Prof Anna Watts

NASA defends selection of astrophysics probe mission proposals NASA defended the selection of two concepts for study as the agency’s first astrophysics probe-class mission amid community complaints.

Sorry about that! Here's the link:

spacenews.com/nasa-defends...

Note that our Zenodo also includes contour files if you just want to plot the updated mass-radius credible regions!

Don't forget RXTE and NICER!

Really sorry for all of the scientists and engineers on the AXIS team. They - and the whole X-ray astrophysics community - deserved better from this entire process.

And now what looks like the deliberate gutting of support for AXIS by Goddard management.

These Probe mission proposals and studies take a HUGE amount of community time and effort, and it's devastating to see that treated with total disregard.

NASA has so many questions to answer about the Probe selection process.

First there were the shenanigans surrounding the initial downselect (when the advice of expert review committees was ignored, for reasons that remain opaque)

[see spacenews.com/nasa-defends...

Flip. So many thoughts on this.

Still chortling after seeing @daraobriain.bsky.social at Carré last night.

Do wish I had bought tickets for the Dutch colleagues who think I talk too fast though. I am the non electric Omafiets to his Max Verstappen 😅

Live Updates: Strikes Launched Across Middle East, With No Compromise in Sight

President Trump on Saturday blamed Iran for an airstrike that hit an Iranian elementary school on February 28, killings scores of children. An analysis by The New York Times indicates that the school was most likely hit by an American airstrike. Follow live updates.

Ja, waarom? De korte versie: boeren in intensieve landbouw kunnen alleen overleven door steeds verder op te schalen. Dus pakken ze de sloten erbij. Desnoods illegaal en ten koste van biodiversiteit.

Mooie illustratie van @laurensvangurp.bsky.social VK (hoewel: realiteit is meer plaatje 2).

Kabinetsplannen om vaderschapsverlof te versoberen 'stap terug voor gendergelijkheid' Een vader kan 44 procent van zijn inkomen kwijtraken als hij met verlof gaat. "Geen verstandige keuze als je gendergelijkheid wilt bevorderen", zegt een onderzoeker.

Kabinetsplannen om vaderschapsverlof te versoberen 'stap terug voor gendergelijkheid' - nos.nl/l/2605267

a ground squirrel standing on its hind legs with buckets written on a wooden surface Alt: a ground squirrel standing on its hind legs with buckets written on a wooden surface

I have now identified more than 100 bloody buckets just to be allowed to read journal papers in SciX.

ai:du This makes me so angry and sad. 😡😢

A group of astronomers peering at a rack of compute nodes.

A huge treat to get a tour of Dutch supercomputer Snellius as part of our X-PSI team hack week! A chance to salute the hard-working nodes in person. Thank you @itcooperativesurf.bsky.social !

Why does quantum chromodynamics get quote marks?! It's a real thing! And definitely easier to understand than American politics.

You can already find the mass-radius samples for our headline run in a Zenodo. We'll update this with a full reproduction package in due course!

zenodo.org/records/1874...

Egg colours Purple: chocolate goop Blue: nuts? Indeterminate Teal/green : crunchy white stuff ( vanilla) Pink: strawberry Dark orange: white choc and caramel

X-PSI spring hack week is underway! The most important part of the hack board? Identifying the chocolate egg flavours in the hack snack tin.

The results are - incoming pun klaxon - much nicer! Results for the different geometric models are more consistent, and tension with other results, for the statistically preferred model, is reduced. Phew!

A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Updated Constraints from Six Years of NICER Observations Pulse-profile modeling of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars targeted by NICER has enabled mass--radius constraints of several neutron star sources, with implications for the dense-matter equation o...

New NICER neutron star results this morning, led by Yves Kini! For the first rotation-powered millisecond pulsar we ever reported on, PSR J0030+0451.

More data (6 years!), background constraints fully incorporated, and improved sampling. #highenergyastro 🔭🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2602.23743

a man wearing a vest and tie stands in front of a group of men with the word apollo 13 on the bottom Alt: Control room, Apollo 13 movie, Gene is standing and saying "good job"

Family movie night, Apollo 13. Kids - thankfully - loved it. There would otherwise have been ructions.

The American-Israeli Strikes on Iran are (Again) Manifestly Illegal After weeks of threats, the United States, joined by Israel, has launched military strikes against Iran. It remains to be seen whether these strikes will be fairly limited, or are the opening of an ex...

Unsurprisingly, Marko has already written something… /3 www.ejiltalk.org/the-american...

Dame Carole Jordan – first female president of the RAS – 1941-2026 We are saddened to hear of the death of Professor Dame Carole Jordan – the first female president of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) – who has passed away a...

A trailblazer (which I did not appreciate enough when I sat in her lectures!).

ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Sigh saying E = m c squared Energy = milk times coffee squared

Wise words from the hoardings on the building site of the new Graz Centre for Physics

I've been aware of this impending change - which hits my dual national kids - for months, as soon as I realised I couldn't get them an ETA on their Dutch passports. I am quite bemused that many of my friends missed it.

But they *did*, and the consequences suck... so fixing it seems wise?

Plaque saying " Ihrem mitgleide in den jahren 1869-1873 und 1876-1890 Ludwig Boltzmann die philosophische fakultät der universität Graz"

Hanging out with the Big Physics Cheeses in Graz....

It's awful isn't it?

Leader of Columbia Brain Institute Quits Over Friendship With Epstein

Gift link from the NYT story about Axel and Epstein. When I was at Columbia he ran a lab where sexual harassment of women was business as usual. We all knew. We all warned each other.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/n...

Not open to anyone needing a visa, is that right?

Ik begrijp dat de inkrimping van de veestapel afhangt van de vraag of ‘we de
boeren meekrijgen’. Dat hoor je nou nooit bij bezuinigingen in de zorg of sociale zekerheid. Dan maakt het niets uit wat de betrokkenen ervan vinden.

Our institute is being renovated so we're packing up to move to a temporary location. Cue a LOT of clearing up....