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Kazu Akiyama

@kazuakiyama.bsky.social
202 followers 194 following 49 posts

Deputy Project Scientist of EHT (@ehtelescope.bsky.social), @Heriot-Watt (@heriotwattuni.bsky.social), ex: PI@MIT (@haystack.mit.edu). Photographing black holes. Dad. @Edinburgh, Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, UK🇬🇧 Tweeting in 🇬🇧/🇯🇵 Website: sites.mit.edu/kazuakiyama

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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
AIP provides an extensive summary of the WH's new regulations proposed for US science funding, which is imo quite damaging also for people outside of the US. Some rules will essentially force us to choose US or China for collaborations and conference organizations. www.aip.org/fyi/white-ho...
aip.org
White House Plan to Take Over Federal Grantmaking Draws Criticism from Science Groups
Science advocacy groups are attempting to mobilize public comments on a proposed rule.
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
MIT、主要な四つの図書館のうち三つを閉鎖へ。閉鎖された図書館の司書さんら職員も解雇されたとか・・・去年の段階で色んな部門閉鎖して知り合いが解雇されているのを目の当たりにしましたが、研究や教育に関わる施設まで影響が及んでおるのを見るのは結構ショックです。
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National Radio Astronomy Observatory - NSF NRAO @thenrao.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
News You May Have Missed ⤵️ Event Horizon Telescope Results Trace M87 Jet Back to Its Black Hole Expanded telescope baselines, anchored by #ALMA, uncover fresh clues to how the supermassive black hole in M87 launched a 3,000‑light‑year‑long cosmic jet. #Astronomy #RadioAstronomy #BlackHole #EHT
public.nrao.edu
Event Horizon Telescope Results Trace M87 Jet Back to Its Black Hole - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The latest news from the NSF's National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Me, an astronomer, reading this: 😳 Now I desperately need a statistical analysis on movie astronomers. Pretty sure 50%+ of us die in the first 10 minutes of disaster movies after saying "Uh, chief... you might want to look at this asteroid trajectory." www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Murder, monsters, occupational hazards: Why movie geologists die so often
Cinematic geologists are usually good guys—sometimes gals—but they have a one in three fatality rate, a film analysis show
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
古巣MITの総長が資金難と人材危機に関するビデオを公表しています。 ・新税(基金運用益への8%税)と連邦予算の配分ルール変更で、研究資金が20%以上減少。 ・資金不足で院生の受入れを約500人(20%)削減へ。 一緒に働いてきた職員の解雇・離職を目の当たりにしましたし、私自身が古巣を離れざるを得なかったのはこれが一因ですが、状況が改善することなく悪化していて悲しいです。
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Sad to watch the latest video message from the President of my former institute, MIT, sharing a "chilling" funding & talent crisis: • Federal research funding down 20%+ • Graduate intake to be cut by ~500 students (20%) due to budget strain & new 8% endowment tax www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xa0...
youtube.com
A message from MIT President Sally Kornbluth
YouTube video by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
This week I’m attending the Massive Black Hole Spin workshop at Edinburgh gathering experts a wide spectrum of astronomy using spins of black holes as a probe to explore the universe. Enjoying stimulating talks and discussions!
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Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.
Email from Chris Reynolds to the AXIS Team. Subject is disappointing AXIS news. Text of e-mail reads: Dear AXIS Friends,


The AXIS team has received some very disappointing news – we have been informed by NASA HQ that AXIS is not eligible for selection and hence the Concept Study Report (CSR) will not be subjected to the full review process.   


AXIS represents the scientific aspirations of a large international community. As a member of one of the AXIS science working groups, you deserve a candid explanation from the PI of what happened and why.  That is the purpose of this note.


