iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Green Party of England and Wales. The National should know better than to allow easy conflation with the Scottish Greens

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Could have made it clearer this is a temporary closure for refurbishment - which honestly makes the risk of job losses worse!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Might just be the methods section started for one of them. But I currently have 3 astrophysics papers on the go at once... With a 4th and 5th in planning/ideation stages Do I do too much? Maybe. Am I trying to make the most of my PhD while I still definitely work in astronomy? Absolutely! 🔭🧪

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

A long-shot: do any of you lovely people live in the North #Shropshire constituency? We had a super visit from your MP, Helen Morgan, to our drop-in event in Westminster about the impending cuts to UK astro & particle physics. We'd love her to hear that her constituents are as concerned as we are.🙏

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I think I've decided that the worst section of my observations based paper to write is the discussion - and I'm not an observer by trade. This is worse than writing about the observations themselves!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

UKRI being reserved is probably why we've not heard anything from the devolved govs. But given the impact this could have on unis, particularly those with large astronomy groups (St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff all spring to mind) - maybe they can try and wield some political pressure?

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Signed - do we know if there are letters going in to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and NI to ask them to take a stance against the cuts (sorry... cost reductions)?

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

🔊 Calling UK early career researches in astro, particle & nuclear physics. Please sign this open response to the proposed cuts at STFC ⚛️🧪🔭 "Protecting the UK's reputation as a science superpower requires not only investment, but continuity, confidence, and people" ✍️ ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I'm currently learning C++ and I keep coming across defined and codified things in C++ that I've been doing for years in Python by accident The latest one of these is using `del` in python to free up memory

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

That they bang on about affordability is utter insanity. In Scotland, under 22s get free bus travel. There's discussion in about extending to under 30s. To not provide free bus travel to young people, and fair concessionary travel to disabled people, is an entirely political decision.

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Simon Clark @simonoxfphys.com · 09/12/2025

OK we're back baby. I'm not exactly well, but well *enough* to attempt a quiz stream tonight. I'll be joined by some creator friends playing quiz games from games.city... who are offering a donation match up to £2000 during the stream! Tonight, 7:30PM GMT www.twitch.tv/drsimonclark

media.tenor.com

a video of a wrestling match on make a gif .com

ALT: a video of a wrestling match on make a gif .com

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Delighted to announce that the first paper of my PhD - "The role of magnetic fields in ram pressure stripping of satellite galaxies in the circumgalactic medium around massive galaxies" - has been published by MNRAS! Check out the paper here: academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... 🧪🔭

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

What are the biggest pains with trying to make an introduction to astronomy video series is I know the things but I can't just be like "Trust me bro", I need references 😔 🔭🧪

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 16/09/2025

Were I the president or chancellor of any institution subject to these demands, my response would be "make me, you fascist fuck." And then I would sic university counsel on them and seek the support of the rest of the institutions in my university system to form a unified front against this shit.

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Most of us don't want these morons in government. Unfortunately, our electoral system is almost as bad as the US so unless something changes, the next election could be a disaster pretty much across the board...

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Today I pause my PhD to start an industry placement working with High Performance Computing in Bristol. Video coming on my channel soon talking about it!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

It's with the Bristol supercomputing centre working on performance for the Isambard 3 and Isambard AI supercomputers. Not far from Cardiff so not too disrupting to the rest of my life 6 months as required by my funding body. Should be fun!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I'm less than 2 weeks out from going on a placement and pausing my PhD research - I've got a lot to do but there's nothing more terrifyingly motivating than a deadline! 🔭🌌

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

For once, I haven't done a very simple silly error this morning. I'm reaping the benefits of past Thomas' effort. I set up my plot layouts in python in a very flexible way that's made making changes based on referee paper comments so much easier!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

In today's episode of even allegedly smart people make very stupid errors... I spent an hour trying to work out why my plots were well below the expected values... I had forgotten to change the units. 🔭🌌

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Some days I think I've really grown as a scientist and what I do now is really cutting edge and interesting... then there are days where I'm triple checking every parameter in the simulations I need to re-run... again... 🔭

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Does the apprehension around waiting for the reviewer report on a paper ever go away? Asking for a friend... 🔭

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

This week I presented my research on the "Role of magnetic fields in simulations of ram pressure stripping of satellite galaxies" at @nam25-durham.bsky.social I also chaired a session at the conference which was a great experience to take on that responsibility as a PhD student! #NAM2025 🔭🌌🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

🌌🔭 Excited to announce my first paper is out now! We use simulations to explore the effect of magnetic fields on satellite galaxies in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) - the reservoir of gas around galaxies. Read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.18983 See thread for remaining images.

