Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 03/11/2025This was done with @anthropic.com's Claude Code. You can grab the code yourself here: github.com/rtfisher/tor... .github.comGitHub - rtfisher/torque-free-rigid-rotation: Python simulator for torque-free rigid body rotation with dual-frame visualizationPython simulator for torque-free rigid body rotation with dual-frame visualization - rtfisher/torque-free-rigid-rotation 030
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 03/11/2025I have been experimenting with large language models to "collaboratively" write code to illustrate key physical concepts for my junior-level mechanics class for physics majors. It did a very nice job in generating an animation of the "tennis racket theorem." 141
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 28/10/2025We're hiring a teaching physics professor! Our campus feels like a liberal arts sized college within a research university. Our current teaching faculty teach first year to graduate level courses and mentor undergraduate and graduate research students. careers.umassd.edu/en-us/job/52...careers.umassd.eduDetails - Assistant/Associate Teaching Professor - PhysicsDiscover exciting career opportunities at UMass Dartmouth. Join our diverse team and make a difference. Explore job openings now at UMassD! 083
Reposted by Robert Fisher Philip Mocz @philipmocz.bsky.social · 14/09/2025I noticed Google search is no longer reliable for quick unit conversions & calculations. So I built a simple online calculator Give it a spin: pmocz.github.io/online-unit-... 1134
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 18/08/2025Generative AI is rapidly progressing and threatens to inundate us. A new paper (including my old Caltech classmate Serge Belognie) utilizes noise-encoded illumination to “watermark” live video. It offers some hope for those concerned for team reality. arxiv.org/abs/2507.23002 h/t @truesciphi.orgarxiv.orgNoise-Coded Illumination for Forensic and Photometric Video AnalysisThe proliferation of advanced tools for manipulating video has led to an arms race, pitting those who wish to sow disinformation against those who want to detect and expose it. Unfortunately, time fav... 060
Reposted by Robert Fisher Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 28/07/2025📣📣 BOOK NEWS 📣📣 I'm excited to share the cover and release date of Book #2, #EdgeOfSpaceTime, which is now available for PREORDER!! You can order from ANY bookstore, including your local indie! More details on preordering here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817... What's the book about? 🧵 56922249
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 27/07/2025It's always great to see the successes of former students. Postdoc Chris Byrohl @cbyrohl.bsky.social, whom I've known he was an undergraduate, published an amazing paper this week on his new GPU accelerated Ly-α radiative transfer code THOR Hugely impressive results! arxiv.org/abs/2507.11603 060
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 07/05/2025Definitely a huge challenge but I know we will eventually get there. It's something I also confronted when teaching math methods; software systems have been better at doing integrals than introductory students for decades, but that doesn't mean we have stopped teaching calculus. 020
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 07/05/2025They are extremely useful for many tasks -- from generating comments to code or git commits to developing perfectly formatted figures. But they are improving so rapidly we cannot really ignore them. A new generation of agentic tools like Claude Code are already here. 150
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 04/05/2025Experimenting with the @anthropic.com Claude Code command line beta. In some ways, it is a natural extension of the familiar chat LLM interface. In others, it offers a brief glimpse of more agentic AIs to come -- building and running code and analyzing results largely on its own. 020
Reposted by Robert Fisher sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 15/04/2025Really cool opportunity for advanced grad students and postdocs to learn about and discuss multi-messenger astrophysics in beautiful Santa Cruz! (featuring yours truly) 32911
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 08/04/2025My research group alumna, Mckenzie Ferrari has made her debut contribution to the astronomy reader's digest Astrobites! In her engaging review, Mckenzie dives into a paper exploring the origins of astronomical candles that shine a bit too brightly. aasnova.org/2025/04/08/s... 🔭🧪aasnova.orgShedding Light on Candles That Burn a Bit Too BrightAstrobites reports on how standard candles might not be quite as standard as previously thought, and how a particular type of supernova is making a name for itself. 072
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 30/03/2025This looks cool!! The postdocs and students at @hitsters.bsky.social developed a Habitable board game last year while I was there. There was a limited run of physical copies, but there is a version available online for free. tabletopia.com/games/habita...tabletopia.comHabitableThis is Habitable, a fun deck-building game where players try to find planets, make them habitable, keep them habitable, and make life flourish. We are an international team of astrophysicists 110
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 24/03/2025The ESA Gaia mission mapped out the positions and velocities of over a billion stars in our galaxy and led directly to dozens of breakthrough investigations in stellar astrophysics. Godspeed. 0133
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 06/03/2025When I was a teaching assistant for Alex Filippenko’s large introductory astronomy course, Alex solicited us (the TAs) for exam questions. The end product was some combination of the best questions from both Alex and the TAs. 110
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 02/03/2025Kramers and Holst (1923) captures the brief "old quantum mechanics" of Bohr and Sommerfeld in beautiful illustrations. archive.org/details/atom... Ht/Paul Prudence 0215
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 17/02/2025Pre-tenure: ~ 1 course per semester. Post-tenure: ~ 1 course / 5 years. 120
