover art for Life magazine, December 1952. A dramatic depiction of the formation of the Earth's continents. This was the first of several Bonestell paintings illustrating the essay series by Lincoln Barnett entitled "The World We Live In."
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
In astronomy, modest data points can hide stories of extreme drama. Here, each purple and white dot indicates a place where planets are colliding & destroying each other, releasing huge clouds of debris. (Artist's interpretation at right.) 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...
Left: By investigating the compositions of extreme debris disks, scientists inferred that silica-rich disks are produced by high-energy impacts of Mars-sized objects, while silica-poor disks are created by less energetic events from Moon-sized bodies.
Right: The types of collisions within young stellar systems known as extreme debris disks are relevant to scientists’ understanding of our own solar system, which is thought to have undergone similar impact events that created our Moon and shaped Earth’s initial state.
Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
China's Einstein Probe satellite uses "lobster eye" optics to provide a unique, wide-field look at the x-ray sky. If something goes bump in the night (in x-rays!), Einstein will see it. 🧪🔭 ep.bao.ac.cn/leia/
X-ray all-sky map obtained by China's Einstein Probe satellite
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Enigmatic flashes of x-rays in the sky may come from the catastrophic merger of two stars, creating an ultra-dense and ultra-magnetc remnant called a magnetar. The finding come from another kind of merger, one of Chinese & EU science missions. 🧪🔭 www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
Artist's impression of the Einstein Probe satellite observing the long-lasting soft X-ray emission from a binary neutron star merger and its post-merger remnant. The inset illustrates the schematic duration comparison of the burst emission detected in X-rays and gamma-rays.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Try "Li'l Schnack"
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026
Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc
nyti.ms
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Here comes the nor'easter, seen by the GOES-19 satellite. It's building outside my apartment, and it is *loud*. (The storm, that is, not the satellite.) 🧪 www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/conus.p...
Nor'easter imaged by the GOES-19 satellite.
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Ed Maibach @maibached.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Happy Stanislav Petrov Day He passed in 2017. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, “He is survived by his two children, two grandchildren, and the entire human race.” If you don't know his story, please take 3 minutes now to learn it. @gchalliance.bsky.social @docsforclimate.bsky.social
sammatey.substack.com
Happy Stanislav Petrov Day
Take five minutes to not destroy civilization
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Also really good at blocking out the Sun. Sometimes.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A surprise in the new computer simulations: The outcome of a giant impact depends sensitively on the temperature & composition of the protoplanet that (probably) struck Earth. A slight change would have produced a different kind of Moon, or no Moon at all. 🧪🔭 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Final state of two identical Moon-forming simulations at 1 M particle resolution, (top) without and (bottom) with strength, for identical initial temperature structures: hot (∼2000 K) but mostly solid. The proto-Earth is 0.877M⊕, and Theia is 0.133M⊕. Impact angle is θcoll = 45∘, the most probable, and impact velocity is vcoll/vesc = 1
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
There's a lot we still don't know about how the Moon formed, but new computer simulations show that the Moon might have come together in just a *few hours*. Which makes me feel really unproductive today. 🧪🔭 www.swri.org/newsroom/pre...
Final state of three identical Moon-forming simulations with different initial temperature profiles, from cold to hot: Tsurf ≈ 400 K (top row), Tsurf ≈ 800 K (middle row), and Tsurf ≈ 2000 K (bottom row), with strength included, shown at t = 0.5, 5, 12, and 24 hr. Colors represent temperature (see color bar).
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
How does a planet devour a moon? Full technical answer at the link. 🧪 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Saturn eating his son, by Rubens.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The Moon shaped a lot of life on Earth, including holidays (like Yom Kippur) anchored to the lunar calendar. But moons are delicate things. We managed to keep ours. Venus may have eaten its moon. One more way it lost out... 🧪🔭 news.ucr.edu/articles/202...
Scientists have long speculated why Venus, with a similar size, mass, and structure to Earth, doesn’t have a moon. New UC Riverside research shows it’s because our hungry twin likely swallowed it.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Pairs well with "'Psycho' Hotel Owner Dresses as His Dead Mother, Murders Guests"
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Beautiful and surprising every time.
Portishead Dummy album cover.
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Kevin M. Gill @kevinmgill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New postcard from Curiosity using Navcams taken on Sols 5000 & 5003 science.nasa.gov/photojournal...
science.nasa.gov
Curiosity Postcard Celebrates Rover’s 5,000th Day on Mars - NASA Science
While parked at a sand ridge nicknamed “Chocolatal,” NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Hold on, I was just measuring Olympic swimming pools and football fields
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The new lunar impact also created a big new cold spot on the Moon. Seems that the incoming asteroid loosened up the Moon dust, so it doesn't hold heat as well. Nighttime temperatures around McGetchin crater are about 8 degrees C colder than its surroundings. 🧪🔭 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Wow: Giant new impact crater spotted on the Moon! An asteroid the size of an apartment building hit the lunar surface in early 2024 & created 220-meter (730-foot) wide McGetchin crater. It's "the largest contemporary impact crater found in the Solar System." 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/solar-system...
