iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Tom Megeath

Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Not everybody knows this, and everybody should. On Sept. 26, 1983, a Soviet nuclear warning system alerted Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov that the U.S. had launched a missile attack. He did not retaliate, preventing WWIII. This is a post about AI. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisl...

en.wikipedia.org

Stanislav Petrov - Wikipedia

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Shane Ross at Virginia Tech created a simulation of what 500k orbital data centers, as proposed by SpaceX, would look like from your home latitude sdross0.github.io/orbital-data...

sdross0.github.io

What would orbital data centers look like from your sky?

500,000 satellites from SpaceX's FCC filing, two published brightness models and the real stars, for any latitude, date and time. Computed in your browser.

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Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Science is a part of your brain you just don't turn off. In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life 🎁 link www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/s...

Sciencing the shit out of this motel room

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Caltech @caltech.edu · 23/09/2026

NASA has selected PRIMA, a far-infrared space observatory designed to reveal the cold, dusty universe hidden from visible-light telescopes. Caltech, JPL, and IPAC will play key roles in the mission, targeted to launch in the 2030s. Read more: www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I know this isn’t the most important hill to die on at this time, but as i am teaching stellar this semester, I wanted to point out that polytopes are the slide rules of stellar astrophysics. Elegant, somewhat useful in the day, no longer needed because of computers. 🔭

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 20/09/2026

Today I learned there are only two known polyhedra in which each face shares an edge with every other face. One of them being the timeless beauty of the tetrahedron and the other one being whatever the heck this is

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The autumnal equinox is only a few days away and here's what Stonehenge looked like in the 16th century. BL Add MS 28330; Lucas De Heere, Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland; 1573 CE-1575 CE; England (London); f.36r @blmedieval.bsky.social

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Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 15/09/2026

#NASARoman activated the Wide Field Instrument—a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will allow it to explore wide swaths of the cosmos quickly. This test image captures the very first photons of starlight to reach the instrument—taken as an initial performance assessment: go.nasa.gov/4rg4qEc

$At the top, a grid of 21 panels shows a series of blue images with tiny neon green and yellow circles. A larger image highlights a section of the grid with circular patterns, and an inset presents a detailed star-like diffraction pattern. The colors consist of blue, green, and yellow.$

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Astronomy 🔭 @astronomy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

NASA's new Roman Space Telescope now has enough fuel to last 22 years after a near-perfect course correction More than double what it was built for!

An artist's concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with gold and silver panels, set against a purple cosmic background filled with stars and galaxies.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 12/09/2026

“these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods & ideas, & citing relevant previous work of others. … We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.”

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Thomas Carpentier @thocarp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Today was a great day for me on professional and personal levels, so I will share something even greater: a JWST observation of the centre of our galaxy! 🔭 This is Sagittarius B2, a molecular cloud a few hundreds light years away from SgrA*, as seen by MIRI and processed by me!

Observation of the Sgr B2 molecular cloud in mid-infrared by the JWST. The cloud appears mostly in red/orange and blue colors. In this wavelength, what is mostly appearing is the dust in the cloud, which is everywhere in the image. Some brighter spots can be seen, where new stars are located. Background and foreground stars can also be spotted as blue and bright dots.

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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I am having a particularly frustrating week, so here’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The eruption of Sarychev Peak in the Aleutian Islands, seen by the crew of the space station. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

As a kid from New Mexico who lived in California, upstate NY, Boston area, and NW Ohio, it’s nice see my linguistic map be almost anywhere but Texas.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Congratulations to the Nancy Grace Roman telecope team for a flawless launch. I look forward to amazing data on our galaxy and its star forming regions.

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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

LAUNCH at 1125 UTC Aug 30 of a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center with NASA's Roman Space Telescope

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Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Breaking: We have lift off! NASA’s Roman Telescope is on its way to deep space, embarking on a mission that could solve some of the universe’s greatest and most enduring mysteries and discover new, alien worlds.

scientificamerican.com

NASA’s Roman Telescope lifts off, starting a mission to explore the universe’s biggest mysteries

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will probe dark matter and dark energy, discover exoplanets and study stars

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Chris Mihos @chrismihos.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Ahh, I'm seeing a lot of particle physicists riding into astronomy research, ready fix our field and solve all our science questions for us. I mean, how hard can astronomy be, right? Welcome in, dear.

1950s man comes home, where his wife and children are hiding behind the door holding carving knives. His wife is labelled "Systematic uncertainties" and his kids are labelled "Non-Gaussian Errors" and "Dust".