NASA’s decision was programmatic and not based on a review of the technology or science; the mission profile described in the submitted CSR was over the allowed budget and schedule.  How was such a thing possible?   In short, with NASA-GSFC as the AXIS managing center, the mission formulation process was critically compromised by the seismic shifts occurring in NASA and the Federal government.  The AXIS study team was hit hard by three unprecedented challenges: 


NASA’s Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and the pressure at GSFC to resign/retire created a rapid and uncontrolled loss of over 20 personnel with key expertise during a critical mission formulation period, including the main GSFC Project Manager (Jimmy Marsh) and the X-ray mirror lead (Will Zhang) and many discipline engineers.GSFC priorities rapidly realigned to the FY2026 President’s Budget Request (PBR) that eliminated the Probe program, further reducing the availability of GSFC engineering and mission formulation personnel (incl. cost analysts and schedulers) over the critical Summer and Fall months. Key work was halted for almost seven weeks when the core GSFC AXIS study team, dominated by NASA civil servants, was furloughed during the government shutdown.  NASA HQ’s extension to the CSR submission deadline (from 18-Dec-2025 to 29-Jan-2026) was inadequate compensation for the disruption and lost time.


Taken together, these factors disrupted the basic grass-roots costing process (which requires extensive “reach back” to the discipline engineers to assess labor requirements) as well as the cost-design iteration process that is central to the formulation of a cost-capped and schedule-constrained mission.  While the mission design was finalized in April, our initial grass-roots costing (which was ~10% over budget) could only be completed in September due to the lack of assigned resources.  With the subsequent government shutdown and then “pens down” in early-December forced by the GSFC Executive Review process, there was no opportunity to work through the set of cost/schedule savings that had already been identified by the AXIS team. 


Ultimately, the GSFC executive council gave AXIS leadership the choice of submitting a CSR with a non-compliant schedule and cost, or not submitting a CSR at all.  We of course proceeded with the submission, including a narrative that we understood the path to a cost-compliant profile (that we would have discussed with the review panels during the Site Visit). NASA HQ has ruled this stance to be unacceptable.


It is important to stress that NASA’s programmatic decision was before any technical review had been conducted.  The decision was NOT due to any concerns about AXIS technology. Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furtheringIndeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering the key technologies. GSFC’s Next Generation X-ray Optics (NGXO) team successfully demonstrated iridium-coated, stress-compensated mirror segments that meet AXIS baseline requirements (i.e. segment-level performance at sub-arcsecond level).  NGXO also built the first AXIS demonstrator mirror module, learning critical lessons about mirror alignment, mounting and bonding. On the detector side, MIT quickly moved to fabricate AXIS-like CCDs and, working with our colleagues at Stanford, recently demonstrated that they achieve the required readout rate and spectral resolution. 


Similarly, NASA’s decision was NOT a judgment of the importance of AXIS science.  The AXIS science case was rated excellent in the Step 1 review, and it only became stronger during our Phase A study.  The AXIS Community Science Book, which many of you contributed to, is an extremely powerful demonstration of the relevance and importance of high-resolution X-ray observations to all areas of astrophysics. The Science Book is one of the most important legacies of the AXIS Phase A study and, I believe, will help define future mission concepts for many years to come.  I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your work on this.


AXIS has been a long journey; we started under the leadership of Richard Mushotzky more than nine years ago.  During that time, it’s been an enormous privilege to work with amazing people; the AXIS science team, the incredible/brilliant GSFC and Northrop Grumman engineers, and the wider astrophysics community.  I am, quite frankly, livid that AXIS ultimately fell victim to the programmatic chaos of 2025. The astronomical community deserves better. I hope that NASA leadership, especially at GSFC and HQ, can have an honest discussion about how to better support and protect programs during extraordinary times. For now, as a community, we must look forward. There is still one excellent mission under consideration for the Probe program, PRIMA, and we wish them a smooth and speedy path to selection and flight.  In X-ray astronomy, the SMEX and MidEX programs represent concrete pathways for focused, high-impact missions, and the scientific case we built for AXIS provides a strong foundation for those concepts. The technologies we advanced in Step 1 and Phase A, particularly the NGXO mirror work and the MIT/Stanford detector demonstrations, can anchor the next generation of proposals. Most importantly, the AXIS Community Science Book, representing more than 500 scientists across, is a living document and a powerful signal to NASA leadership that this community is organized, serious, and not going anywhere. I encourage everyone to use it actively, as a resource for future concept development, for Astro2030 engagement, and for building the next mission that will deliver high angular resolution X-ray imaging to address the fundamental questions about black hole growth, galaxy evolution, and the hot universe that motivated AXIS from the beginning. This community built something remarkable over nine years and that doesn't end here.


Thank you again for your support of AXIS over these times.


