It is really important for the proponents of commercial deep space to understand that there are no "customers" other than scientists. None. And if you drive all of the scientists out by starving them of opportunities, then there will be no deep space economy. None. It's a telecom orbiter to nowhere.
Every year I’m so delighted and proud to see “my” art show has continued to live and grow beyond me :) The grads running it always do an awesome job and it’s become a community staple in Tucson! It runs all weekend, go see some #sciart! 🎨🪐
🧪 #resist #resistrfk #defendresearch #standupforscience
"Private money cannot replace public funding of science"
Thank you @naomioreskes.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪 🌊 ⚒️ #scipol
We "celebrated" the increase in the federal research budget. But the $ isn't flowing. The NIH has so far not received approval to spend any of the research $$.
Everyone should know that Russel Vought, the architect of Project 2025 is behind this.
Take Action!
🧪 actionnetwork.org/forms/civil-...
Just encountered Captcha-style anti-robot measures on the NASA ADS search page. I guess it's a sign of the system creaking, presumably under the weight of endless scraping by LLMs. 😢 🔭
Stellarium graphic showing the asteroid 20 Massalia in Virgo at 23:00 UT on 21 March 2026.
21st: Asteroid 20 Massalia is at opposition today. Find it in Virgo, midway between the stars Zaniah and Zavijava. At magnitude 9 it will need binoculars or a telescope to spot. #Astronomy
Surprise, surprise... publicity trumps pedagogy
Also being used for asteroids- typically, occultations, but also light curves
This essay from Maciej Ceglowski from May 2024 is still very much worth reading.
idlewords.com/2024/5/the_l...
A white, glowing egg-shaped object lies in the centre of the black-and-white image, on a dark, starry background. Glowing streaks spread upwards from the object. In the top left, a yellow arrow marked ‘Sun’ points straight down, and a blue arrow marked ‘Velocity’ points towards the 7 o’clock direction. In the bottom left, an inset shows the same object on a lighter grey starry background, filled with ragged-edged, concentric egg shapes gradiented black-to-white.
Our first glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice's science camera 😍☄️
The precious data from the mission's November observations of the interstellar comet arrived on Earth last week. Teams are now digging in to discover what they reveal.
Stay tuned for updates!
More 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
🔭 🧪
Can comets be different colors? You bet! To learn more about comets, read Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid vs Comet! a.co/d/0jbtWVx4 #astronomy #astrophotography #kidlit #booksky
Rubin Observatory with open dome under a night sky. Text reads "NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory has released its first world-public alerts. Here's what you need to know. El Observatorio Rubin de NSF-DOE publicó sus primeras alertas públicas a nivel mundial. Esto es lo que necesitas"
Rubin Observatory under a night sky. Text reads "What are alerts? ¿Qué son las alertas? Alerts are a "heads up" that something in the sky changed in brightness or position. Las alertas son "avisos" que indican que algo en el cielo cambió de brillo o de posición."
Rubin Observatory during an orange sunset. Text reads "Does an alert mean a new discovery? ¿Una alerta significa un nuevo descubrimiento? Not necessarily. An alert flags a change in the sky, which could be either a new discovery or a known object. No necesariamente. Una alerta señala un cambio en el cielo, que podría tratarse de un nuevo descubrimiento o de un objeto ya conocido."
Rubin Observatory under a night sky during a long exposure shot, causing the stars to streak. Text reads "Why are these first alerts such a big deal? ¿Por qué son tan importantes estas primeras alertas? Rubin is now a real-time discovery machine, enabling scientists worldwide to follow up within minutes! Rubin es ahora una máquina de descubrimientos en tiempo real, que permite a científicos de todo el mundo hacer seguimientos en cuestión de minutos."
NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has officially started releasing world-public alerts! 🎉
Here's what you need to know about these first alerts and what's coming up for Rubin ➡️
🔭🧪☄️
Vera Rubin also created visualization tools- including an interactive asteroid display
EVERYTHING. Vera Rubin will spot:
-Variable stars
-Novae and supernovae... the ultimate variables
-Counterparts to gamma-ray bursts, and (we hope) fast radio bursts
-Comets and asteroids
-Things we don't even know about yet
On Thursday (02/25) at 5pm JST I'll chat with Nate Taylor (Australian Space Agency) about the JAXA Hayabusa2 mission 🛰️, and the challenge of outreach for tiny asteroid grains that might tell a story as big as Earth. 🔭 Will this go smoothly? We have no idea. Come and join us for this online webinar 🧪
Comet Interceptor now being built. But "next time," because of Vera Rubin Obs, might be as soon as this year.
The Comet Interceptor people helped build their case for the mission on Vera Rubin being there.
The 5 biggest obstacles to AI data centers in space
There are five main objections to building AI data centers in space.
Engineering challenges are one thing.
When you need to defy the laws of physics, that's where you get into trouble.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro #physics #ai
Don't know many tech bros, do you?
The VC money is there. Balls on parade...
By the time I got to the middle of this article I could feel my brain pouring out of my ears. I’ve turned away and it’s still flowing.
"cheaper than a sheet of plywood" in some (unfortunate) markets
Now that SCOTUS has ruled that Trump’s tariffs are unlawful, I bet prices don’t decrease for consumers.
But they're betting that they'll see the fall in advance, and sell before.
All gamblers, on some level, think they're beating The Game at the game.
Son of Shuttle strikes again!
Or would that be 'sucks'?
...'fool me twice,' they say...
Now it can (again) be told: We had a tagline for DART:
“66 million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. In 2022, Earth strikes back”.
Everybody loved it except some (1-whimsical) NASA folks, so it was never officially adopted. It did sneak into some things, though…
Again, LLMs as a business is doomed to fail because the business model has all the worst parts of a textbook shitty business model every 1st year MBA learns about:
1. No moat
2. Poor unit economics
3. Zero product differentiation
4. Product has superior competition (i.e. humans)
This happened previously with the Tornado. West Germany wanted a plane to strike East Germany, while Britain, etc. wanted a plane to reach Moscow.
Holy shit, the verbal gymnastics used to avoid saying that a woman ran over and killed a three year old girl with her car.
Watched a vid talking about "genAI tourism," & declaring it to have already peaked.
Basically, ppl piled into Sora & other apps, made their "Mickey Mouse snorting coke" or whatever 2-second clips, got their dopamine hit, & then.... lost interest.
Apparently, Sora has a 1%(!?) user retention rate.