Officially named McGetchin after pioneering lunar scientist Tom McGetchin, the crater formed on the Moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, after a comet or asteroid the size of a three- to six-story building hit the surface.
 
The crash left a crater, 728 feet wide, that spans the length of two football fields. And at 141 feet deep, the crater could fit three vertically stacked yellow school buses. Scientists estimate that an impact of this magnitude happens on the Moon about once in a century or even longer.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
You can find a huge version of this panorama of the star-forming region IC 348, along with more background information, here: esawebb.org/news/weic2619/
esawebb.org
Webb reveals stunning panorama of star formation - One of Webb’s largest images to date showcases the hunt for the smallest brown dwarfs
This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope released to the public so far. Using Webb, astronomers searched ...
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Look closely, and there's even more to see: shockwaves, distant galaxies, gravitational bending of light. This nebula is full of planet-mass objects that formed on their own like stars. What to call them? NASA says "brown dwarfs." Many astronomers disagree. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/i...
This collage features a collection of insets from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s image of star-forming region IC 348: embedded stars, a central star cluster, faint outflows, Herbig-Haro objects, gravitational lensing, and spiral galaxies.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Just in: A gorgeous new panorama of creation in our galaxy, taken by JWST. This image shows infant stars shooting out jets, baby stars emerging from dusty cocoons, young planet-like objects floating alone & starless, and one planet birthing planets of its own. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/i...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently observed IC 348, a star-forming region just 1,000 light-years away from Earth. Webb’s sharp vision revealed tiny brown dwarfs, some just twice Jupiter’s mass, and young stars ejecting powerful jets crashing into surrounding gas and dust.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And most of the past Earths would have been completely inhospitable to human life! The world we know, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere and land covered with plants, has existed for less than 10% of geologic history.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
90% of all the helium in the universe today was already around at the time of the Big Bang. All the stars in the universe, cranking out fusion reactions for 13 billion years, have managed to contribute only 10%. That's how efficient solar/stellar energy is! 🔭🧪 iopscience.iop.org/collections/...
The Andromeda Galaxy, a typical spiral galaxy of the modern universe.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
According to the standard model of the Big Bang, the universe was born containing 24.7% helium by mass. A new galaxy survey finds that the actual helium content was 24.6% (with a little uncertainty)! It's amazing that human brains figured out how the universe began. 🧪🔭 news.osu.edu/using-helium...
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a spectacular view of the galaxy  I Zwicky 18 (I Zw 18) in this new image. The galaxy was first identified by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1930’s and resides roughly 59 million light-years from Earth.

This galaxy has gone through several sudden bursts of star formation. This galaxy is typical of the kinds of galaxies that inhabited the early Universe and it is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy (much smaller than our Milky Way). Galaxies like this one make it possible to measure how much helium the universe was born with.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
There's a sense of community born out of shared trauma, and one born out of shared aspirations. 9/11 brought us the first, briefly. When I watched the launch of NASA's Roman telescope, I saw a lot of the latter. We need more of that kind of community: optimistic, forward-looking, sustainable. 🧪🔭
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope on board is seen transiting the sun during launch from Launch Complex 39A, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA/John Kraus
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Ha! I recall seeing copies of this letter (or something very similar) when I was the editor of Discover, 15 years ago. For better or worse, this type of smug drivel has been around a long time.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
There is something sadly Suessian about our current situation.
Sneetches, man. We are living in an age of Sneetches.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Do you have the reference link? It's hard to find some of these shots within the huge NASA photo drop.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
A new study has exposed a major blind spot in our view of the cosmos. Objects that shine in extreme UV are among the most energetic sources in galaxies. Yet we've overlooked them because we lack the right instruments & they get hidden by interstellar fog. 🧪🔭 chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2026/m...
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The galaxy pair is also known as "Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola" (“Twin Spirits Pulling Together Creating Life"). The name was chosen by a trio of high school interns who helped direct the creation of this image using the Gemini North observatory. 🧪🔭 noirlab.edu/public/news/...
Project Hōkūlani interns Alia Tamanha, Raiyan Rahman, and Rafan Rahman visited the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea to learn about telescope operations and the diversity of careers that exist on the mauna. They inspired the new image of the galaxy pair "Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola"
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Gas + gravity + time leads to surprising and gorgeous results. Look at this peculiar galaxy pair, NGC 7253. Gravity caused a couple hundred billion balls of hydrogen to light up as stars, held together in two great swarms that then collided, scattered & reassembled. 🧪🔭 noirlab.edu/public/image...
Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola is the Hawaiian name given to this image of NGC 7253 — a pair of spiral galaxies caught in each other’s gravity. This image was captured by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. The name of the image, which translates to “The Twin Spirits Pulling Together Creating Life,” was chosen by the 2026 Project Hōkūlani interns.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
And he was a pioneer of color photography! (Not news to you, I expect, but I was quite surprised.) Maxwell was a remarkable human all around. www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?i...
historyofinformation.com
History of Information
An interactive, illustrated timeline of historic moments in humankind's quest for information. With annotations by Jeremy Norman.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
James Clerk Maxwell was also a poet! www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45777/...
poetryfoundation.org
Molecular Evolution
dry nurse of Red Lions, From thee the wise their wisdom learn, From thee they cull those truths of science, Which into thee again they turn. Soon, all too…
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
A Chinese spy satellite broke up in an unusual retrograde (backward) orbit, creating a field of space debris that will remain up there for decades or more. There have now been more than 600 fragmentation events in Earth orbit. 🧪🔭 spacenews.com/chinese-reco...
A Long March 6A rocket lifts off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, March 15, 2026, carrying the Yaogan-50 (02) satellite into orbit. Credit: CASC
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Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Quite enjoy getting this sort of alert. An asteroid has just been discovered before it’ll hit Earth! It’ll enter the atmosphere just northwest of Australia. (Don’t worry: it’s ~1m long, so it’ll just make a cool, brief fireball. We aren’t all about to die.)
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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It can be hard to appreciate the vastness of just one (1) light-year. The most distant human-made object has been hurtling into space for almost 50 years, and its distance from Earth is just about to reach 1/365th of a light-year.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It's been a long, challenging path to Mercury. A glitch with BepiColombo's thruster added a year to its travel time. But the probe will reach final orbit in December & science begins next spring. Mercury like we've never seen it before! 🧪🔭 arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...
A monitoring camera onboard the Mercury Transfer Module captured this view of Mercury’s cratered surface during a flyby on January 8, 2025. Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The BepiColombo spacecraft just broke in two. In December, the remainder will split in two again. It's all part of the elaborate preparations for making the best-ever observations of the enigmatic planet Mercury. 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
Artist’s impression showing the Mercury Transfer Module separate from the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) composite spacecraft. The transfer module is only needed for the journey to Mercury. The two science orbiters will be captured into Mercury orbit, and the small thrusters on MPO will be used to deliver MMO into its orbit. There, MMO will be ejected from MPO and spun up. MPO will then discard the sunshield, and continue into its own orbit around Mercury.Artist’s impression showing the Mercury Transfer Module separate from the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) composite spacecraft. The transfer module is only needed for the journey to Mercury. The two science orbiters will be captured into Mercury orbit, and the small thrusters on MPO will be used to deliver MMO into its orbit. There, MMO will be ejected from MPO and spun up. MPO will then discard the sunshield, and continue into its own orbit around Mercury.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I was just talking about it with a friend. We were fantasizing about an extended dance mix with unplayed beats.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The first private Venus probe--part of a planned set of Morning Star Missions--is taking shape in California. It will sample the Venusian clouds to see if they could possibly support life. But for now it's grounded, awaiting the debut of its Neutron rocket. 🧪🔭 www.leonarddavid.com/unveiling-ve...
Sara Seager holds a mission to Venus probe to investigate its atmosphere. Image credit: Sara SeagerAn illustration shows Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft above the clouds of Venus (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It's not at all hard to imagine that he'd now be a snarky MAGA agitator.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Two magnetic observatories in London recorded the effects of the Carrington Event. The readings were, literally, off the charts. A day earlier, astronomer Richard Carrington had observed an eruption on the Sun and recognized a new phenomenon: a solar flare. 🧪🔭 geomag.bgs.ac.uk/education/ca...
The 'Carrington Event' of August 27th to September 7th, 1859 - recorded at Greenwich Observatory, London. Declination, or compass direction, (D) is the lower trace on each image and the horizontal force (H) is the upper trace. Universal Time is the time recorded here (astronomical) plus 12 hours and measured D precedes H by approximately 12 hours.
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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Happy Carrington Event Day to all who celebrate. On Sept 2-3, 1859, a huge solar flare hit Earth with the most intense magnetic storm on record. Auroras bloomed, magnetometers went wild, and telegraph machines sparked around the world. 🧪 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Carrington’s (1859) carefully executed drawing of his sunspot group 520 on 1 September 1859, the first visual record of a solar flare. The initial (A and B) and final (C and D) positions of the white-light emission are indicated. Solar east is to the right. Below: Enlargement of region 520 from an early solar photograph made at Kew Observatory by Warren De la Rue on 31 August 1859.
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