Best

Chris and the AXIS leadership team
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Leaving the US and now seeing this in my new country. Given that the US FY26 budgets for mathematical and physical sciences ended up without significant cuts, it is hard not to feel that the UK’s leadership may end up undermining itself faster than the US.
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
EHT Deputy Project Scientist Dr. Kazunori Akiyama (@kazuakiyama.bsky.social‬) has received a £4M Faraday Discovery Fellowship. The project, TomoGrav, will deliver the first dynamic 3D views of plasma around black holes. Read more: eventhorizontelescope.org/news/2025/12...
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
JOB UPDATE! I'm moving to the UK after an amazing 10 years at MIT Haystack Observatory (@haystack.mit.edu). I have been awarded a The Royal Society's (@royalsociety.org) £4M Faraday Discovery Fellowship to be hosted at Heriot-Watt University (@heriotwattuni.bsky.social) in Edinburgh. (1/7)
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Heriot-Watt University @heriotwattuni.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Scientists are creating the first-ever 3D movies of black holes. The work combines world-leading black hole imaging expertise with cutting-edge UK-developed AI. A huge step forward for world science. 👏 Read more: lnkd.in/eXRvfamF #HeriotWattUni @kazuakiyama.bsky.social
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 19/12/2025
Three outstanding international researchers are set to establish new research groups in the UK through the Royal Society’s fast-track scheme for global talent, the Faraday Discovery Fellowships Accelerated International Route. #RSGrants royalsociety.org/news/2025/12...
royalsociety.org
Leaders in black hole imaging, glaciology and human development to come to UK via Royal Society fast-track international route | Royal Society
First three researchers awarded Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowships through accelerated international route
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MIT Haystack Observatory @haystack.mit.edu · 19/12/2025
Congratulations to @kazuakiyama.bsky.social and colleagues! Good news for black hole research and for science. We will miss you but are very happy for you and @heriotwattuni.bsky.social!
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
The EHT Collaboration recognizes outstanding contributions through the 6th Annual EHT Early Career & Outstanding PhD Awards. Featured here are three 2025 Early Career Research & Leadership Award recipients: Iniyan Natarajan, Paul Tiede, and Efthalia Traianou. Congrats to all!
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
私の指導教官の本間希樹さんがEHTに関連する研究で仁科賞を受賞しました。EHTの黎明期は日本のプレゼンスを国際的に確立するために本間さんと二人三脚でやってきたこともあり、自分のことのように嬉しくとても感慨深いです。VLBIの分野では3つ目の受賞、電波天文学では4つ目の受賞になります。そう考えると電波天文学やVLBIは物理学分野でもかなり健闘していると思います。 www.nao.ac.jp/news/topics/...
nao.ac.jp
本間希樹教授が仁科記念賞を受賞|国立天文台(NAOJ)
国立天文台水沢VLBI観測所長の本間希樹(ほんま まれき)教授が、2025年度(第71回)仁科記念賞を受賞しました。
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
今月からイベント・ホライズン・テレスコープ(EHT)の副プロジェクトサイエンティストとして、EHTの運営チームに加わることになりました。プロジェクトサイエンティストのDe Laurentisさんと一緒に、500名以上の科学者が参加するEHTのコミュニティの国際的な科学運用を取りまとめることになります。来年には初のM87の動画撮影の観測が始まる重要な時期でとても楽しみにしています。
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
I'm happy to share that I've joined the management team of the EHT Collaboration (@ehtelescope.bsky.social) as Deputy Project Scientist! I'm honored to serve the EHT community—now over 500 scientists worldwide—as we enter this exciting era of capturing the first-ever movies of black holes.
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Sera Markoff @profsera.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Argh and I forgot the 🔭🧪 --> new black hole results look at first post! And also see: youtu.be/7P04NXrNp5U?...
youtu.be
New images of M87's black hole show its changing magnetic field
YouTube video by ESO Chasing Starlight
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Sera Markoff @profsera.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Check out our new results on the M87* #blackhole w/ @ehtelescope.bsky.social ! We now have 3 frames in a 4yr "movie", including polarisation ⇔ magnetic fields. It's like tracking extreme sunspots just outside a black hole, the brightness and fields flip, yet the shape stays the same bc...gravity!
A tryptich of three images of the M87* black hole, from April in 2017, 2018 and 2021 (we lost 2019-2020 campaigns to technical/pandemic reasons).  The fuzzy red donut shape is the same but the bright spot shifts in 2018 and seems to reset in 2021.  Streamlines in the image indicate the polarisation vectors, that trace the magnetic field configuration.  This too seemed unusual in 2018 and the whole field configuration flipped direction over the 4 year period!
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Groundbreaking new image! The EHT reveals the dynamic environment around black hole M87*. The 2021 image shows a distinct shift in polarization patterns, tracing changes in magnetic fields near the event horizon. eventhorizontelescope.org/new-eht-imag...
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Imagine a donut...now squash it🍩. That's what the black hole inside M87* looks like! New EHT research reveals that the squishy distortion is not due to gravity, but the turbulent, swirling plasma around the black hole: www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004... #space #blackhole #astronomy #astrophysics
Two glowing yellow and red rings (the black holes) against a black background and separated down the middle by a thin white line. The left black hole has a blue circle and white elliptical shape overlaid. The right black hole has just the elliptical overlaid, with white lines to show how the black hole aligns with the shape.
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
🌍📡 The global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team met earlier this month in Berlin for the 2025 Collaboration Meeting! 120+ researchers shared breakthroughs, planned 2026 observations, and discussed turning black hole images into time-lapse “movies.” #astronomy #blackholes #globalscience
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."
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MIT Haystack Observatory @haystack.mit.edu · 03/07/2025
Congratulations to Haystack director Phil Erickson! Phil gave the prestigious CEDAR Distinguished Lecture on June 23 at the recent 2025 NSF joint Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) and Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) Workshop. www.haystack.mit.edu/news/erickso...
A man sitting in front of a slide for the Distinguished Lecture at CEDAR/GEM 2025
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
昨年度後半に東京電機大の学部生さんとやった卒論のプロジェクトが、2026年度の入学案内でハイライトされました。日米で検討が進むBlack Hole Explorer Missionの地上観測網に対して膨大な数の観測シミュレーションを行い、その評価をやっていただきました。MITにも来ていただいて、日米の若手研究者の交流の一環ともなりました。 www.d-pam.com/dendai/25143...
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Could you starwatch all night? The IRAM 30-m telescope can!✨🌌 This observing mode is called VLBI, which involves telescopes around the world viewing the same object at the same time, such as a black hole, then combining the data to get super-high-resolution images.
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
"You asked, we answered!🫡 Here are some of our favorite questions from last Friday's Reddit Ask Me Anything for #BlackHoleWeek2025 Have more questions about the mysteries of black holes❓Read the full thread here: www.reddit.com/r/askscience...
Question: How do you feel about the theory that our universe could be in a black hole?

