Dr Pamela L Gay
@starstryder
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I am an astronomer, technologist, & creative focused on using new media to engage people in learning and doing science. Ideas & opinions are strictly my own.
Edwardsville, IL
Joined January 2008
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My 3 part series, Space Exploration v Economics, is LIVE
1 - Science Budgets versus Congress and rising costs
2- NASA’s Fixed-Cost Contracts Change Vendor (and NASA’s) Risks
3 - Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 leaves NASA no
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Can we just celebrate this for a minute?
Girls present science to the President & everyone wears a tiara because
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There are now 9 toilets in space.
4 on ISS, 1 on the Crew Dragon, 1 on the Soyuz, 1 on the Shenzhou, and 1 on the Tianhe…
AND 1 on
#Inspiration4
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I’m ready for Monday’s flight… or lightsaber duels.
@DrEricDing
you should have told us the best ppe was also great for low key Sith cosplay :-)
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It's gone to 11 folks!
The number of toilets in space has GONE TO 11!
4 on the ISS,
2 on the Tiangong space station,
1 on Shenzhou 14,
1 on Soyuz MS-22,
1 on Soyuz MS-23,
1 on Crew Dragon Freedom,
&
1 on Crew Dragon Endeavour.
This is a new space record.
There are 10 toilets in space right now.
Soon to be 11. 👀
(Yes, that would be a new record.)
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This is the most awesome, weird, practical, & wonderful science breakthrough I think I’ve seen.
A new procedure to treat burn victims is cheaper and more effective: Fish!
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Dear headline writers,
Astronomers don’t think Betalguese is going to explode.
Astronomers desperately want Betalguese to explode with every cell in our beings.
And we know full well Betalguese doesn’t care what we want and may wait another million years to go boom.
xoxo,
me
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Repeat with me. Rosalind Franklin. Say. Her. Name.
scientist: "does everyone here know what Watson and Crick discovered?"
me from back of room: "Rosalind Franklin's notes"
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Things I now know:
Humans have ~7*10^27 atoms
Atoms are ~10^-10m in length
If I mathed right, a person can be spaghettified to 75ly long
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There is no recovering from this. For every death there are even more who will have permanent health issues.
The orphaned children. The medical bills. The forever sound of an oxygen machine. There is no end to the ways we will pay for the failure of too many to wear masks.
Over 400,000 people have died of the
#COVID19
in the U.S., according to an NBC News tally early Tuesday.
US makes up ~4% of the world’s population, but ~20% of the world’s 2 million COVID deaths.
Let that sink in.
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That’s it, that’s the shot.
Lightning strikes beneath tonight's total
#lunareclipse
#lunareclipse2022
#eclipse2022
Satellite Beach, FL
#flwx
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I’ve decided vaccines are essentially firmware updates for the human body.
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I’m a PhD astronomer.
All my income this month comes from my work as a painter on Etsy. (, btw)
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Lack of universal health care or disability care in the US means long Covid will bankrupt families, drain support services, hurt the economy, and ultimately make some of these kids homeless.
I’m afraid of long Covid.
Let this sink in—If a school class of 30 kids get
#COVID19
– as many as 4 kids could have
#LongCovid
—1 in 7 says 🇬🇧 data. Kids should not need to beg us adults to listen!
HT
@Ruth5News
, who's had long Covid for over 18 months, reports on 2 kids affected.
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Forever and always,
@MerriamWebster
is the only dictionary for me. This exchange with
@ACLU
brought me joy.
@MerriamWebster
, love you!
2017, the cute G-rated version:
@ACLU
is a
@nytimes
crossword puzzle answer, gets affirmation from
@MerriamWebster
on spelling slang.
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I feel that asking the public to name a Uranus Probe will lead to responses that require a lot of, um, filtering.
There was:
Voyager -
@NSFVoyager2
🌌
Cassini-Huygens -
@CassiniSaturn
🪐
New Horizons -
@NASANewHorizons
🖤
Juno -
@NASAJuno
🟠
Perseverance -
@NASAPersevere
🔴
We want to know, what would YOU name the
#Uranus
Orbiter & Probe Mission? ⚪️🛰️
#letsgoback
#icegiants
#namethemission
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To be more specific, right wing anti vax protesters shut one of the largest vaccine sites in the US in a city where air pollution restrictions were lifted to allow crematoriums to more effectively burn the massive numbers of covid-dead.