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 13/02/2025I usually do this as a homework assignment, but it could work in-class: given stellar data, “discover” the HR diagram by plotting mags and then abs mags versus colors. Also interactively see the difference between a magnitude and volume limited sample. 100
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 08/02/2025Indeed, we had a preview of what a sudden endowment shortfall looks like — Harvard for instance couldn’t even afford to put breakfast on the table for their students. That is precisely their goal here. 010
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 28/12/2024There's actually quite a literature surrounding hypothetical "neutrino balls," going back at least to Holdom, 1987 (journals.aps.org/prd/abstract...).journals.aps.orgCosmic balls of trapped neutrinosFermions trapped inside a closed domain wall may cool to degeneracy and form a long-lived structure. In the context of spontaneous left-right-symmetry breaking, we show that trapped right-handed neutr... 010
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 24/12/2024Dan Scolnic posted about it on the other side. x.com/dscol/status...x.comx.com 040
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 23/12/2024OS/X (both Intel and silicon) is currently supported, but only minor tweaks will be needed for Windows. github.com/rtfisher/sni...github.comGitHub - rtfisher/snid_dockerContribute to rtfisher/snid_docker development by creating an account on GitHub. 020
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 23/12/2024The requisite legacy PGPLOT library is automatically downloaded and installed with X-Windows interface support. The container hosts the X11 server which the user can easily connect to via a local X11 client on their desktop. The best part is this is all accomplished by running a single script. 120
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 23/12/2024I’ve written a short Docker file to easily enable anyone to run Blondin & Tonry’s SuperNova IDentification (SNID) code on almost any platform. (1/2) 193
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 19/12/2024@kanopyofficial.bsky.social is widely used at universities and public libraries in the US. www.kanopy.com/sites/defaul...kanopy.com 010
Reposted by Robert Fisher Dr. Skylar Grayson @skylargrayson.bsky.social · 10/12/2024Periodic reminder that the sun isn’t going to explode. It will slowly ploof out and completely wreck the inner solar system in ~5 billion years but a ploof is very different from a boom. The sun (as crazy as this seems when you think about how big the sun is) is too small to go supernova 7648
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 07/12/2024So many Weinberg gems in this talk. This one slide distills the essence of his approach to science wonderfully. As someone who interacts primarily through the command line still, I feel for the loss of the “good old days” of MS-DOS. 🙂 0133
Reposted by Robert Fisher Nilesh Trivedi @nilesh.trivedi.link · 29/11/2024floss.fund is offering $1 million per year grant to open-source projects. But very few applications have been received so far, and it needs help spreading the word. Please RT/boost and upvote it on HackerNews: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4227... #foss #OpenSource #sustainabilityfloss.fundFunding for Free and Open Source projects - FLOSS/fund 2166
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 01/12/2024Exciting to see so many new folks here. I’m a computational astrophysicist working to understand how dead cinders of stars can blow up and light up the sky in a last hurrah. We use big computers. (Figure below courtesy of current PhD student Vrutant Mehta and collaborator Ruediger Pakmor.) 1205
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 26/11/2024I wonder if @aip.bsky.social has statistics on this — both within the field and to other fields. 030
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 19/11/2024This entire series is amazing! I think you’ve captured the spirit of the text — which aims for a very intuitive understanding of many complex topics with a minimum of technical detail (stuffed into a lot of appendices!) perfectly in digital form. 110
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 16/11/2024Started using containers for a recent workshop presentation. Definitely will solve your dependency issues and also guarantee reproducibility (if done right) as a bonus. 020
Reposted by Robert Fisher sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 18/09/2024Exciting news everyone! I am hiring a postdoc scholar to work with me at Oregon State Physics. If you love computational astrophysics, supernovae, and/or compact object mergers, this may be a great fit for you. More information here: aas.org/jobregister/...aas.orgPostdoctoral Scholar in Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics | American Astronomical SocietyThe Department of Physics at Oregon State University invites applications for a 2 year postdoctoral scholar position. The successful candidate will work with Prof. Sanjana Curtis on multi-messenger as... 110759
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 06/10/2024I participated in the judging of an elevator pitch competition hosted by our campus’s NSBE chapter. Every one of the participants deserves the opportunity to go to the national meeting to advance their career aspirations. Can you help make it happen? www.linkedin.com/posts/maxime...linkedin.comMaxime Larsen on LinkedIn: #nsbegold #nsbegold #nsbeI just got asked a magical question! Why don't you bring every student from NSBE to the National Convention? I know the answer to this valid question but I… 000
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 22/09/2024The great astro Exodus from X took place early in Bluesky’s development, thanks to @astrokatie.com’s engagement. With X continuing to melt down, these numbers will only grow with time. 021
Reposted by Robert Fisher Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 29/07/2024A calming happy astro #poem for the start of your week. I'm guessing John Updike wasn't aware of the blaze star though, a white dwarf that is currently busy cannibalising its neighbour, and about to explode, creating hellfire for a whole week! 🧪🔭 😱 ℹ️: www.astronomyedinburgh.org/2024/07/10/t... 1216
Robert Fisher @fisherastro.bsky.social · 02/07/2024An impressive dialog! I suppose not many self-consistent infinite stacks of turtles happened to be in its training corpus. ♾️ 010