Answer: This is a legitimately tricky question!

It turns out that the total mass contained in the Universe is approximately the same as what we would expect to be contained within a black hole that has the same size as the Universe, which seems to indicate that the answer to this question should be “yes.”  However, we also have plenty of observations of how the spacetime and material inside of our Universe behaves, and much of this behavior does not seem to comport with how we expect the interior of a black hole to behave.  For instance, we know that the spacetime inside a black hole looks like a contracting cosmology. However, observational cosmology tells us that galaxies are moving away from each other, i.e., the universe is described by an expanding cosmology.

Certainly, we do not appear to be suffering from the inevitable plunge into some central singularity that classical black hole interiors would suggest, which is perhaps the most salient thing to take away – i.e., even if the Universe is a “black hole” by some definition, it’s not something that we need to worry overly much about!

u/gravitomagnet1sm & u/maserstormQuestion: 
What do you need to make a higher resolution picture?
Answer: The resolution of any telescope is determined by two factors: the size of the telescope, and the wavelength of light at which it’s observing. To make higher-resolution pictures we need to either increase the size of our telescope or observe at a shorter wavelength of light.  The size of the EHT is already approximately the size of the Earth, so the only way to make it physically larger is to put telescopes in space – which is something that many people are already working on!  As far as the wavelength goes, the primary wavelength of light that the EHT observes at – the one that was used to produce the first images – is 1.3 millimeters.  The EHT has already made initial forays into observations at shorter wavelengths, in particular targeting 0.87 millimeters, and there have been successful detections!  But these short wavelengths are really hard to observe, because Earth’s atmosphere gets more and more opaque as the wavelength gets shorter.  So we have to keep improving the sensitivity of the array in order to push to these shorter wavelengths, which is a big part of the current and next-generation upgrades to the EHT!Question: My 8 year would love to know how do black holes shrink?
Answer: 
It turns out that there’s a way for black holes to “evaporate,” loosely similar to how water can evaporate on a hot day.

