iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 24/06/2026

No less than 60 million stars in one image. It's possible thanks to ESA's Euclid mission. For just one day, Euclid turned its gaze to the crowded heart of the Milky Way and captured the largest, most detailed photo ever taken of our galaxy's centre in visible light. Let's dive deeper 👇 🔭 🧪 ☄️ 1/8

A dense field of tiny stars fills this square image taken by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. The lower and central areas are dominated by bright yellow and gold colours, forming a textured background similar to fine glitter or sand. Dark brown and black patches cut irregularly through the yellow regions, like ink stains or clouds of smoke. Toward the upper left, the colours shift to purple and reddish tones, blending gently into the surrounding star field. Small blue points of light are scattered across the image.

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Anthony of the Badlands @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Well crap. I accidentally found a complete and articulated stupid Xiphactinus today in the Niobrara

A string of tan fish vertebrae leading to a blown out tail fin. Dorsal fin to the side. The chalk is dusty.

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Physics Magazine @physicsmagazine.aps.org · 21/05/2026

By converting a laser's wavelength into shorter harmonics, researchers have overcome the diffraction limit to pack even more energy into ultra-powerful pulses.

physics.aps.org

Harmonics Push Lasers Toward Record Intensities

Researchers have unlocked a method to dramatically boost the intensity of high-power lasers, opening the route toward light-induced matter creation.

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Daniel Keys Moran @fatsam.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I have a boy at NASA in the supercomputing group. I bet he'll like this.

Panel 1: What normal people see

Panel 2: Pic of Jupiter

Panel 3: What NASA sees

Panel 4: a slingshot

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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 13/05/2026

Autotuning gravitational-wave detectors using the chirps of the cosmos! ⚫⚫🎶🎛️ Meet #GW240925 and #GW250207, two new, LOUD #GravitationalWave detections that have enabled us to use astrophysical calibration to tune our laser interferometers 🖼️ : @astronerdika.bsky.social, @sbisco.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

The Autotune problem in gravitational waves: understanding astrophysical calibration with music

1. We hear an autotuned recording (detector data) and we want the original voice recording (gravitational wave).
BUT
2. We don’t know the autotune settings (calibration uncertainty).
3. So we use a bunch of trial voice recordings (waveform templates) and apply various autotune settings to them to obtain a set of autotuned recordings.

The best match reveals BOTH the autotune settings AND the original voice recording!

GW240925 and GW250207 Events

GW240925 with component masses of about 9 and 7 solar masses located roughly 1.1 billion light-years away.

GW250207 masses of about 35 and 30 solar masses located about 600 million light-years away.

LIGO Livingston and Virgo were online and observing fine, but LIGO Hanford had calibration issues. KAGRA was not observing at the time.

The Distorted Recording

Infographic describing gravitational-wave detector calibration. Three panels show:

A compact binary system of two orbiting black holes producing gravitational waves.
A stylized interferometer being stretched and squeezed by passing waves, illustrating calibration and detector response.
A green waveform representing the recorded gravitational-wave signal.

Detectors measure tiny changes in distance, and calibration disentangles the true gravitational-wave signal from distortions introduced by the detector response.

More Detectors = Better Localisation

Infographic explaining how adding more gravitational-wave detectors improves sky localisation. On the left, two detectors (Livingston + Virgo) localise a source to a large ring-shaped region on the sky. On the right, adding Hanford creates overlapping rings from different detector pairs (H+L, H+V, L+V), shrinking the possible source location to a much smaller region.

Astrophysical calibration was needed to use Hanford data

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Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Wanna go surfing on Saturn's moon Titan? The forecast calls for 40-meter waves of liquid methane that move slowly and freeze you death. Cooooooooool. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/how-big-ar... 🔭 🧪

badastronomy.beehiiv.com

How big are the liquid methane waves on Titan? And another Voyager 1 instrument turned off

Very cool research shows just how gnarly surfing is on other worlds, and a venerable spacecraft is losing power rapidly

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Claire Lamman @clairelamman.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

So happy to finally share this: I made a long-form comic about Hawking radiation for Physics Today! Although it's a short read, I hope it sucks you in ;) physicstoday.aip.org/features/bla...

physicstoday.aip.org

Black holes aren’t black

A half century after the discovery of Hawking radiation, we are still dealing with the quantum puzzle it exposed.

