iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 22/09/2026

Come and join us! We have cake (at a responsible frequency). You also get to work with me. Which I hope isn't excessively off-putting!

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 19/09/2026

I'll admit I'm a little intrigued as to how Meta AI intends to convert a photo of my thesis into a tarot card. But not intrigued enough to find out...

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 18/09/2026

I wrote a little bit about finishing the Munros, and what's next. Maybe what's next is being semi-consistent about writing? Who knows? uproute.substack.com/p/8421?r=2a2...

uproute.substack.com

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The end, and new Beginnings. Wherein I complete my first Munro round and muse on future plans.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 15/09/2026

One list I'm not unhappy to be on.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 10/09/2026

I think you'll find he was in fact blown towards, and not out.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Happy publication day morning to me!! Dear friend @chrislintott.bsky.social said on record that it was "Truly unique! Sparkling with charm and interest & uncompromisingly clear". In person he said "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but it was surprisingly good" 🥳 Major compliment! 🤗🧪

"Sparkling with charm and interest".
Chris Lintott present of The Sky at Night
Catherine's book is below it, looking dark and moody, but with peachy-pink tones.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 10/09/2026

So giving everyone $5000 collected from general taxation, and... Redistributed...? I didn't see socialism being the big pivot Trump would make for the midterms.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 08/09/2026

Watching the trailer for the Ocarina of Time remake was nerve-wrecking. There are few things scarier, it turns out, than seeing a core part of your childhood being remastered in 4k. With voice acting.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 08/09/2026

8 September 2026. The day my kitchen appliances started making veiled threats against me by email.

Two consecutive emails, from hotpoint and beko, both with the subject line "Daniel, accidents happen..."

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 08/09/2026

Strong assumption that it was identifiable.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

I discovered that the acoustics of my new(ish) home office are surprisingly good today. Apologies to the neighbours.

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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Preprint out today: A short review of science to come from GWTC-4.0 and GWTC-5.0 put together with @daniel-williams.co.uk arxiv.org/abs/2609.03859 Catch up on some of the recent advances in gravitational-wave astronomy 🔭☄️🧪⚛️ #GWTC4 #GWTC5

Timeline of LIGO Virgo KAGRA observing runs, showing the increase in detector range and increase in the number of detections

Comparison of our first detection GW150914 and recent loud detection GW250114. While the sources are similar, GW250114 is much louder because of advances in our detectors. This means that measurements of source properties are much more precise.

The inferred mass distribution of binary black holes from GWTC-3.0, GWTC-4.0 and GWTC-5.0. As we have built larger catalogues, the precision of the inferred distribution has improved.

Timeline of observing runs and data releases. GWTC-6.0 will release in December this year, so expect more science!

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

The summary paper would be an especially good option if you need a journal club paper 👀 as it's concise, and has pretty plots which your journal clubmates are sure to enjoy.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

(This is also my first foray into cosmology; I'm finally branching-out from the cataloguing business).

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

Gravitational waves let us do this a few different ways, but we're using black holes to do it. That's not, in and of itself, new, however we've developed a technique which allows us to squeeze even more information out of our observations, and ultimately get a better answer with fewer observations.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

We were invited to put this together by Nature Astronomy, and we're hoping to see it in print later in the autumn all going well!

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

I'd like to think of this paper as a celebration of just how far we've come in so little time as a field. It was fun to put this together as well as trying to find some novel ways to put this together visually.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

In arxiv.org/abs/2609.03859 @cplberry.bsky.social and myself have a look at the new things the cornucopia of new black hole collisions have taught us about the Universe and the way it works. We also have what I hope are some handy never-seen-before plots.

The primary mass spectrum of black holes. The plot shows three lines, each with an accompanying shaded region showing the line's uncertainty, plotted on axes: primary mass on the x axis and rate on the y axis. The lines are broadly similar, peaking around a value of 10, with an elbow close to 40 solar masses where the rate starts to drop off more sharply.

A timeline showing various observing runs as coloured blocks and data releases as diamonds. There are lines above the blocks which indicate the content of each data release.

The image shows three plots. On the left are two similar waveform plots, with time on the x axis of each, and whitened strain on the y axis. The upper plot shows GW150914 in blue, the lower GW250114 in green. The lines look similar, with both containing a noisy waveform, but the green, lower plot is much clearer than the blue, upper plot. On the right hand side two contour plots are overlaid, showing the posterior distribution of the primary against the secondary mass. The blue contour is much larger than the green one, but they have very similar median values.