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 30/08/2026

Watch what it's like to sample an asteroid. On 20 October 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft positioned itself above asteroid Bennu and used its sampling system to grab material for return to Earth. Rather than being a solid chunk of rock, Bennu turned out to have the cohesion of a ball pit.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I have been working on NGC 2392 (Lion Nebula) bit by bit over the past couple of weeks. Pretty happy with it! As always, high quality image and perhaps overly verbose information is available at my Flickr gallery: flic.kr/p/2swHfCQ

A heavenly view of one of our friendly neighborhood planetary nebulas, the Lion Nebula. It's circular in appearance with cometary knots streaming outward from the center, making up the "hair" of the lion's mane. The lion's face is a brightly outlined inner shell that kinda looks like a spaghetti nest with a bright star nestled in the center. Numerous background galaxies are sprinkled around the image, along with a handful of stars. The lion has a blueish mane and a pinkish face with a deep, dark cyan center. The background galaxies are subtly colored with yellows, oranges, and reds. The few stars are more or less white.

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Robert Rohde @rarohde.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

With record-breaking heatwaves, France just had both its warmest June and July on record. Systematic collection of weather data basically began in Western Europe, giving Europe the longest thermometer-based histories in the world. After more than 250 years, we have changed the climate. 🧪

Time series graph of June-July average temperature in France relative to the 1850-1900 baseline. Data from Berkeley Earth.

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Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

G79.29+0.46 - From Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/KZgYoB

Close-up of the luminous blue variable candidate star G79.29+0.46 and its associated dusty, red ejecta shells. Also visible is a bright pillar of gas and a dark tendril of thick dust containing numerous young stellar objects.

More information and widefield view here: www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/28314613744/

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Ryleigh Davis @import-astrory.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

My new paper is out in Science Advances! Neptune's inner moons preserve clay minerals from the deep interiors of ancient icy worlds, exposed by Triton's catastrophic arrival. Here's the story and what it tells us about the violent history of the Neptunian system. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Neptune’s inner moons and rings are exposed icy body interiors

Triton’s destructive wake exposed clay-like minerals from within ancient icy worlds, now reaccreted as Neptune’s inner moons.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I just read Wilson’s brutal review. I had a similar reaction to Interstellar. As an astronomer, I was expecting an ingenious script about time and relativity, instead I got angry Matt Damon. Maybe Nolan’s movies are best enjoyed with expectations set to blockbuster and critical faculties paused.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Never been to Detroit‘s Concert of Colors before, but I had an amazing time. Here is the finale by the Slavic dance band Lemon Bucket Orkestra (from Toronto).

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Star City Spoiler: so if For All Mankind is all about Mars and war, Spy City is ultimately about love and Venus. Nicely done.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Today in 1955, Bertrand Russell issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in London, calling upon every government on Earth to prevent a nuclear war by publicly renouncing war, abolishing thermonuclear weapons, and pursuing “peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

A black and white photograph of mathematician, philosopher, and logician Bertrand Russell standing in front of a desk before a crowd of journalists and reading the Russell-Einstein manifesto at a press conference in London on July 9, 1955.

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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Students have long been given the idea that the goal of taking classes is to get good grades, learning is just a side effect. Now it’s not even a side effect.

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phoenixrising @mmcarthur.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Joan Miró : Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman, 1941 Opaque watercolor with watercolor washes on ivory, rough textured wove paper. 45.9 × 38 cm | 18-1/8 × 15 in The Art Institute of Chicago Further description in the alt text 👇

In January 1940, Miro began a series of 23 works on paper that later became known as The Constellations, of which this is an example.

Composed on identically sized sheets of paper over 21 months, this remarkably poetic suite was created from January 1940 to September 1941, under the duress of World War II, when Miró and his family moved from France to his native Spain to avoid the advance of the Nazis.

About the “Constellations” he stated: “If the interplay of lines and colors does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the reality of the present… . in order to approach new realities, to offer men the possibility of rising above the present.”

Miró chose a stiff, textured watercolor paper for the series, and began each sheet by sanding the surface, then rubbing his freshly cleaned oil paint brushes over the paper, sometimes blending it with thinned gouache so that the two incompatible liquids created diaphanous, cloud-like pools.

In these suggestive fields, he constructed his visual story, covering the sheet with hourglass shapes and a multitude of forms suggesting crescents, eyes, stars, and triangles, linked by thin black lines to evoke an imaginary celestial world.