JFC
Dodger Stadium's COVID-19 vaccination site shut down after protesters gather at entrance
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This account made me cry. On
#HolocaustRemembranceDay
, it's highlighting Jews killed at Auschwitz after denied US visas.
#learn
#WeRemember
My name is Josef Köppel. The US turned me away at the border in 1939. I was murdered at Auschwitz
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I can’t even.
I’m out of fucks.
There're no damns left to give.
Gov Abbott dropped TX mask ordinances & is now predicting there will be mass COVID outbreaks *because of released refugees*.
This is cunning strategy of a sort Tom Clancy would write.
This shouldn’t be real life.
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#betelgeuse
is seen to be changing in shape in new images from
@ESO
’s Very Large Telescope. This is an actual image.
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Our local schools recently opened & the downward trend in
#COVID19
stopped with reopening.
How many kids will have to live with the grief of becoming sick & transferring their illness to a loved one who dies?
Kids are resilient & can make up lost school, but not lost lives.
In all 9 months Jan-Sept 2020, British Columbia 🇨🇦 had only 532 cases in kids & teens total—only 5 🏥.
Fast forward to now after school reopening:
Over 12,200 cases in kids & teens aged <=19, plus 71 🏥.
📌Kids can get infected
📌Kids can transmit
📌Let’s mask & protect kids
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The
@steak_umm
brand launched in 1975, and is GenX to its core.
when people trust corporate food brands on twitter more than long-standing institutions, society is probably not in the best shape
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@SethAbramson
A woman’s place is in the resistance. We’re going to fight. I just hope our numbers are strong enough. But isn’t every rebellion built out of hope?
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Is anyone else watching the Delta Variant news and starting to feel that July 2021 is going to be the new March 2020?
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These are the same people who lick rocks.
Geologists are a crazy lot. We love ‘em, but they are crazy.
This is how geologists collect lava samples from an active volcano.
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Being mathematically literate is painful during a pandemic it turns out.
But less painful than getting Covid.
#MaskUp
2) Time & time again, countless idiotic health officials and self-proclaimed “experts” have claimed COVID is over because cases dropping, herd blah-blah, vaccines enough blah, no need for N95 blah blah, cases don’t matter blah blah, long COVID not real blah blah… I’m sick of it!
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The world is on fire, so I bought a dinosaur footstool.
I realise this makes no sense… but dinosaur footstool.
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I just found my new favourite website: Planetary Maps for Children,
Check out this great Pluto by: Editor: Henrik Hargitai. Illustration: Adrienn Gyöngyösi.
Text: Ross Beyer.
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There are few things I hate more then someone crying victim as part of being an abuser. What happened to Johnny Depp, according to new evidence coming forward, shows he was a victim who deserves support moving on. Evidence matters.
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That’s my name, on the cover of a magazine, getting an award next to an author whose work I respect.
No words left. Just feels.
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We try to only do it once per mission
You space science folks sure do crash your instruments into planets and moons and comets a lot.
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This is so obvious a need I can’t believe we didn’t already have one.
I can’t wait to see what they do.
💡OMG—Biden WH just created a new *National Center for Epidemic Forecasting & Outbreak Analytics*.
Just like a national weather center or NASA’s asteroid detection center (CNEOS), this will be a pandemic warning center!
This will help prevent pandemics!
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This is horrifying. In combo with Super bowl makes me fear for April conditions. Too many have castoff masks. Too many more people think one dose of vaccine means free to mix. The truth is, we’re at a cusp; we could reclaim our nations or lose another year awaiting new vaccines.
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We don’t yet have a vaccine cleared for use in children and only have enough vaccine secured for US adults.
If this happens here, ... I have no words.
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I had it pointed out that everyone working on Mars Insight is currently a red shirt. We are hoping Insight is not also a redshirt… we all knows what happens to redshirts on away missions!
#InSight
#InSightLanding
#startrek
#redshirts
(read more
@scalzi
)
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This is the telescope dome I seek.
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Gen X: we’re just tired & disappointed in your bullshit.
We’re the generation that started as latchkey kids, came of age during the AIDs crisis, entered the workforce in a recession, got crushed by dotcom crash & housing bust, & expect no pension.
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I ask this at least once a week, then I remind myself fairness isn’t generally a thing in politics.
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I painted this. I’m super proud of it. I’m not going to sell it yet because I just want to stare at it. This is a kind of Water World I won’t tire of.