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Its important to remember that in addition to being evil, fascism is incredibly lame.

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

And the final score. Scott Adams: 3, Incurable Health Issues: 1

X post from Scott Adams April 17, 2022. "Number of incurable health issues I cured in myself: 3"

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WIRED @wired.com · 08/01/2026

We've removed the paywall from this guide so everyone can access it. 👇 Stay safe.

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Nicole Mortillaro @nebulousnikki.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Guys! Guys! This is SO cool. This is a time lapse from the Chandra X-ray Observatory of Kepler’s Supernova Remnant over 25 years!

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The Onion @theonion.com · 12/12/2025

Frustrated Trump Struggling To Find Any Infrastructure Left In Indiana To Destroy theonion.com/frustrated-trump-strug…

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Usually when my home state is in the news it is to be a disappointment, but not today. Proud of every hoosier who stood up against Trump.

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Neal Agarwal @neal.fun · 10/12/2025

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

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Andy Moore @aaandmoore.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Attempt number seven at uploading this video of intermediate filaments in an enormous COS7 cell. I have a feeling the BlueSky compression will not do it any favors.

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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

First day of classes at @jhuartssciences.bsky.social. A glorious day to learn #QuantumMechanics! I'm teaching two courses - QM for physics majors, and Philosophy of Cosmology for a general audience. I'm going to try to maintain a thread saying what happens in each class, let's see how I do.

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

It must be exhausting being Matt Walsh. Just getting into a frothing rage every time he encounters human decency.

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ceej @ceej.online · 01/10/2025

if the government doesn’t show up for ten minutes we all get the day off

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

An optically addressable qubit encoded in a fluorescent protein could be used as a sensor to measure quantum properties inside living systems. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/protein-qu...

physicsworld.com

Protein qubit can be used as a quantum biosensor – Physics World

A qubit encoded in a fluorescent protein could act as a sensor to measure quantum properties inside living systems

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 21/08/2025

I'm sure many of you have seen the pulsar map (part of the plaques on the Pioneer Spacecraft and also went out on the Voyagers) The map features the period of the pulsar converted to binary, so you could sort of triangulate our position if you can decode the map. But there's a problem .... 1/3

Pioneer plaque that shows several symbols, such as the structure of the hydrogen atom, the pulsar map, a basic diagram of the solar system and a spacecraft leaving Earth and a male and female naked figure.

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

How hot can you make a solid before it melts? New research shows that gold can remain solid at temperatures >14 times its melting point – far beyond a supposed theoretical limit known as the “entropy catastrophe”. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/how-hot-ca...

physicsworld.com

How hot can you make a solid before it melts? – Physics World

Superheated gold stays solid at temperatures far beyond the predicted "entropy catastrophe"

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astrafoxen @astrafoxen.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea... 🔭

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Daniel Thorngren @dpthorngren.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Just found out about this fabulous diagram of the local stars from Reylé (2021). Stars with known planets are highlighted in green, and the brackets indicate how far above or below the galactic plane it is (in parsecs). You can look at a few versions of the map here: gruze.org/10pc/resourc...

A map of the local stars near us, stretching out to 10 parsecs, viewed from above the galactic plane looking down. Around 500 stars are shown, mostly m-dwarfs, and many in binary systems. A bluish blob forms the background, representing local clouds of interstellar hydrogen. Two red circles stand out, representing the Stromgren Spheres of Sirius and 40 Eridani, which are regions where the stars have ionized the surrounding hydrogen. Stars with known planets are highlighted in green; not many stars are highlighted, which is more related to our ability to detect planets than whether they are actually there (it's much easier if they transit, but that's uncommon).