Each picture took about a month to complete, demonstrating his intense engagement with the images. Miró titled the works as if each were a poem, and the background suggests night and day, alternately, evoking imaginary atmospheres, and characters in space.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

This beautiful infrared image from JWST shows a piece of the sword of Orion, just north of the Orion Nebula. Hidden to our eyes, this inconspicuous patch of sky is furiously forming stars - more rapidly than any other region within 1500 light years. esawebb.org/images/potm2...

esawebb.org

Webb unveils young stars across every stage of formation

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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 02/06/2026

Midnight sun during the #Arctic spring. Animation looks downward at the North Pole over a 24-hour period. More seasonal animations: zacklabe.com/arctic-clima...

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

This is absolutely astonishing - it's rare in astronomy to see so much change on a human timescale, but this really shows how dynamic the gas and dust around a young star can be. Seeing the shadows from the inner regions cast out onto the outer spiral arms, amazing!

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M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Entering the grand halls of the NAS I felt a potent mixture of awe and fury. Science is so amazing. Not just for its material discoveries, but also for what it reveals about human values and our ability to know the world *together*. Shame on everyone who is complicit in this crisis. >>

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Kevin M. Gill @kevinmgill.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Wait, is that the Moon out beyond the Moon? And is the ISS out in lunar orbit or something?! Man, fire your AI provider... bsky.app/profile/redd...

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Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 24/04/2026

Well, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes! 😍 Our beloved Hubble appears in this amazing image from one of Vantor's WorldView Legion satellites. It was 36 years ago today that Hubble was launched in the bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Vantor.

A detailed image of the Hubble Space Telescope floating in space, showing its solar panels and cylindrical body in space.

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 07/04/2026

Today is a good day to remember that Carl Sagan was as outspoken about the dangers of war and nuclear weapons as he was an advocate of space exploration.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

This is one of a series of prints of Opabinia, 🧪🐡 an extinct prehistoric creatures which lived during the Cambrian geological time period, carved by hand in linoleum, printed onto lovely white paper with bark inclusions and collaged with Japanese papers in different colours and patterns, 🧵

As described this is my linocut print in blue in on white speckled washi paper of the segmented prehistoric animal Opabinia, with its claw-like proboscis and five eyes on stalks, each segment on a different colourful collaged paper.

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Johns Hopkins APL @jhuapl.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, was discovered on March 25, 1655, by Christiaan Huygens. More than 350 years later, it remains a key target for exploration. Launching in 2028, NASA’s Dragonfly mission will investigate the complex chemistry of this ocean world. dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/Why-Titan

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Tonight in 1983 in the Oval Office, President Ronald Reagan called on “the scientific community in our country” to develop a defensive shield to render strategic nuclear ballistic missiles “impotent and obsolete.” More than $494 billion later (fiscal year 2026 dollars), his dream remains just that.

A screenshot from a color video of President Ronald Reagan speaking to the American public from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on this day in 1983.

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 23/03/2026

Star Formation xkcd.com/3222/

4-panel comic. (1) [Glowing black dot surrounded by clouds.] DOT: I think I did a good job with this universe. Pressure waves dance through gas clouds. They clump together and then pressure pushes them apart. (2) [Some of the clouds are clumping together.] DOT: Oh weird, that big clump of clouds is staying together. Their gravity is overcoming the pressure and more gas is falling in. (3) [More clouds are sucked in.] DOT: It’s not stopping! The heat is rising but the collapse is only accelerating! I messed up. I messed up *bad*. (4) [The clump has become a shining star.] DOT: NOOOOOOOO!!! My beautiful clouds! Ruined! It’s all ruined!

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Dr. Wendy Bohon @drwendyrocks.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Xkcd does it again! m.xkcd.com/3221/

Map of the United States with geologic and geomorphic processes highlighted. For instance, the central US landscape was caused by farming, while the Appalachian mountains were caused by continents colliding, while Florida was caused by ongoing disputes between limestone and water, and the southwest was caused by water and time

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András Gáspár @andrasgaspar.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Looking at the AAS jobregister lately, it seemed to me that there are less positions available in all categories than in previous years. Wanting to quantify, I used the wayback machine to check on the number of postings in the January-March window and it is quite depressing.

A Table showing the number of positions posted at AAS job-registed for various categories.

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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world. Do people really imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real? 🧪

Absurd claim: "Elon Musk says physics has stagnated and AI could overtake scientific research. He says progress has relied on expensive hardware like colliders and telescopes, that slows discovery."

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I talked to a lead NSF program officer (PO) who’s considering quitting because everything’s terrible. This is part of the apocalypse. POs don’t just give out money. They keep up with their scientific field and everyone in it to ensure that there’s balance in who and what’s funded. It’s bad news.

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