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Humans are bad at assessing risk or intuiting statistical risk.
Don’t guess the risk - use the
@GeorgiaTech
calculator
Lesson: 10 people = 75-99% COVID contact risk where I live.
VERY COOL: How likely you’ll encounter at least one person who is infected if at a bar in Denver? What about a 100-person wedding in Baltimore? Or a Thanksgiving dinner with 25 guests in LA?
➡️Calculate w/ this
#COVID19
Risk Assessment Planning Tool
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There are entire countries w fewer new cases than the WH-orbit. (Source )
For instance
Country Cases in last 7/days
Rwanda 35
S Sudan 34
St Martin 29
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius & Saba 25
Cen.l African Republic 25
Equatorial Guinea 24
Malawi 24
Eritrea 23
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Update—35 positive 1 week WH-orbit
#COVID19
. *4 New:
Hicks
D&M Trump
*2x military aides
*Jalen Drummond
*Charles Ray
Conway
McEnany
K Leavitt
C Gilmartin
G Laurie
C Christie
M Lee
T Tillis
R Johnson
R McDaniel
J Jenkins
B Stepien
N Luna
1x Jr staffer
3x reporters
11x OH staff
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1 in 500 children became an orphan…
"We hear again & again about the mental health trauma of being denied in-person schooling... How come we almost never hear about the mental health trauma of losing a parent to Covid? 1 out of 500 children in America became an orphan."
My
#minirant
:
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Be loud.
#BlackLivesMatter
RT
@CandisLynnT
:
#timesquare
action
#Justice4EricGarner
#whitesilence
=
#whiteconsent
http://t.co/sEqVeAoKZw
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Thank you, Canada!
Dear California,
We love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
We love you, California. Stay safe, eh?
Yours,
🇨🇦
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IT SAYS AWARDED. It’s an itsy bitty tinny photometry / astronometry grant! I SHALL LIVE TO MAKE ANOTHER SCIENCE!
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First they came for the blacks & indigenous, then they came for the Asians, then they came for the LGBTQ, and now they come for the Jews… who is next? I don’t want to know.
My god—This projected sign reads “Kanye is right about the Jews”.
Jacksonville, Florida football game at
@UF
—- FL Governor
@RonDeSantisFL
flipped the coin at the start of the game, and his family attended the game.
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@seananmcguire
I use text expander software. I have one that replies to kud asking for the teacher's email and saying I'll only respond if their teacher responds to me, and another to the teacher about stranger danger and saying I'll only do it if she is on interview with kids. Never happens.
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Do not go quietly into the night. Rise up with fire and a roar.
image: CIBER Rocket launch by T. Array / U Tokyo
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No questions asked way to handle harassment. I’ll be implementing this for when we do public events.
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I’d been waiting for this kind of a study. The results are sadly about what I expected.
Statistics is sometimes truth, truth, and damning truth.
⚠️True US Coronavirus deaths = ~300k! New study found ~75,000 more people may have died from
#COVID19
than recorded in March-July. By examining death certificates, JAMA study determined ~75k additional deaths were indirectly caused by the pandemic. 🧵

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Sunday, Hubble shut itself down when an error occurred in one of its OG circa 1980 computers. Engineers are working to repair it, & wish them well.
You know Hubble, at 31 I was starting to throw errors & sometimes shut down, too.
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Changed Perspective: Because I grew up with The Hobbit cartoon, I always saw “Snow White” as staying with 7 Dwarves - like, their own proud race. Peter Dinklage’s comments made me realize it’s actually a story about 7 folks cast out for being different who are kind to lost girl.
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The
@cosmoquestX
team sends our joy and congratulations to the entire
@OSIRISREx
team and PI
@DSLauretta
for their awesome operations today. This mission has had to change its plans so many times because this rubble pile was such a rocky mission. Today's plan went off flawlessly.
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I am pleased share there is one glorious thing this week.
I had
@steak_umm
in my DMs.
This is the only un-invited meat allowed to invade my DMs.
As a reminder - listen to the meat. This year, they are the truth and joy and needed messages of 2020.
Thank you
@steak_umm
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I’m so pleased and honored to be inducted to the podcast Hall of Fame by
@planetx
(The Voice of Free PlanetX) & to walk on stage w
@GeorgeHrab
’s song “Far” blaring happily through the room.
