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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 1h

The nephew and I had a fun time doing twirls, burn outs and getting dizzy. Yes, I’m a 46 year old adult. And????

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 4h

Ha! Sooooo true! It’s so funny that both my mum and he think they are circumnavigating the rules on the sly, like we don’t know what’s going on!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 4h

Another adventure out to Mother’s house! His fav adventure of them all because she’s also one of the people that gives him lots of tasty food when we are not watching and he knows / remembers this.

Small white dog looking back from the front seat to the back seat

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Jèf Uphoff @juphoff.bsky.social · 8h

Radio-astronomy history is one of my geek kinks. Family history and all…

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Glen @gergyl.bsky.social · 8h

These!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 7h

Yeah it would pretty much be on brand if there was an alternate motive behind this, of which he had some conflict of interest in

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 7h

+1 People pushing GenAI aren't seeing how it is rapidly fuelling mis/disinformation in communities that, sadly, no longer have the opportunity to determine what's real and what isn't. That can lead to extremely bad things, and the erosion of truth keeps me up at night a lot, tbh.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

As I just showed in that thread I just posted, we've understood radar tech so well since WWII, we've developed it out into things like microwave ovens and radio astronomy. People have been studying radar tech for 80+ years now, but sure, the trillionaire Nazi is the one who has all the answers.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

I also find it extremely hilarious that the self-proclaimed saviour of humanity, the trillionaire nazi, continues to publicly debase himself and show us he has absolutely no idea and is very much not smart. He is absolutely learning from his pet CSAM robot, rather than picking up a textbook.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

So here's to 81 years of #RadioAstronomy in Australia! 📡📡📡📡📡📡

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

And that includes #RadioAstronomy tech that has come and gone .... like the old Mills Cross antenna, like Molonglo and some of the old dish antennas that now reside where I work 📸 B. Pedersen / TROVE / UTMOST / me

Aerial shot in black and white of a cross structure in a large paddock

Photo taken from below the north-south arm of the Molonglo telescope, showing gears and metal bars which make up the telescope

Long, half-cylinder view of the Molonglo telescope, stretching off into distance.

A radio antenna pointing upwards toward the sun in the middle Of a field. The image is black and white

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

Today, we have so many fantastic #RadioAstronomy observatories and telescopes -- Australia is a world-leader in this field, pioneering tech exported everywhere else. And of course, we're building one half of the biggest radio telescopes EVER in WA ... the SKA! 📸 Me / CSIRO / M. Goh/ICRAR/Curtin

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

This is an excellent video that was *made in 1958* that covers these early days of the emergence of #RadioAstronomy in Australia. Highly recommend this -- it's like a time capsule of what they knew of the radio sky back then (juxtaposed against what we know today). it's very good!

youtube.com

Radio astronomy in Australia (1958)

YouTube video by CSIRO

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

Some of the first observations of radio sources in the sky, like the Crab Pulsar, Cygnus A, Cent A, and Sgr A*, were made from these stations. At that point, they didn't know what their source (e.g. pulsars, supermassive black holes, etc.) was. 📸 CSIRO

Black and white image of a man standing in front of a dish antenna dug into the ground

Four plots showing radio sources in the sky from four objects

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

Collaroy Plateau station was the first, but many radio astronomy observatories started popping up after this. The other one, not far from my place, is Dover Heights station, where these early pioneers of radio astronomy in Australia also started observing other objects too. I took my dog there!

Nine tile image showing several photos. In the centre a man, holding a dog and pointing through a fence. A few photos are of an old antenna sitting on a cliff face. Remaining photos are shots of a information board showing historical info about radio astronomy at this site.

An old, rusty antenna on a cliff face with the ocean in the background

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

Pawsey, along with Ruby Payne-Scott and Lindsay McCready took the observations and compared them with solar observations made at Mount Stromlo Observatory (Canberra), finding radio emissions correlated with Sunspots. Findings were published in Nature www.nature.com/articles/157... 📸 CSIRO

Nature article opening:

Radio-Frequency Energy from the Sun
RADIO-FREQUENOY radiation in the ten-metre range
of wave-lengths which appeared to originate in the
region of the Milky Way was reported by Jansky1 in
1933. He observed no measurable effect from the sun,
despite the fact that its thermal radiation immensely
exceeds the total from all other stars, and deduced
that this 'cosmic static' originated in interstellar
space. Later observers, Reber2 (2 metres), English
Army observers3 (5 metres) and Royal New Zealand
Air Force radar personnel' (1·5 metres), have since
reported small or large effects from the sun itself.
On October 3, 1945, this Laboratory initiated a
series of observations on 1 ·5 metres from a 400-ft.
hill overlooking the sea near Sydney. The equipment
consisted of an array of forty half-wave dipoles
with a plane reflector, connected to a receiver having
a noise factor of 9 decibels and fitted with a square
law output meter. Since the aerial rotated about a
vertical axis, we could only direct it to the sun near
sunrise and sunset.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

