Extragalactic observer (black holes, galaxies, galaxy clusters, stellar pops) that also dabbles in planetary astronomy. Really, basically a pixel pusher.
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It's an ancient and lazy trope: Brilliant maverick scientist opposed by the masses of stultified unimaginative lesser colleagues. Makes for great copy. Also extremely dangerous, as a flavor of it is destroying the CDC and government support on climate science. The lone voice is always right.
I always thought that Dune was recasting Mars to a good extent, and since Star Wars started by ripping off Dune, there you have it.
Not quite - he’s still there going on about anomalous behavior and how nickel means technology or whatever.
I mean are they, like, star-crossed lovers then?
I dunno, maybe he would dump the body in Central Park, which would have a certain symbolism to it.
All I’m saying is that when you want to go somewhere you should do your own flying.
Nah, he’s out on the golf course today. People are watching to see if the caddy is hard at work planting balls, a sign that everything is normal.
The first one that occurred to me was Frank Sinatra, who was the lead for "The Manchurian Candidate."
An oldie but goodie. Just played this AM on Tucson's KUAT.
Reading this while waiting for my annual exam to start! Had a little melanoma taken off 21 years ago, so I take this very seriously.
The Titanic made it most of the way to NY.
My solution for the south pole has it darker than the surrounding terrain.
And that's that for the CDC... wapo.st/4n7Dkfm
Doing the integral is always awful. I once read the we will spend fully 6 months of our lives looking for things that aren't where they should be.
So is the story that once we have dozens of interstellar objects we will find that they will testify to a diversity of SS formation/chemistry similar to the richness of exoplanent properties?
I've read AL's latest, and I must say it leaves me with a deep sense of inadequacy for my simple inability to recognize a modern day Galileo, but at least I've come to appreciate how lonely it is at the peak of that towering summit. ...and to be carried there by a dirty race horse in need of a wash
My approach is to start things with a file called "junk," which is always intended to be a quick sort of scratch pad, but then I start making junk_v2 and junk.txt, and so on before I realize that hmmm... I better document this all better...
It's all from dry ice, which is needed to keep the fudgsicles frozen.
I do not like him, Michael E. Mann! (him=Trump, of course)
No, you forgot to factor in that while we forgive the president for having 34 felony fraud convictions awarded prior to assuming office, we can't tolerate even the suggestion of fraud in a fed governor. So it's really proven guilty compared to simple suspicions raised.
As a scientist is his later 60s, I can say that most would be delighted to talk to you, and to see you do well. The good ones are with you in the trenches doing the work and don't want to be isolated on top of some sort of pedestal.
The fig leaf is that Trump can fire for cause. They will claim that the law didn't define that in any detail, thus it is what ever Trump says it is.
Pretty picture of rain over there, but not over here.
Been there twice and have 5 books on it. The house is a bold romantic creation. But Gawd, I wish Frank would have paid better attention to the actual construction.
Ummm, no - they've battled maintenance issues of one sort or another since the start. A few decades ago they had to shore up the cantilevered beams supporting the whole thing. It's an incredible house, but completely impractical with constant attention.
At age 5 I could not cope with the slowly dying witch in Wizard of Oz.
I don’t want to post on arXiv until I have really good evidence, but my working hypothesis is that 3I/Atlas is a massive transport of fugdsicles.
It's to keep all the fudgsicles frozen.
Sorry - Poe’s law you know…
No, ask anybody who actually works on comets.
Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about much about it. I mean, I don’t think any of us would be expected to hold our own against a modern day reincarnation of Galileo.
A rich dark hue, with an aromatic halo that goes far beyond the glass.
Yeah, the aliens are trying just a little too hard.
Dare you to post it!
Yep, 3I/Atlas is really a comet.
May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.
It’s so irritating
Well, that’s a great question, but at this point we’re just asking NASA to put their best people on this and do an in depth study.
I doubt this is true, but we immediately need to retarget New Horizons to do a flyby.
Really like your thinking out of the box. I’ll circle back to you to discuss what you wheel house should be.
Trump says that DC having a week with no homicides was something that happened "for the first time in memory." The last time that happened was March, where there was a 16-day streak without a homicide.
Rio Negro? Say hi to the cardinal tetras for me.
Please...make it stop...
This is why we're lucky to have geniuses like Avi in the field, Mark. I mean you could fill a room with astronomers and a list of dozens of spacecraft they could use, but yet until one of them got the IDEA to apply them, they're all useless. This is why Avi is really the Galileo of modern times.
Very clever of Trump to gut the NSA cause his little feelings were hurt. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...
At least you're getting something out of this nonsoon.
Yes! That was the first one that came to my mind as well!
Do you have a lower-level text for extra-galactic astronomers trying to do planetary science?
What is an unnatural moon?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_35...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_35...
