🇺🇸 Mild-mannered professor by day. Astrophysicist by night. Methodist, Smoky Mountain hillbilly. Observational research on active galaxies & galaxy evolution.

Joined November 2014
Interesting thread:
1/24 410 years ago today, a Dutch ship ran into a coast that was on no European map. Her crew climbed a cliff, flattened a pewter dinner plate, scratched a message into it, and nailed it to a post. That plate is the oldest known European object from Australia. #maritimehistory
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Timelapse of the rising Moon over the limb of Earth during the March 2025 lunar eclipse. Crew in orbit is lucky to see this a few times per year!
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An impressive project, and it was done about 25 years before the Cavendish experiment, which I’m much more familiar with, since it’s occasionally repeated by undergraduate physics students. The original paper is here, including the star observations: royalsocietypublishing.org/r…
In 1774, a Scottish mountain was used to weigh the entire planet. And pretty much as a by-product, the people doing it helped invent something you'll find on every single walking map you've ever owned. This is the story of the ‘fairy hill of the Caledonians’: Schiehallion. 1/5
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Great opening but I'm going to push back on "the clocks were striking thirteen." Many readers will find this confusing. Do you want me to add a clarification like "because it was the future"?
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Removing AI from your feed with 4 of my illuminations
Removing AI from your feed with 4 of my illustrations 🚫
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We’re buying a new one for the campus. So now’s the time to rename it properly.
STOP saying “planetarium.” That’s from Latin. The native English word is “tunglehall.”
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Number of US states per US state
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Hello afternoon.
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The Rubin Observatory in Chile is an accidental art machine. It's gearing up to produce a 10-year, high-def movie of the whole universe. But along the way, it's returning beautiful shots like this one of the Seagull Nebula in the constellation Monoceros. rubinobservatory.org/news/ru…
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A major event just passed without notice: the 180th anniversary of the discovery of dark matter. You hadn't heard that we discovered dark matter 180 years ago? Well, have I got a story to share with you. My latest Invisible Universe column, here: invisibleuniverse.substack.c…
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BREAKING: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, per Axios
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"Good morning, gentlemen, the temperature is 110 degrees." "Holy shit, it's Viper!"
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"Good morning, gentlemen, the temperature is 110 degrees..."
🤖 Made with AI
Tom Skerritt, who starred in the TV series “Picket Fences” and appeared in movies ranging from “MASH” to “Alien,” “Top Gun,” “A River Runs Through It” and “Ted,” has died of natural causes at 93. variety.com/2026/film/news/t…
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If you post about reading banned books but none of the books you read appear on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books, then you're doing a bad job.
I read banned books
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"This doohickey can make any food I want?" "Affirmative." "Computer. A succulent Chinese meal." [Red Alert]
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Umm…like, the entire the 20th century just called, and…
Francis Fukuyama: "The lack of a strong national musical tradition contributes to the weakness of American national identity."
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