iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 13h

Looks like a great opportunity!

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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 28/09/2026

pretty sure "lands" is the wrong word here for at least two reasons

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I give up. I’m moving into a cave.

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 28/09/2026

This is a photo of our home planet taken only a few hours ago! So what? We have photos of Earth taken from space every day. Ah, but *this* photo was taken by a spacecraft ON ITS WAY TO JUPITER.

From the source: "Mostly black space, most of Earth visible at the top right of the image. Part of a spacecraft visible on the left."

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm striking this week. A real pity to have to do this again.

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Ryan North @ryannorth.ca · 23/09/2026

Pompeii is a UNESCO world heritage site not because it was remarkable in its prime, but because it survived to our era untouched: one moment, preserved for all time. But future generations won't know what OUR world was like unless we do the same. This is why we MUST bury Toronto with a volcano

Picture of the streets of Pompeii, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompei_-_panoramio_(26).jpg. Taken by Tanya Dedyukhina, used under CC

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Stuart Atkinson @stuartatkinson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Mars has some spectacularly insanely huge features - towering volcanoes, deep valleys, vast deserts - but kneel down in the cinnamon-hued dust and you'll also see it has exquisitely beautiful smaller features on its surface too... Sept 14th Curiosity images credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S Atkinson

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Emma @emmasartworks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Never mind the Bayeux Tapestry, look at the Seaton Snail Weaving! (I believe the script is known as Molluscule, but researchers have been unable to interpret the meaning 😉

Snail trails on a sandy beach in northeast England

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Book launch tech rehearsal at Dynamic Earth complete! @spacedoot.bsky.social is officially amazing: his planetarium show is going to be awesome! Sound check with the 🎸Sound Rays was fantastic. There are only a few tickets left - come - it's going to be🤩 Fri 11th: dynamicearth.org.uk/event/how-to...

Catherine reading from a lecture on stage, amazing graphics of the Australian outback behind her

A base guitar sits under a galaxy-filled sky.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Here's another pic from our fieldwork in Svalbard this summer. Polar bear and Arctic fox tracks. Someone told me the foxes follow the bear tracks hoping for scraps from bears' meals but I don't know if that's true!

Trails of animal footprints approaching the camera in grey sand on a beach with driftwood. There is one big set of bear prints and several smaller sets of prints.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

🚨Cover reveal🚨: My first non-academic book: How to Find a Martian: A Fossil Hunter's Guide to the Red Planet. Published Spring 2027 by @oneworldbooks.bsky.social (UK/Ireland/Commonwealth, this cover) and @uchicagopress.bsky.social (North America, other cover). 100% human-authored!

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Marking can be a drag... but reading the dissertations by our astrobiology/planetary science MSc students in Edinburgh is also a joy and a privilege. There is talent, hard work and insight on every page. These young scientists give me hope for the future.

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Metal (or sedimentary) rocks. Did you know, bats roosting in caves, led to generational accumulations of fossilised bat remains. There are entire rocks, composed almost entirely of fossilized dead bat bodies. 📍Late Quaternary Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico

"Accumulation of skulls and disarticulated skeletons of bats" from https://www.caves.org/wp-content/uploads/Publications/JCKS/v87/87_4_265.pdf

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

"Scientists" believe life began in underwater hydrothermal vents 4 billion years ago. I believe it began at the Denny's off the interstate in Toledo Ohio in 1956. I don't make fun of their theory and yet they constantly ridicule mine. And that's what's wrong with our so-called elites

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Still thinking of a biology lecture I attended years ago where the scholar made it clear that “survival of the fittest” is fundamentally incorrect, and the correct phrasing is more like “survival of the fit enough”

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Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

My colleague & pal Charles Cockell , renowned astrobiologist at Univ of Edinburgh, just spent a month teaching in Ukraine. Bravo Charles. And bravo to the students in Kyiv who keep showing up to class, as the drones buzz and the bombs fall. Slava Ukraini! edinburgh-global.ed.ac.uk/stories/teac...

edinburgh-global.ed.ac.uk

Teaching through wartime: Professor Charles Cockell reflects on a month in Kyiv | Edinburgh Global | Global

Professor Charles Cockell shares his experience teaching at Taras Shevchenko National University (KNU), and the vital role international partnerships play in sustaining teaching and learning, research...

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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

When you don't listen for *years* to what loads of us who actually understand universities say, when you listen to a load of know-nothing frauds from think tanks and consultants and media loudmouths instead, this is the university disaster you make. Govts could have listened. They didn't.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

“Life… finds a way”. Freshly broken rock reveals green microbes hiding inside, sheltering from the harshness of the Arctic desert. Svalbard.

Held in a gloved hand, a freshly broken fist-sized rock showing bright green strip 1 cm below what was the outer surface. Photographed outdoors; snow patches visible in background.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Climate change is revealing new geology in Svalbard. This layer of fossil microbial colonies (stromatolites), tilted almost vertical, formed nearly 800 million years ago in a tropical sea. Until just a few years ago, nobody had seen this view: ice covered everything here.

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Geology Johnson @geologyjohnson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

2 back to back tours today at #Whitby. What will we find? Here's a lovely Peronoceras #ammonite some one found last time. #Geology #Paleontology

Photo of a piece of grey mudstone with a dull golden brown coiled ammonite fossil with closely spaced ridges.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Fossil microbial colonies: some spectacular 800 million-year-old stromatolites photographed this week in Spitsbergen.

Orange rock with strange blobby bulbous protuberances on top surface, somewhat like mushrooms or lichens in shape but part of the rock. A scale-bar indicates that he blocks are 5–20 cm across. Rock is a boulder resting on mossy tundra.