Before the Borg made Wolf 359 famous, there was a deeply lonely and scary "Outer Limits" episode about it. Wolf 359 has always given me the creeps. Aliens there can see Earth transiting our Sun. We looked at it with New Horizons to see the whopping Earth/NH parallax. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTMQ...
Of course I love the old "Outer Limits." How many TV shows start with an image processing demo? www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCcd...
The margaritas are quite potent...
With a barbecued ribs, frozen margaritas, cherry pie, a roaring bonfire, and a research topic singalong.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...
What have you got against sentence fragments?
Wow! I didn't know that, but I did know that it was in 5/4 and have it in my mental museum of cool 5/4 pieces...
“Good evening professor Coles. For too long this group of rogue observers has been filling the literature with overly optimistic interpretations of CMB power spectra…”
True, but it’s still impossible picturing anyone other than Peter Graves in his role. (Always wanted to build an Astro research team MI style, including a folder of 8x11 BW glossies of potential collaborators.)
Meant to say the beatles are great.
The Beatles, but I'm afraid that Steely Dan is my favorite. I;m mean what do have against this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVc...
Hmmm… I don’t think we could go observing together.
Find the MW SMBH. Note star cluster center-right. Find teapot spout: vertical star pair left of cluster. Go up one pair length, and to right a little into dark area. Find star, brightest in area, with 3 faint stars in a line at 10:30. Go opposite direction from star but same distance as to the 3.
Speaking of comets - here's a snapshot of Halley I took on March 21, 1986 south of Kona, Hawaii. About a 30s exposure with a 35mm camera on a tripod, using an f/1.4 70mm lens and ASA 3600 film. The famed Sagittarius teapot is in the center. Center of the MW in the dark area above Baade's window.
And those that ate the crab cakes got the runs.
My Dad and Grandfather on the right.
BTW, a wienie machine would be perfect for an observatory control room. Do not know why I've never seen that tried.
that would be great, but you and your collaborators will need to look the part.
It would be interesting if you calibrated it with real names.
Now make the garden party scene that goes with that.
My particular pleasure though is writing abstracts. It's like one of those NYT word puzzles. You get 250 words - go.
Evidently, though not as much as Putin got him to swallow.
This may not be worth much, but L has worn out his welcome in astrophysics. Not long ago I asked a Harvard colleague of his if he could get me L's autograph. His instant strong reaction was wonderful. He then proceeded to explain to those witnessing it that we were actually friends.
Maybe, but you have, like, sounds of Javelinas slurping as they drink and that's hard to top.
Gawd - they would make for a hell of a control room set.
Steve - you are standing in the way of a surefire Nobel prize. Lots of people are saying that.
Oops - you've never published a paper of any sort with the person I have in mind.
I'd like to see what they could do in the way of a "sir" story.
WTF?!
Hmmm... I had one like that - wonder if it's the same person. For this and other similar deeds of daring (like exceeding his talk allotment by 100%) I've called him the Bruckner of astronomy.
YBYA!! Yes, you want figure captions that convey the main idea of the paper, not just what the different line colors mean!
A wonderful article. Not through it yet but I already love it for its discussion of how the author thinks of generating good ideas. This is especially true: "Sometimes it's a good idea but not a good idea for you." journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Changing the subject a bit, I also hate standard section headings. When I'm FA I prefer using them to actually say something: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Back in '86 when TeX was pretty new, Scott Tremaine started off his summary talk at a conference by going on about how everyone should learn about how to do double quotes in TeX.
Haha - well Overleaf is always going on about something. If it looks OK then I just ignore it.
Widowed section headers are the thing I hate most, but failure to learn how to do leading double quotes in TeX is a close second.
I'm always bugged by such stuff. For me it's a look at how careful the authors were in general.
A little blog entry posted on the NOIRLab site today that discusses the New Horizons Interstellar navigation demo. This was first written in 2020 when we obtained the observations, but reflects the navigation solution that we published a month ago. noirlab.edu/public/blog/...
Nice demonstration of the admin's respect for the first amendment.
The explanation is simple. In Trump world the law is for thee not me.
Exactly! The dirty race horse model!
Brilliant - love your writing, although you have yet to turn a phrase as lovely as Loeb’s “ a dirty race horse in need of washing…” or how ever it went.
Brilliant, and Steve can write (although he has yet to turn a phrase as lovely as Loeb’s “a dirty race horse in need of washing”)
Extortion of Nobel Prize is Hall of Fame level abuse of office. Every single Democrat should be mocking this clown for being so fragile, so insecure, so weak, and so openly corrupt.
With a little work you quickly find that J has <1/3 fuel needed & the engine’s busted anyway. L cited convos with the J PI in his paper, so he surely knew this. Don’t know why he posted on arXiv. You don’t push an idea that you know is wrong. Maybe, though you just want to be seen as clever.
~50 or so...
Seth Abramson 