A screenshot of my new paper on the preprint arxiv titled "the role of magnetic fields in ram pressure stripping of satellite galaxies in the circumgalactic medium around massive galaxies. Text above reads "My first paper is out now". Below reads "this paper looks at how magentic fields affect how gas is removed from galaxies orbiting other galaxies. Swipe to read more."

An image of simulated galaxies surrounded by lower density gas. Some of the galaxies have bright tails of dense gas behind them. Text above: "Galaxies are surrounded by an atmosphere of hot gas called the Circumgalactic Medium or CGM" Text Below: "Orbiting within the CGM, we find many smaller satellite galaxies".

A plot showing the temperature of a satellite galaxy with a tail of gas, relative to the hot CGM surroundings. Text: Satellites feel a headwind from the gas in the CGM - which we call Ram Pressure. If this ram pressure can overcome gravity, it removes gas in a process called Ram Pressure Stripping"

An 8 panel plot showing a galaxy with magnetic fields (above) and without (below) for various properties. Text: In this paper, we run simulations with and without magnetic fields to see their effects. Without magnetic fields, more gas is stripped from the galaxies. There's also more mixing of hot and cool gas - this causes more gas to cool onto the stripped gas."

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Dr. Skylar Grayson @skylargrayson.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

"Why should my tax dollars go to fund your astrophysics research?" A thread. 🔭🧪 Brushing aside how absurdly little of the federal budget goes to science (according to the Planetary Society NASA accounts for only 0.3% of federal spending), the benefits of funding astronomy fall into two camps. (1/n)

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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 17/04/2025

Reading more about this, I'm disappointed in the authors of this study & how they've turned a very marginal result into worldwide press releases. In this climate, we as scientists have a responsibility to lead by example and represent our work accurately to the press. This is not that. ☄️🔭🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Yesterday went great! Today's off to a less great start... Went to go work on a project on my laptop in the office, to discover I had not uploaded the latest version to github from my desktop at home... Guess I'll do that tonight and do this work tomorrow!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Something I'm really enjoying in my PhD in Astrophysics is that my actual work is presenting me all these opportunities to learn new skills for coding/software/data science/etc. Today, my work has weaved its way to the point that I think it makes sense to learn CUDA so I can run my code on GPUs 🔭🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

This is amazing! Thank you so much!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Working on a video about light pollution and dark skies, anyone know of any public datasets of light pollution maps? Ideally worldwide but would settle for UK, Continental Europe and North America (ideally not just the US) 🔭🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Goodbye Gaia. Thanks for everything. Gaia might never have been as flashy as Hubble or JWST, but it was one of the most amazing and most accessible missions. I worked with Gaia data in my undergrad and I hope we see more missions like it. 🔭🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

This totally sucks and sadly isn't isolated to one area. I've seen maybe 3 postdoc positions come up in cosmological galaxy simulations in the UK this year - doing a PhD knowing there's probably no job at the end is rather depressingly motivating me to make the most of it while I can

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

I've always assumed it's just because the equations are the same? Like the Navier-Stokes (or whatever approximations to it we're making) applies as much to diffuse cosmic gas as it does to the ocean

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 07/03/2025

TODAY IS THE DAY! 🧪☀️⬇️ Join us at the Lincoln Memorial or your local site to Stand Up for Science!

Flyer for stand up for science--more information available at www.standupforscience2025.org

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I'm finding it closer to the LinkedIn end so far, but would love to see that shift more the other way...

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I criticised the "echo-chamber" aspect of the BlueSky feeds initially. But right now when the world is just a bit too much to be constantly reminded of it all, it is nice to be able to filter down to just astronomy for a bit

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

@jostevenslabour.bsky.social maybe we can get some funding to keep Cardiff's staff and get a few more highly qualified researchers in Wales?

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Hear that UK Labour? Huge potential here

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Oooh I've been meaning to pick that up! Heard it's really good. Followed you on Storygraph too!

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

My first science video of 2025 is now available to my patrons over on Patreon. General release tomorrow! www.patreon.com/posts/my-top...

Thomas looking into the camera with his hand palm up. The words "Top Five Unsolved Astronomy Questions" are beside him. The background is an image from the Illustris TNG simulations showing the formation of a galaxy cluster.

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Oh absolutely. Yesterday was also plagued by the issue of being new to trying to do this at all

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Big win today in PhD land - I got my code to run in parallel (using more cores so it goes faster)! I spent all day yesterday fighting with this trying to get it to work. Came back to it today with a slightly different approach and it worked so much better! 🔭🧪

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

This is more that I've got too many things already in the air that need dealt with before I can do anything new

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Thomas Rintoul @thomasrintoul.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Ahhhhh!!! So much research to do... so little time...🔭

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