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Will M. Farr

@farrwill.bsky.social
1.1K followers 286 following 42 posts

Astrophysicist. Associate Professor at Stony Brook University, Gravitational Wave Astronomy Group Leader at Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics.

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Reposted by Will M. Farr
John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
WITCH KING: No man can kill me <Tree blows over onto him>
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
The exact moment I realised I shouldn’t have let the cat in the room while I was working out.
A photo of the bottom half of a person working out while a blurry, in-motion cat is mid-leap towards them.
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Andreas Freise @gwoptics.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
I completed my important task for the day: installing a cute little cat in my editor! For VS Code cats, see here: github.com/tonybaloney/vscode-pets Pets from other suppliers might also be available. #cat #vscode #editor
A code editor screenshot showing LaTeX syntax. A tiny cat sprite is visible in the lower left corner. The code in the window on the right includes commands like \closing, and \end{letter}, displayed with syntax highlighting in different colors.
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Karen Masters @karenlmasters.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
It’s squirrel appreciation day! Squirrels are not literally dark matter. Thanks @xkcd.com
It’s an xkcd comic about squirrels not being dark matter. The volume of the Earth would have about one squirrel mass of dark matter.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 21/01/2025
Chemical Formulas xkcd.com/3040
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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
For a little more reading in anticipation of future maths classes, a useful term to look for may be solid angle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_a...
en.wikipedia.org
Solid angle - Wikipedia
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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Exciting gravitational-wave candidate from yesterday S250114ax If real, the source is probably a binary black hole False alarm rate 1 in 7.7×10^18 yr GraceDB gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/... GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/38... Rating 🖤🪿🤝 [🧪🔭⚛️]
Initial sky localization. 90% area 37 sq deg.Initial three-dimensional volume localization. Distance around 470 Mpc.
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Mom would have been 82 today. She died at 55. I recently realized that I am now older than she ever was, which seems like a fundamental wrongness in the universe. I was particularly thinking about her penchant for taking a direct and vivid role in her schools’ disciplinary approaches. /1
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Charlotte Moore-Lambert @charlottereads.com · 12/01/2025
tldr the medium-range weather models are hemming and hawing over sending the East Coast more uhhhhh Weather and much deeper cold early next week. I wish there were more professional weather nerds on here so I could share some analysis but dang
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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 12/01/2025
COMPANY: We’ll set you up with a call with someone who can go over the many benefits of solar! ME: Let’s try this again. ME: I want solar for ethical reasons. I want to give someone money to make solar happen. That someone could be you. COMPANY: … ME: … COMPANY: We’ll send a guy out Tuesday.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
BOROMIR: I told you we should have put salt down last night ARAGORN: Leave it, Boromir. BOROMIR: But nooo. SOMEONE has a new weather app on his phone. ARAGORN: It said 'light snow' BOROMIR: Light snow is it? ARAGORN: Fucking hell dude. Just leave it. Are you going to be this all day? BOROMIR: Yes.
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The Shire-Reckoning @shire-reckoning.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Dawn reveals that the snow has stopped but that the trail is buried both ahead and behind. Aragorn and Boromir spend the first hour of daylight clearing a path back downhill. They reach the deepest drift last, flung across the trail almost as though to prevent their escape.
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👻 Saavik ‘Spooky Season’ Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
😂 he comes to CCA all the time! David Neufeld.
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Our house is safe. We are very grateful.
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Sarah Kendrew @sarahkendrew.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Fully concur with @emily.space. @esa.int ‘s Gaia mission has been transformative & a triumph for #openscience. Kudos & gratitude to my colleagues at the agency and to the whole Gaia data consortium for stellar work 💫✨🔭
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👻 Saavik ‘Spooky Season’ Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Yes, I am old & have been guilty of cutesy titles & even a few of the archaic ‘On…’ style titles. I have been fully won over by the young people. No one reads anything anymore. Your best chance of anyone knowing what you did is making it the WHOLE TITLE.
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Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
On Monday night, essentially the entire US will be able to see the Moon occult Mars, passing directly in front of the Red Planet and eclipsing it! This happens around 9:00 Eastern time, but can vary wildly depending on your location. This site has timings: lunar-occultations.com/iota/planets... 🔭
lunar-occultations.com
Occultation of a Planet
International Occultation Timing Association
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ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
I am a single issue voter and that issue is that I do not want to get leukemia from a retaliatory Ottowan dirty bomb strike on DC
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Mike Brown @plutokiller.com · 11/01/2025
You guys I just don't see how any of the wildlife survived with everything burnt down. Maybe Patch found a safe spot I dunno. Maybe the bobcats found a house shelter. I did see some deer yesterday. But I am sad and scared. So much destruction.