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Physicist and astronomer Willem de Sitter was born #OTD in 1872. He is best known for his work in Cosmology, applying Einstein’s general relativity to the dynamics and history of the universe, and also for strong "Jude Law as young Dumbledore" vibes. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ Image: history.aip.org/exhibits/cos...

A sepia tinted photograph of Willem de Sitter standing next to the eyepiece of a large telescope. He is wearing a suit with jacket and vest, a white collared shirt with a black bow tie, and a dark as well as a dark fedora. A watch fob extends from one of the vest's button holes to a pocket. De Sitter's left hand is in his pants pocket and his right arm rests on a ledge on the wall of the telescope dome. He is looking directly at the camera; part of the telescope instrumentation is between him and the camera but he is peering over it. De Sitter has a neatly trimmed beard and appears to have a cigar or cigarette in the corner of his mouth. A very strong "Jude Law as young Dumbledore" vibe.

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 25/04/2025

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Going to see Bernie!

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

I'll be shocked when the cause happens to align perfectly with their policy agenda and preconceived biases.

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Physics Magazine @physicsmagazine.aps.org · 10/04/2025

Light-induced, uni-directional flows of electrons in crystals were thought to require an exotic band structure, the application of a magnetic field, or both. Now researchers have observed a photocurrent in films made of single-element, nonmagnetic metals.

physics.aps.org

Normal Metals Made to Behave Exotically

A new experiment challenges the notion that only exotic materials exhibit nonlinear transport phenomena.

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hooda @hooda3.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

I'm sure this will lead to one spicy fundraising email.

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Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

A reminder that calling out Israel about their genocide of Palestinians is NOT antisemitic. I'm Jewish, and I think it goes against Jewish tradition to *not* call it out. "Zachor" (remember) and "never again" are phrases used by Jews specifically about the Holocaust. Yet here we are.

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Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

An extremely distant galaxy — we see it as it was just 330 million years after the Big Bang! — is blasting out ultraviolet radiation. That in itself isn't surprising, but the thing is, *we shouldn't be able to see it*. How about some Monday science? badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-mind-cru... 🔭 🧪

badastronomy.beehiiv.com

A mind-crushingly distant galaxy lights up the Universe around it

JADES GS-z13 is sending out ultraviolet light from nearly the dawn of time. That we can see it at all is shocking.

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 14/03/2025

Planet Definitions xkcd.com/3063

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Rob DenBleyker @robdenbleyker.com · 28/02/2025

Balatro predicted an egg that gets more expensive forever, and nobody listened

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

A thread on Felix Klein, Emmy Noether, and credit where credit is due. Felix Klein gave a lecture at the Mathematical Society of Göttingen #OTD in 1918. The title was “On Hilbert’s first note on the foundations of physics." 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬

Black and white photo of Felix Klein. He wears a dark jacket, white shirt with a high collar, and a thin black bow tie. Klein has a neat, short beard and his hair is parted on the far right. He is looking just to the right of and slightly above the photographer, with a serious and thoughtful expression on his face.

Black and white photo of Emmy Noether. She wears a white blouse with fine vertical stripes and puffy shoulders, and a light gray skirt fastened at the waist with a dark belt. There is a puffy black bow at her collar. Noether's dark hair is pulled back, and she is looking just down and to the right of the photographer. She is standing behind an ornate chair; only the back of the chair is visible in the photo.

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

J.J. Thomson was born #OTD in 1856. He discovered the electron, developed experimental techniques that led to mass spectroscopy, and trained physicists like Rutherford and Bohr. He was later BETRAYED by his own son, in the ultimate act of 20th century filial physics rebellion. (1/n) 🧪 ⚛️ 🎢

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Cody @codyjohnston.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Here's our new episode about that thing that happened. You know the thing. youtu.be/Z8R4XeNcHu8?...

youtu.be

Is Everyone Stupid? An Election Investigation – SOME MORE NEWS

YouTube video by Some More News

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