Orange boulder on black tundra with blue fjord in the background and snow-capped mountains/glaciers on the horizon. The boulder shows pale vertical stripes crossed by finely etched curved parallel lines. A glove for scale shows that these stripes are a couple of fingers' width. They are fossilized columnar stromatolites.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Up in Svalbard for the next couple of weeks on fieldwork. Did not expect to find fossil plants on the glacier above Longyearbyen!

A photograph from the Longyearbreen glacier, Svalbard. Foreground: a boulder with dark fossil fern leaves resting on the glacier ice. Middle distance: some scientists and snowmobiles. Background: The glacial U-shaped valley leading down to the coast where the town of Longyearbyen hugs the shore. There are mountains beyond the water in the distance.

A photograph from the rocky debris around the Longyearbreen glacier, Svalbard. Foreground: a boulder with a fossil leave, clearly showing veins. Background: higher up, the glacier nestled in a valley.

Scientists traipsing between streams on the glacier, below an overcast sky.

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Andrea Luck @andrealuck.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Last night’s Noctilucent clouds over Glasgow

Night view of Glasgow with shimmering blueish and white noctilucent clouds above the illuminated city

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Another ammonite from North Yorkshire, this one found (and proudly displayed) by my young niece!

A smiling young girl holds an ammonite fossil in two parts (from a split nodule). The fossil is a spiral about the size of a ping pong ball.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Just back from North Yorkshire Jurassic coast. Few things satisfy like opening one of these!

Photograph showing part and counterpart of a split nodule bearing a beautiful ammonite in positive and negative relief respectively. Ammonite about as wide as a tennis ball. A geological hammer is shown for scale.

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DutchSpace @dutchspace.eurosky.social · 25/07/2026

Dish update, she made it through.

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 24/07/2026

This is really, really bad. This is one of the complexes we use to communicate with spacecraft in deep space. The effects of climate change are extending out into the Solar System.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Here's a taster from my segment on Monday's episode of The Sky at Night, now available on BBC iPlayer:

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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

This is a really really good episode. #skyatnight

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"Aliens Next Door?" — You can see me chatting to @chrislintott.bsky.social on the BBC's Sky at Night next Monday about some of our experiments @theukca.bsky.social to understand recent observations by Perseverance Rover on Mars. @severinhryn.bsky.social gets a shout-out! #astrobiology

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Most interesting thing about this (“Farage says he's 'done no wrongdoing'“) is the word choice. A denial not of doing wrong but of doing wrongdoing. If this usage catches on, perhaps the next generation will deny doing wrongdoing-doing… and so on. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Nigel Farage says 'no wrongdoing' after benefits from ally not declared

The Liberal Democrats have asked the Reform UK leader to be "straight with the British people".

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

🤔 Can a concept widely used in economics help us recognise alien life, from fossils on Mars to molecules in the outer solar system? A quick thread to explain a new paper from my research group : Can Pareto Optimality be Evidence of Life?, by Rodgers et al. 🧵 1/10 doi.org/10.1177/1531...

Cartoons of (a) swimming rod-shaped bacteria, which look like long beans with wriggly strings at the ends; (b) a branching network that could be a kind of plant, alga, or fungus; (c) the structure of a protein molecule.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Who doesn't love a nice set of preserved trilobite appendages?

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

On this topic and immigration, the current Labour government has been steering in the rear view mirror. When immigration plummets and hits OBR estimates and they have to bail out Russell Group universities it might finally dawn on them.

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Keith Smith @drkeithsmith.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Marchi et al. report results from the the flyby of asteroid Donaldjohanson (DJ) by the Lucy spacecraft. They find DJ has a bi-lobed shape and is in a tumbling spin. The crater density is consistent with an age of about 150 million years. ☄️🔭 #planetsci www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅 @cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

>renames it to the Department of War >names himself the Secretary of War >fights one war >loses

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

My goodness, Ed Luce is furious giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

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Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

At the base of Greenheugh pediment - sol 2671 - From Thomas Appéré (thomasappere.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/2izujCZ

Subset of previous panorama taken by Curiosity rover on Mars.
We see Western Butte on the left and Tower Butte on the center. The shadow of Curiosity's mast appears on bottom right.
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Recadrage du panorama précédent pris par le rover Curiosity sur Mars.
Western Butte se situe au loin dans la partie gauche de l'image, puis on trouve Tower Butte au centre et l'ombre du mât de Curiosity en bas à droite.

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Stuart Atkinson @stuartatkinson.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Just for a moment, imagine you're hiking up the outer slopes of Jezero Crater on Mars... Turning, you see this sweeping Big Country view stretched out before you... Stitched & processed panorama of Perseverance Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S Atkinson (Like this? Please Share!)

Panorama stitched together from multiple individual frames taken and sent back from Mars by the Perseverance rover on June 1st 2026, processed by Stuart Atkinson

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 02/06/2026

What does the new OMB proposal mean for science? How can we STOP VOUGHT and SAVE SCIENCE together? All of these questions and more to be discussed at the Emergency Science Meeting, TODAY at 4PM ET, hosted by Stand Up for Science! Register at the link in our bio, or go here: zurl.co/oCIDw #OMB

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 24/05/2026

This is a newly processed view of the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons. It's 21 km tall. It's as wide as Arizona. Metropolitan LA fits inside its summit caldera. Its basal cliff is 7 km high. And it started to grow ~3.5 billion years ago but has lavas only 2 million years old.

Olympus Mons. The summit caldera (and two impact craters) are clearly visible at the top of the edifice. A large escarpment circles the volcano. An orographic cloud is at centre right.

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Sean McMahon @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

sorry @stevebrusatte.bsky.social but you appear to be on display in terminal 3 at Chicago O’Hare

A table of books on display in an airport bookshop, including the story of birds by Steve Brusatte

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