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👻 Saavik ‘Spooky Season’ Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
I had the weirdest dream: I was at a big dinner filled with my mentees… and my (beloved) thesis advisor… Oh wait, I’m actually organizing that dinner FOR THIS UPCOMING WEDNESDAY 😳😂
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Yvette Cendes @whereisyvette.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Applying to grad school this year in physics/astronomy? Think living in a funky Pacific Northwest college town surrounded by nature, working with lovely colleagues, is your jam? The University of Oregon Physics dept deadline is January 15! 🎢🧪🔭🦆 naturalsciences.uoregon.edu/physics/appl...
Pic with the UO duck
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
The Judge actually understanding what Bitcoin IS, is a problem for James' lawyers because their whole case pretty much depends on arguing that this isn't just covered by a very basic principle of English and Welsh law best summarised as: "You binned it. Stop being silly." /12
The position is no different in principle from what it would be if the record of the private key had been written on a piece of paper that had been put into the landfill. If the claimant had a separate record of the private key, he could use the private key to access the Bitcoin
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Dr. Tessa Fisher @tessafisher.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
It is with a heavy heart that I must report that 'galactic archaeology' isn't actually at all what it sounds like.
aas.org
Assistant Research Scientist Position in Galactic/Stellar Archaeology | American Astronomical Society
An assistant research scientist position (i.e., postdoc will full employee benefits) in Galactic and stellar archaeology under the mentorship of Prof. Kevin Schlaufman is available in the Johns Hopkin...
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
German colleague asked why so many people live in California with disasters like fire, mudslides, earthquakes. I used to live in Los Angeles. The disasters are evidence *for* how nice a place it is to live. If everyone lines up at a kebab stand in a war zone, you should believe it is damn good kebab
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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
TWO gravitational-wave candidates today S250109f and S250109bi If real, S250109f's source is probably a binary black hole False alarm rate 1 in 11,000 yr GraceDB gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/... GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/38... Rating 🦢🍦🍊 [🧪🔭⚛️] 1/🧵
S250109f initial sky localization. 90% area 810 sq deg.S250109f initial three-dimensional volume localization. Distance around 3.3 Gpc.
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
🔭🪐👩🏻‍🔬 #jobs
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Meet the destroyer HMS Glowworm. In April 1940 she was forced to fight the German Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper, ten times her size, and Hipper's destroyer escorts. Her extraordinary last stand earned her captain the first Victoria Cross of WW2. In part because THE GERMANS nominated him for one /1 🧵
side view of a British destroyer, with two funnels, at sea.
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Mike Brown @plutokiller.com · 08/01/2025
Me and the cats are now in our second evacuation spot after the first one needed to be evacuated. The cats, needless to say, are not pleased. I assume my house is gone, but we will see what the dawn brings. It's all just stuff. We saved what matters.
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Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
The quantum reason that ultra-massive stars are forbidden Black holes can be many billions of solar masses, but no star has more than a couple hundred solar masses. There's a quantum reason for that. bigthink.com/starts-with-...
bigthink.com
The quantum reason that ultra-massive stars are forbidden
There's no upper limit to how massive galaxies or black holes can be, but the most massive known star is only ~260 solar masses. Here's why.
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Mike Brown @plutokiller.com · 08/01/2025
We have had different level evacuation plans for a while. What to take with a day warning, hour warning, no warning. I just got to do the no warning version where I grab me, grab terrified cats, and split. We are now out of the path of the Eaton fire, but I paid in blood to get the cats secured.
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Will M. Farr @farrwill.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
@hogg.bsky.social & Kate Storey-Fisher’s quasar catalog makes the year-end roundup!
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Flatiron Institute @flatironinstitute.org · 08/01/2025
ICYMI: One of our biggest 2024 stories was the release of a new map co-created by #FlatironCCA scientists with ~1.3 million quasars from across the visible universe that could help scientists better understand the properties of dark matter. simonsfoundation.org/2024/03/18/l... #science #astrophysics
simonsfoundation.org
Largest-Ever Map of Universe’s Active Supermassive Black Holes Released
Largest-Ever Map of Universe’s Active Supermassive Black Holes Released on Simons Foundation
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Cameron @cameron.stream · 08/01/2025
Great git commit style tips for @dgerlanc.bsky.social dangerlanc.com/posts/git-gu...
dangerlanc.com
An opinionated guide to `git` collaboration (Part I)
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sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
we just moved so the house has been a cat’s paradise (boxes everywhere). I started breaking them down yesterday and turned around to find the kitten watching me with a look of horror on her face 😢
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David W Hogg @hogg.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Useful paper by Ting on biases in ML arxiv.org/abs/2412.05806 Very related to things Villar and I said in arxiv.org/abs/2405.18095
arxiv.org
Why Machine Learning Models Systematically Underestimate Extreme Values
A persistent challenge in astronomical machine learning is a systematic bias where predictions compress the dynamic range of true values -- high values are consistently predicted too low while low val...