The details behind how exactly this “evaporation” – which is technically  called “Hawking radiation” – takes place requires some fairly sophisticated physics knowledge.  But the important thing to know is that it takes an incredibly long time for real-world black holes to evaporate in this way.  For instance, a black hole the size of the one in M87 would take many, many times the age of the Universe to lose even 1% of its mass through this sort of evaporation.Question: Is there suspected to be "quark matter" inside black holes like there is suspected to be inside large neutron stars?

Answer: From Peter Galison:

An astonishing feature of black holes is that from all we know, matter completely collapses, so no ordinary matter would be found inside the horizon. Not molecules, not atoms, not protons, not neutrons, and not even quarks.
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
東北大の田中さん、東京都市大の津村さんにお声がけ頂いていて、天文学の最新成果を解説する本の執筆に参加させていただきました。第一線で活躍している日本を代表する天文学者の皆さんに混ぜていただいて、私は超巨大ブラックホールの章を担当させていただいています。このような著者陣が集まる本は貴重だと思います。来週発売だそうです!ぜひご覧になってください! www.kawade.co.jp/np/isbn/9784...
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
As we've seen this Black Hole Week, black holes have gone from theory to image, from mysteries to measurements. Now, the EHT is entering a new era, where more telescopes around the world — and maybe in space — will capture time-lapse “movies” of black holes. Popcorn, anyone?🎥🍿
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
It is starting in 2 hours!
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American Astronomical Society (AAS) @aas.org · 09/05/2025
The AAS is aware of reports of pending restructuring and more grant cancellations at NSF, and is working to learn more and formulate a response. If you have been directly impacted, please share your story (aas.org/form/share-y...) or contact us at public.policy@aas.org.
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Prof. Ghosty Neilsen @joeyneilsen.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Hey I've been busy grading, but that doesn't mean it's not #BlackHoleWeek! Have burning questions about black holes? Join me and some of my colleagues from @ehtelescope.bsky.social for a Reddit AMA, today from 3-5 PM ET (19-21 UTC)!
reddit.com
AskScience AMA Series: We're Event Horizon Telescope scientists who've taken the world's first black hole photos. Ask Us Anything!
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
About 27,000 light years away, with a mass of more than 4 million Suns, lies the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. If you were to approach it, you’d be deceived by its size - the shadow is roughly twice as big as the black hole’s actual surface!⚫️
Blue, yellow, and red swirls in an oval shape represent the Milky Way's polarized emission from dust. An inset image in the center of spiraling rust and white shows the polarized dust emission at the center of the Milky Way. An inset image on the left shows streaky spirals of bright yellow and orange around a hazy black center: the Sag A* black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Behold Perseus A, one of the closest active supermassive black holes, at 230 million light years away. Composite images like this one from the NRAO, Chandra, Hubble, and the EHT can help us study black holes and their environments, which influence each other.🛰️
Swirling clumps of purple and pink form a galaxy in the bottom left, set against a dark blue starry sky. To the top right is an inset image of different-sized orange blobs, representing the emission seen by the EHT and other collaborations.
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Centaurus A is the closest radio galaxy to Earth. Radio galaxies feature two-sided jets that are ejected from the galaxy’s central black hole and measure up to millions of light years long. These jets are theorized to spread energy and affect the growth of their host galaxies.💫
A photo of the galaxy Centaurus A, seen in orange and blue tufts against a black starry sky. There is a inset image to the right that shows two orange lines, which is a zoomed in version of the glowing heart of the galaxy, where the jets reside.
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Martin Enserink @martinenserink.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
"It’s like I have to choose between my life and my career." The personal stories of 5 scientists affected by Trump's assault on science. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories
As the second Trump administration sends U.S. science into upheaval, countless researchers are fighting for their futures
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Happy Black Hole Week! This is Messier 87; despite being located about 55 million light years away, the EHT peered at its beating heart in 2017 for its first image. Did you know that the location of the brightest region around the black hole, and its shadow, can change yearly?🔭 #BlackHoleWeek2025
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Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Ever wonder how to study the nature of spacetime and the edges of physics? These mischievous black holes have a clue! Join the Event Horizon Telescope for #BlackHoleWeek2025, May 5th-9th, as we highlight pieces of the black hole science jigsaw puzzle.🌟 #astronomy #astrophysics #blackholes
