Astrophysicist. Author of The Little Book of Aliens. Stuff shows up at The Atlantic, NYTimes, Big Think, etc. The Ramones, the Mets and lots of video games.
And its done! The Little Book of Aliens.
Everything you need to know about everything there is to know about life in the Universe (out there and, you know, maybe but probably not, here).
This week's
@bigthink
post
#Arewealone
1) Scientists are not being "elitist" when they tell us about the state of knowledge in their fields. Instead they are being experts. The "elitist" tag is a deliberate attempt to undermine the critical-for-democracy idea that some people know more about some stuff than others.
My
@NPR
review of
@johngreen
wonderful new book "The Anthropocene Reviewed".
What Green is really telling us with these unexpected stories... is how much there is to love in the world and why that love is worth the effort.
1. When it comes to facing global warming and choices for our cherished "project of civilization," we've been asking the wrong question over and over again.
I am deeply honored to receive the 2021 Carl Sagan Medal.
Sagan was a HUGE influence! He was my # 1 hero as a teen, inspiring me to do science and write of its power and beauty. Now I find his fingerprints on most of my research questions: bio/technosignatures, climate, etc.
Congratulations to Rochester professor Adam Frank (
@AdamFrank4
), the recipient of the
@AAS_Press
2021 Carl Sagan Award for excellence in public communication in planetary science
#Meliora
No new oil fields. No new coal power plants. No new pipelines. The energy transition has to start now with zero funding for any all projects involving fossil fuels. The events of the summer show we are out of time.
The German Chancellor nails it
"As we are experiencing firsthand, you cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation any more than you can fight it with hate or incitement to hatred ... The limits of populism and denial of basic truths are being laid bare."
Yup.
Ok, so here is the thing. The Expanse is the best and smartest and most science-savy show on the human future ever. Do ya hear me people? E. V. E. R! I dare you to find me one that’s better. Double dare!!
@AbrahamHanover
@TheExpanseWR
@ExpanseSYFY
@JamesSACorey
The Eye of the Sahara is strange geological anomaly, 40 km in diameter, located on the Adrar Plateau in central Mauritania
The site is remarkably similar to Plato's description of Atlantis, leading some to believe it is the remains of the lost city
This puts your problems in perspective. Every one of those galaxies hosts many billions of stars and every one of those stars hosts a few planets. And on every planet stuff is happening. So many stories! Yours is just one. Try and enjoy it all as much as you can.
2) If someone has intensively studied a subject for 20 years and all you've done is look at a couple of website then, yes, the knowledge they're dropping counts a boat load more than your opinion on the subject.
Agreed. It’s absurd to blame scientists who’ve been yelling about this for decades. President Johnson addressed congress about CO2 in 1965! Why? Scientists told him about it. Climate denial has been highly organized and well funded. Scientists must play by rules. Denial has none.
Actually it says much more about the impact of billions of dollars of fossil fuel interest & dark money invested in the most concerted disinformation campaign in history. But by all means go on blaming the scientists.
Am I the only astrophysicist studying the Great Filter keeping alien civilizations from progressing past our level of development who is terrified of climate breakdown?
Here is my piece on
@Sara_Imari
most excellent new book "Life as No One Knows It". Anyone interested in the physics of life, the origin of life or the possibilities of life beyond Earth should read it.
The most astonishing thing about science denial is how people are willing to parade their ignorance of complex subjects in public. There is a whole lot I don't know much about. On those subjects I try to listen and learn, not scream and shout.
You know what’s weird? At the same time that the world is awash in unbelievably fake UFO stuff like the alien Mexican bodies, astronomers are actually seeing into the actual atmospheres of actual alien planets and sniffing out their compositions.
The Earth is NOT “fragile”. We need to stop saying that. It paints an entirely wrong picture of what’s coming. Earth is a beast, a monster, a pissed off goddess channeling cosmic energies ( ie sunlight). The Earth will trash you and leave you a wasted ruin if you mess around.
So here is the official announcement of my new project: "The Little Book of Aliens".
Its a book with everything you need to know about everything there is to know about life in the Universe (from Technosigs to UFO/UAPs).
Fall 2023... hopefully!
1) Oh. My. God. This book... changes everything (as they say). It offers a stunning overview of the broad domain called "complexity" which is absolutely, positively the future of science. Complexity is the scientific path out of The Blind Spot
@MGleiser
@evantthompson
3) If people want to be "skeptics" that's fine but that title comes with real responsibility. They need to educate themselves on the fundamentals and that is going to take a lot of time and work. If they're not wiling to do that work they spare us all their bloviating.
The new book is here! In physical form. It's an amazing moment when the idea you've worked on for years become an actually thing in the world. Can't tell you how excited I am to share this with everyone. Release = June 12
#AlienDay
Videos like this will always amaze me...
Astronomer Jan Koet captured this video in 2007 of Saturn appearing behind the Moon. Nothing like seeing the movement of planetary bodies through space to remind us that we're living in a Solar *System*
Source:
1) How do we go about our lives, do our shopping, and care for our families, when it seems like so much is spinning apart? How do we find any hope and any simple joy in the middle of such strife and fear?
BREAKING: The Commerce secretary threatened to fire NOAA officials in a fight over President Trump's incorrect warnings about Alabama and Hurricane Dorian.