At sunrise on 3 Oct 1945 on the Collaroy Plateau, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) radar operators, on instruction from Dr Joseph Pawsey, used the 200 MHz radar to capture the first radio-frequency detection of the Sun and the first Australian radio astronomy observation. 📸 D & J Thorncraft / RAAF

Old photo of a radar station with a short building next to a more narrow taller building that has a radar atop of it

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 8h

Today is the 81st anniversary of the birth of #RadioAstronomy in Australia! 📡 It grew out of radar tech built here in Sydney during WWII. As the war ended, military activity shifted to research, investigating the strange 'noise' and 'interference' coming from the Sun. 📸 J. Messer/NSW G.R.

Coer of a magazine from the late 1940s showing an illustration of a radar station on top of a hill. The title reads: SECRET - Directorate of Radar Services R.A.A.F. Radar Station Portable Type - LW Station

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 21h

I will be pleased with this gift as your token of apology!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 02/10/2026

There’s a bit of Praying Mantis talk about, and tbh, I still think about that Buffy episode. I haven’t seen one in a while, but I once saw a video of a Praying Mantis catching and killing a Hummingbird! WTF! Anyway, I had a Stick Insect swaying in my garden yesterday. Much more friendly!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 02/10/2026

Islands in the stream That is what we are No one in-between How can we be wrong? Anak rising is a new one on my bingo card!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 02/10/2026

There's some interesting work being done at Uni. of Western Sydney that is building cameras (I think mainly for Space Situational Awareness work) that are "neuromorphic designed" -- inspired by biological lenses.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 02/10/2026

QUARTZ wins #MinCup26! This was a fun year, and now I can be friends with @crystallised-cricket.com again! Big shout out thanks to the @mineralcup.bsky.social team + @mikamckinnon.bsky.social for all the hard work (and having to deal with really annoying issues) for this fun social game!

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 02/10/2026

Queer culture / history has such excellent characters. Like this Queen. 👑👑👑

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

yeah, I suspect that 2028 deadline will just extend further. It might actually also force other countries to develop their own launch capabilities rather than relying on SpaceX. I know several companies here are doing just that. So it might take $$$ away from SpaceX (potentially)

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

yeah I don't think i saw that either, and there was still some issues. That's why I am referring to it more so as an "engineering success" rather than a true success of the technology. Of course, there are others, who are spinning it as 'the revolution is here' and that just makes me lolsob

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

Will end with this little nugget that made me LOL. This again demonstrates the overreliance on SpaceX launch as the backbone for a lot of these things. Maybe the slower-than-expected progress of Starship might work in our favour, giving us time to organise and cause good trouble. /end

What will it take to do that? Based on the amount of payload launched by the Falcon 9, they think a similar cost-reduction trajectory will require Starship to fly 370,000 tons of payload into orbit. That’s something that would take it about 1,800 launches over the next 10 years, or 180 a year — and that’s if it can fly 200 metric tons on each mission.

That’s a big ask for a vehicle that has never flown more than five times in a year. SpaceX predicts the company will be flying far more than that — Elon Musk has suggested Starship could achieve an hourly flight rate in 2029, for example, but Musk says a lot of things.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

At this stage, I can see the prototype of Suncatcher being fairly feasible. Over the next few years of testing, they could potentially put a 1km-radius swarm of 81 satellites in orbit. That's gonna be fun* at dusk and dawn, reflecting sunlight. But they even call it a "moonshot" so 🤷‍♂️ *not fun

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

This Google project is the type of thing we should keep an eye on -- they are now getting into the finer details and being a bit more serious about this. The issue is that they're largely ignoring the wider impacts on the rest of us. We should speak to lawmakers NOW about this.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

A few days ago, the overreliance on SpaceX became obvious to many orgs worldwide when SpaceX said it won't take bookings for Falcon 9 beyond 2028 and will move customers to Starship (pooling resources). Not sure what effect this might have. Maybe more sovereign launch capability (e.g. Rocket Lab).

techspot.com

SpaceX has stopped taking Falcon 9 bookings past 2028, betting everything on Starship

Meanwhile, Falcon 9 is still doing much of the work in the commercial launch market. In 2025, it launched 165 times, successfully delivered every payload to orbit,...

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

Starship, after 14 attempts, only just achieved "engineering success" and reached orbit a few days ago. For critical technology that underpins ALL of SpaceX's grand (and frankly, lolzy) plans, the market did not jump with joy or excitement about this. Risk/reward likely already priced in.