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
If you are US residents or citizens and support science, please join us the “Week of Action 2025” organized by the American Astronomical Society (@aas.org) next week. Call your representatives and let’s remind Congress why federal funding for science matters. aas.org/posts/news/2...
aas.org
AAS Week of Action 2025 | American Astronomical Society
Federal funding for science is currently under grave threat. We need you to take action this week, and thereafter, to remind Congress of the importance of federal funding for the sciences.
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
If you are US residents or citizens and support science, please join us the “Week of Action 2025” organized by the American Astronomical Society (@aas.org) next week. Call your representatives and let’s remind Congress why federal funding for science matters. aas.org/posts/news/2...
aas.org
AAS Week of Action 2025 | American Astronomical Society
Federal funding for science is currently under grave threat. We need you to take action this week, and thereafter, to remind Congress of the importance of federal funding for the sciences.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 02/05/2025
President Donald Trump today asked Congress to make massive and unprecedented cuts to the 2026 budgets of major federal science agencies. scim.ag/3Yszqnm
scim.ag
Trump’s proposed budget would mean ‘disastrous’ cuts to science
Key research budgets would shrink by one-third to one-half in 2026 spending plan
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Reposted by Kazu Akiyama
Nature @nature.com · 02/05/2025
US President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 calls for unprecedented cuts to scientific agencies that, if enacted, would deal a devastating blow to US science, policy specialists say. go.nature.com/4jYv3IP
go.nature.com
Trump proposes unprecedented budget cuts to US science
Huge reductions, if enacted, could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on US competitiveness and the scientific pipeline, critics say.
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Reposted by Kazu Akiyama
Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 02/05/2025
NSF just revised its indirect cost policy—15%. When NIH tried the same, it led to lawsuits, layoffs, and a federal court injunction. Changes like this can wreak havoc on research. MORE ACTION ITEMS TO COME SOON. Stay tuned. www.nsf.gov/policies/doc... #NSFFreeze #WithoutNSF
nsf.gov
Policy Notice: Implementation of Standard 15% Indirect Cost Rate
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Reposted by Kazu Akiyama
NPR @npr.org · 02/05/2025
The National Science Foundation, a major government funder of basic science research, is being shaken up with over 1,000 grants already terminated and the White House looking to halve its budget.
npr.org
Scientists reel as turmoil roils National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation, a major government funder of basic science research, is being shaken up with over 1,000 grants already terminated and the White House looking to halve its budget
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
US ground-based astronomy has been largely funded by NSF, including EHT, as well as NRAO that operates world-leading radio telescopes. This will cut ~70%+ of the budget for the infrastructure, including buildings, equipment, and administrators, causing catastrophic damage to basic science research.
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Kazu Akiyama @kazuakiyama.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
media.tenor.com
a man is holding a purple lightsaber in his hand and saying no .
ALT: a man is holding a purple lightsaber in his hand and saying no .
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Reposted by Kazu Akiyama
NASAWATCH @nasawatch.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Group Letter To Congress Regarding FY2026 NASA budget nasawatch.com/congress/gro... #NASA
nasawatch.com
Group Letter To Congress Regarding FY2026 NASA budget
the following letter was sent on 30 April 2025 to House and Senate leaders
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Reposted by Kazu Akiyama
National Radio Astronomy Observatory - NSF NRAO @thenrao.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
NEW: ALMA Detects First-Ever Hydrogen Recombination Lines From Proplyd Disks in Densely Packed Orion Nebula Cluster Archival data points the way toward new ideas for characterizing planet-forming disks with upcoming #ALMA upgrades and #ngVLA telescopes. #RadioAstronomy #Astronomy
public.nrao.edu
ALMA Detects First-Ever Hydrogen Recombination Lines From Proplyd Disks in Densely Packed Orion Nebula Cluster - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Most stars form in clusters, where hundreds to thousands of stars coevolve in proximal environmental conditions that dictate how...
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