Seriously folks, we should spend a lot more time just being totally frickin' amazed. Like everyday, from the moment we wake up till the moment we fall asleep. Just being amazed...
I randomly met Tomas in a bar in NYC in the 1980s.
Me: I’m a physics grad student. I love quantum mechanics. Let me tell you about it.
Him: My grandfather invented it.
Me: My grandfather sold pickles on Delancey street.
He was actually a very cool guy, had a great talk.
Three generations of brilliant Bohrs, photographed around 1960:
Niels Bohr, 1922 Nobel Laureate
Aage Bohr, would become a 1975 Nobel Laureate
Tomas Bohr, accomplished biophysicist
Also, Tomas Bohr today
#NASAWebb
is fully deployed! 🎉
With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, that's:
50 major deployments, complete.
178 pins, released.
20+ years of work, realized.
Next to
#UnfoldTheUniverse
: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2!
No matter how bad the news is, the Universe is always trying to remind of us of its profound beauty and possibilities. We can, and must be, better to each other.
We need to learn how to "think like a planet". It's all about feedback loops (positive and negative) and the evolution of cycles of matter and energy. We are part of those cycles now - dominating them even. That's what climate change and the Anthropocene are all about.
It’s easy to get beaten down by the day-to-day monotony of life, but the world is extraordinary. Science gives us the opportunity to see what wonders we’re a part of.
You are more than just your damn atoms! I think Reductionism is wrong... useful but wrong. First in my
@bigthink
series on Emergence/Reductionism.
This is very much in line with the "Blind Spot" book work I'm doing with
@evantthompson
and
@MGleiser
Could an advanced civilization have existed a hundred million years before humans? Probably not but the big question is how would we know?
Here is my article for the Atlantic on a new research paper
@ClimateOfGavin
and I recently published .
1) So after watching my feed blow up all weekend because of my
@nytimes
OpEd I have a few comments. Then leave I will leave it be cuz I got sciencing to do.
I obviously pissed off UFOTwitter which is ironic if you read the piece...
I am in line about to get my first dose COVID-19 vaccine. I am so proud of science and of government for their ability to pull through and make this happen. When we work together anything is possible.
Tipping points. They are the real danger. The future will not be kind to our memory if we don’t get it together. Million ways to act right now. Give some support to a candidate who takes climate seriously.
Top scientists warn of an Amazon ‘tipping point’
“water that's older than the solar system”
Man, the world would be such a great place if everyone did science and we spent our time sharing mind blowing results.
Ok, art and music and being kind to each other. We should all do that stuff too.
But don’t forget the science.
Why do climate deniers resist what has been scientifically clear for decades? It ain’t about the science. It’s about identity. The lessons from Flat Earthers.
@ORBITERmag
.
@MichaelEMann
@ClimateOfGavin
@KHayhoe
Climate change and its denial is the tip of the spear in this strange fight we're all in about "reality-based" reality. The problem is eventually reality-based reality always wins ( that's why science works) but by then the damage has already been done.
Astronaut Scott Kelly once smuggled a full gorilla suit aboard the International Space Station. He didn't tell anyone about it. One day, without anyone knowing, he put it on.
Nice piece on that “Negative mass solves all problems in cosmology” paper from last year. Bug in code found. Results wrong. Go science!
@telescoper
uses this as opportunity to reflect on peer review and how to make it better.
News! Very amazed and grateful that my book “Light of the Stars. Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth” has won the National Honors Society 2019 Book Award for Science.
Wow. 20 years of real footage of stars orbiting the black hole in the center of our Milky Way from
@ESO
. You can even see the instrumentation/image quality improve over time!
This is the Shanghai-Beijing train going at 350 km/h
As
@yfreemark
said:
"The distance between NYC and Chicago is almost exactly that between Beijing and Shanghai.
NYC-CHI is served by 1 🚂/day (19 hrs)
SHA-BEI is served by 35 🚄/day (4.5 hrs)"
All the scientists who fought to do their work with honesty and integrity showed us what American ideals mean when put into practice. Now our science can show us the way towards an American renewal.
@MichaelEMann
@ClimateOfGavin
@DrFunkySpoon
@Revkin
Oh my god. This is THE COOLEST THING EVER! You have to watch a few times carefully to fully appreciate what’s happening. Following the moving light ...
Ever wondered what a rocket launch looks like from space?
Progress MS-10 launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as seen from
@space_station
on November 16th, 2018
Magic starts at 5 seconds, frame bottom left...
NASA / ESRSU / Seán Doran
"The real technology is justice" says Kim Stanley Robinson in an amazing conversation with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò about Climate Change, Geoengineering and political structures.
Today on NPR. "Certain And Confident: Predicting The Future In A Climate-Changing World." I read the big climate report so you don't have to! And you know what? It's an awesome lesson in how science works!
“Milankovitch cycles still affect Earth’s climate but are now dwarfed by anthropogenic greenhouse warming.”
In case you were wondering.
From Del Genio eta al 2018.
So if we are looking for "techno-signatures from exocivilizations on other worlds, how do we deal with the fact that many will be much much older than us?
What does a 100 million-year old civilization even look like?
I love being American and it comes with lots of personality traits - some awesome, some less so. But worshipping our leaders, being a boot-licker - not part of the deal. It's supposed to be the opposite. That's why we ditched having a king. So how the hell did we get here?