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Durham on the weekend from Liam McCormick
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
TWENTY-FOUR LADY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SAY NO.
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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Time to plan out my intro physics class that starts next week, I really need to focus and get this done. [four hours later] 🔲 plan lectures 🔲 set homework schedule 🔲 decide on quiz dates 🔲 decide on exam dates 🔲 write syllabus ☑️ use pgf/TikZ to draw a very fancy, very empty calendar in LaTeX
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Laura Kreidberg @lkreidberg.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Classic astronomy ... when you have more than 6 data points, time to do a demographic study! nice work, Fu et al. :) arxiv.org/pdf/2501.02081
A screenshot of a figure showing 8 data points and the correlation between them
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Sabina Sagynbayeva @sabinastro.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
Taylor Swift saved my life. How? There was 10 min left of my brain MRI scan, and I was singing All Too Well (10 min version) to get through this. So thanks, Taylor.
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
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👻 Saavik ‘Spooky Season’ Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
Ok, I have finally knit a skirt (@asleepywanderer.bsky.social I did do it!)! #ShowMeYourKnits (sorry off theme this week) And it is astrophysically-themed—the 3rd in a series of gravitational wave inspired garments! I’ve now covered the frequency span from LVK to PTA! 🧶🔭⚛️🧪
Mirror selfie—I’m wearing a blue cardi-hoodie and a grey knit skirt held in place by a grey satin ribbon. There are about 2 dozen embroidered stylized pulsars, each with a blue neutron star and black jets scattered over the middle front of the skirt. If you look closely you can also see an embroidered set of axes on the hemline, which was knit transitioning from stockinette stitch to garter stitch along the Hellings-Downs curve: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellings-Downs_curveMirror photo closeup of right butt pocket on same skirt, with an embroidered pair of black holes, trailed by orange spirals of accreting gas, as might be expected for a pair of merging supermassive black holes in an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Pocket top is 2x2 rib, stockinette stitch for the rest, as is most of the rest of the skirt, except for the waistband, which is also a 2x2 rib, with interspersed vertical buttonholes, which have been threaded with a grey satin ribbon.Mirror closeup of same skirt showing left butt pocket clearly, with a large single pulsar embroidered with a blue neutron star also showing a few embroidered blue magnetic field loops and black jets. Large grey ribbon bow is visible up close, tied on the left side hip.
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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Happy birthday GW170104, here's a new gravitational-wave candidate S250104v If real, the source is probably a binary black hole False alarm rate 1 in 33000 yr GraceDB gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/... GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/38... Rating ⛅️🎱🍰 [🧪🔭⚛️]
Initial sky localization. 90% area 1600 sq deg.Initial three-dimensional volume localization. Distance around 5.4 Gpc.
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Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Happy perihelion! At 13:28 UTC, Earth reached its closest point to the sun in its orbit, a mere 147,104,000 million km distant, about 1.5% closer than average. It's all uphill now until aphelion in July.
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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
One more 2024 gravitational-wave candidate S241230bd If real, the source is probably a binary black hole False alarm rate 1 in 510000 yr GraceDB gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/... GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/38... Rating 🐌🍦🕊️ [🧪🔭⚛️]
Initial sky localization. 90% area 920 sq deg.Initial three-dimensional volume localization. Distance around 2.2 Gpc.
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Daniel Green @dangreen.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Dec 29 - Dispersion Relations & EFT arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9... Donoghue shows how to use subtracted dispersion relations to expose the structure of EFT. Specifically, this technique precisely illustrates UV information can be traded to local contact interactions.
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
One cat always tells the truth, and one cat always lies.
A backlit double glass doorway with a cat standing in each half of the door.
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Dan F-M @dfm.io · 25/12/2024
Now that I write code as a full-time job, I didn't think I would do adventofcode.com this year, but I couldn't stop myself. I just finished collecting all the stars, and it was great fun as always! Thanks for the fun ride, @was.tl!
adventofcode.com
Advent of Code 2024
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Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Merry Christmas from @booplefloof.bsky.social
Bear and gizmo trying to get at their stockings. Bear is on his hind legs. The stockings are on the bookshelves bc fire hazard.
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Daniel Green @dangreen.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Dec 25 - CMB Peak Locations arxiv.org/abs/1603.03091 Pan et al. use (semi-)analytic methods to model the location of all the CMB peaks at the level of the Planck peak measurements in TTTEEE (<1%). Many corrections are 1-10% and thus are essential for consistency with data.
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