A timeline plot showing coloured bars for each observing run. The height of the bar is proportional to the sensitivity of the detectors in that observing run. There are points marked on the plot which indicate detected candidates which are plotted against their inferred luminosity distance on the y-axis.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 07/09/2026

Today's a rare and coveted double new paper day* for me. 📄What we've learned so far from the 2023-2025 observing run: arxiv.org/abs/2609.03859 📄Measuring the expansion of the Universe with black holes, better: arxiv.org/abs/2609.04991 * for me; I was on holiday the day the first one came out...

arxiv.org

Expanding the scope of dark siren cosmology: Inferring the population properties of gravitational wave-hosting galaxies

The field of gravitational wave "dark siren" cosmology is facing a number of challenges surrounding the way in which galaxy catalogue data is incorporated into the analysis. The three biggest challeng...

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 22/08/2026

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Gravitational wave astronomer: *makes strange gesture with arms* the cup expands in one direction, contracts in another, but its volume remains constant as spacetime distorts.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 22/08/2026

You should not call water water, it is dihydrogen oxide.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 22/08/2026

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Cosmologist: The cup is expanding in all directions all of the time. We don't know how fast it's happening, and our measurements all seem to contradict each other.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 21/08/2026

So Daniel, what's the best thing you've done to the flat since you bought it? Paint? New floors? No, I installed a sensor which would identify when my laundry had dried by the ambient humidity.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 04/08/2026

Calling Terry Pratchett a fantasy writer, while not disingenuous, is inexcusably reductionist.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 29/07/2026

In a bizarre state of affairs, you presume incorrectly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele...

en.wikipedia.org

Michele Dougherty - Wikipedia

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 29/07/2026

To my great surprise, I was oddly heartened by the reader comments on the BBC News website's coverage of the story. I'd assumed it would be mostly "why are we wasting money on 1950s out-dated infrastructure when we could be filling potholes". It was not.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 03/07/2026

In a moment of peak adulting, I am disproportionately excited about having just had an induction hob installed in my kitchen.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 24/06/2026

Second city of both the UK and Scotland.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 10/06/2026

I mean, we're 20 miles out into the countryside. There's no public transport, but there hasn't been since the 70s.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 10/06/2026

Well, I certainly chose an interesting week to visit family in Northern Ireland.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 02/06/2026

I presume you need the onesie to stay warm, and the coffee to stay awake while using your expensive telescope.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 02/06/2026

Not to suggest that I approve in any way of embezzlement, but there are worse things you could have bought with the money...

A list of objects purchased by Peter Murrell, including a telescope and a coffee machine.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 26/05/2026

It's results day at the gravitational-wave factory! We have an exciting treasury of new events: from three events a decade ago to almost 400 to date.

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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Nice seeing gravitational waves highlighted as driving technological innovation. As well as advances in optics and photonics, technologies have been applied to help grow bone tissue and to monitor the performance of retinal scanners. Investing in fundamental research can lead to surprising benefits

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 18/05/2026

Not to mention the somewhat harder-to-quantify benefits from UKRI-funded researchers developing techniques for GW astronomy, and then going into the broader economy with the skills they developed in so doing.

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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 14/05/2026

"On the application of astrophysical signals to gravitational-wave detector calibration" — an artistic interpretation of our latest science with #GW240925 and #GW250207 by @asleepywanderer.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️🐡

A poster in the style of an old Victorian science book showing depicting how we use astrophysical calibration to tune our detectors. The poster shows binary black holes (the source of our signals), illustrations of the gravitational-wave signals, the laser between our mirrors of our interferometer with a scale bar indicating the precision over which they need calibrating (they are really, really, really precise).

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UofGNews @uofgnews.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Gravitational wave researchers at @uofgphysastro.bsky.social and @uofgravity.bsky.social, working as part of the LVK collaboration, have found a way to tune their detectors using a process akin to the pitch-correction used in music production. Read more here: www.gla.ac.uk/news/headlin...

A visualisation of gravitational wave detectors at work. Image credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav / Swinburne University of Technology

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 09/05/2026

You know what, I should start doing the lottery.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 08/05/2026

Only two out of three steps, and only during specific hours.

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 08/05/2026

Great Britain. A modern advanced economy. Where, when I move house, I need to fill in one form to update the address on my Driving Licence, another to update the address on my car logbook, and then phone someone to update my car tax details. The second form is only available during work hours...

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Glasgow Science Centre @glasgowscience.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Celebrate 10 years of gravitational wave astronomy with a family lecture in The Planetarium! Discover how ripples in space reveal black holes, exploding stars and the secrets of the Universe, led by experts from @uofgravity.bsky.social 9 May | Ages 8+ | No experience needed bit.ly/3P61Dih

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