SpaceX share price showing history of share value over time. It has now plato'd to around $150 per share and did not react positvely to the positive news of Starship success.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

Google is banking big (literally, they are an investor ... and figuratively) on SpaceX for launch capabilities. Sidenote: extra funny seeing big companies completely bypass diversification risk here. They need 180 Starship launches per year to cut costs to ~$200/kg by 2035. 🤭🤭🤭🤭

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

Because this is a bit more serious than the other clown statements, they also looked at launch costs. And it may (for now) be a bit of a saving grace. This is where the lolzy SpaceX part comes in. Beyond the demo, this proposal (like all others) depends heavily on launch becoming cheaper.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

But this is just the demo/prototype. They eventually want to scale this to “terawatts of compute capacity” which means basically there will be lots of these swarms orbiting Earth. Again, very much lacking consideration on impacts of something we all share, and yet don't get to have a say in.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

The plan for this project, called Suncatcher, is to demo a swarm of 81 satellites as the data centre. The 81 satellites will be contained within a 1km radius cluster orbiting at ~650 km. The distance between the satellites inside the cluster is ~100- 200 m. Awesome* for astronomy. *not awesome

research.google

Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

We know from existing satellites and constellations that they have direct negative environmental effects on the global commons (e.g., biodiversity, cultural, scientific, etc.). But there are also indirect negative impacts like unintended emissions from onboard compute that affect radio astronomy

spaceaustralia.com

An Emerging Risk to Radio Astronomy | Spaceaustralia

A new study using a prototype SKA-Low telescope has detected over 100,000 emissions from Starlink satellites, including signals in radio bands protected for astronomy. The findings raise urgent concer...

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

What immediately jumps out is the lack of environmental considerations. Do a Ctrl+F in that paper for "environment" "spectrum" "astronomy" "light pollution" etc. Nothing. It's a fairly big omission IMO, but then again, I don't really expect these issues to be considered at all from these guys.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

Why does it look a bit more serious this time? Normally, these clowns make big claims without the finer details. This time, it looks like they have the finer details. Pretty sure this is the white paper on their intentions. They cover orbital dynamics, radiation, costs, etc.

arxiv.org

Towards a future space-based, highly scalable AI infrastructure system design

If AI is a foundational general-purpose technology, we should anticipate that demand for AI compute -- and energy -- will continue to grow. The Sun is by far the largest energy source in our solar sys...

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

I'll come to the lolzy #SpaceX part in a second, but first Google .... In a nutshell: Google is planning to put these AI data centres in Low Earth Orbit and power them with solar. The DCs communicate with each other via optical links. They've done some testing on the ground for radiation, etc.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 01/10/2026

There's so much to unpack in this .... but I think I can pretty much summarise it with: Big tech companies are forcing their way ahead with space-based dominance, with very little consideration for environmental impacts. This is nothing new. However, this looks more serious. 🧵👇

techcrunch.com

Google thinks SpaceX's Starship has to launch 1,800 times before space data centers get off the ground | TechCrunch

Google launched its first advanced chip into orbit to pave the way for space data centers.

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19thnews @19thnews.org · 01/10/2026

The 988 hotline's LGBTQ+ youth services have been returned over a year after the Trump administration shut it down. Advocates say this is a crucial step to address a growing mental health crisis among LGBTQ+ youth. bit.ly/3TAna4Y

Colorful artwork showing two hands holding phones, with a rainbow emerging from the screens. Text reads: "A critical suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth is back. LGBTQ+ young people can once again press 3 after calling 988 to be connected with specially trained counselors."

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Sophie Carr @sophiecarr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A few random abstract images from #Iceland.

Flat grey pebbles on a black sand beach with little specks of sand on top of them and directional trails of sand to the left of each pebble where the wind has sculpted the sand.

A frozen pool with snow on the top, a little open gap with lighter area reflected and a dark black rock to the bottom left.

Small pieces of broken icebergs on a black sand beach with the icebergs covered in the sand after strong winds.

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arXiv @arxiv.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

arXiv has updated our policy on rate limiting for all submitters. This update was made to fairly distribute moderator time & support the arXiv community of staff, volunteers, readers & authors. Please read our announcement to learn more: blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/updated-r…

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Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

From NASA: How do you get a probe ready for the heat of Venus? Put it in a furnace.🔥 From Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, a model of our DAVINCI probe went through six cycles to 869°F (465°C), each matched to its planned hour-long descent. It came out unscathed: go.nasa.gov/3VYwVKR

Close-up of the DAVINCI probe engineering model, a rounded metallic vessel about the size of a yoga ball, before heat testing.
Credit: NASA/Mike Guinto

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