To
@fcain
@wshcrew
& everyone who’s helped me thru the years: this awards for us.
#PM18
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We have failed to live up to the precedent of our grandparents
📍DEVASTATING OBITUARY—
Kansas man was born before World War II when we rationed supplies & sent children to fight in wars...
➡️but “died in a world where many of his fellow Americans refuse to wear a piece of cloth on their face to protect one another.”
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An additional reason that herd immunity would come at far too high a cost.
New study of 60
#COVID19
patients finds 55% were still displaying neurological symptoms during follow-up visits 3 months later. When compared brain scans to controls, brains of COVID patients showed changes that correlated w/ memory loss & smell loss.
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This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a bare face.
Oh hell.
📌38% of U.S. residents say they plan to gather in groups of >=10 people this holiday season.
📌Nearly 33% said they would not require friends or family to wear masks at Thanksgiving gatherings
📌25% would not practice social distancing.
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I deeply appreciate that through the grace of interitive design, SpaceX fails in a new way every time. As a coder, I believe in this technique but my results are never this spectacular.
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I just want it to be as hard & annoying to have a gun as a car. License, registration, & insurance - all of which varies by age & what you have. Need a shotgun for rattlesnakes in the barn? Cool. $20 a year. A rifle for deer? That’s more. AR-15? $300/mon insurance & $1000 reg.
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Covid is deadliest among black communities where a lifetime of unequal preventative care & ean all too common struggle with poverty left bodies compromised.
These are the men & women who need vaccines.
@GovPritzker
I ask you to demonstrate with vaccines that
#BlackLivesMatter
VACCINE ROLLOUT IN NUTSHELL
Trump WH / HHS: Vaccines shipped out—mission accomplished—who needs a plan anyways?!
1 month later after no federal leadership or any community vaccine plan...
➡️ Here is who got
#COVID19
vaccines in Chicago.
📌This is how to screw up a pandemic.
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While editing a short video about tonight's potential solar storm I discovered I'd made this face.
Because I know Starlinks are likely coming down, and I'm an astronomer, and we can get excited about these things sometimes.
Villainous-ly excited.
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@hankgreen
Keep talking and no one explodes. Print out the booklets, 1 per person, and only one person needs a computer. It’s deliciously fun, and is even good over Zoom.
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When a friend says they have cancer, don't assume there will be time to visit when things are less busy. Don't assume there will be time at all. Tell them you love them. Go see them as soon as able. Then say you love them some more.
Fuck cancer.
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This could have been us.
If you’re wondering what life is like in Australia... pretty much back to normal. Thanks to decisive action, lockdowns, mandatory international quarantine, and stringent contact tracing, the current number of active cases in the whole country (pop. 25 million)?
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Controversial Opinion:
We need to think about the greater good instead of just the scientific good.
Case study 1: Mauna Kea and TMT
Case study 2: Starlink and observational astronomy
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"Particle physics is like trying to understand the insides of pianos by throwing them down the stairs and listening." -Fr. Dr. Andrew Pinsent
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When I was 17 I was a student astronomer at the 6-m telescope in the Caucus mountains in the USSR. It was one of those peacekeeping student exchange things where Soviet teens were at Harvard-Smithsonian at the same time.
I left a few weeks before the coup.
1/n
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My fortune cookie doesn't know about inelastic collisions.
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I saw this new Hubble Image, and found myself saying, “Awwwww, aren’t you the cutiest lil Einsting Ring?”
Gravity apparently fell in love with this galaxy pair, and put a ring around them using the repeated light of a distant quasar.
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Perspective: This full-disk img will be in every textbook laid out after today & until we revisit Pluto.
#PlutoFlyby
http://t.co/fbgfjvvYi6
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Earlier today I meet fabulous human who has been listening to
@astronomycast
since middle school.
She is now a 1st year PhD candidate.
This is awesome.
In other news, I am old.
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I'm dyslexic & was in remedial classes until I got a computer with spell check. Got a B in every college math class, and my only C- in electronics. Now I'm a PhD astronomer who programs and writes (and still can't spell.)
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After 11.5 hours, 1 OS upgrade, many system updates, & countless reboots, I FINALLY got this Windows laptop to talk to a telescope mount.
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And all of Gen X cried out as one, we are old (while still wanting to be read to again and again)
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1 - I’m going to listen to books the rest of the day because the news is hurting my brain.
2 - Folks are talking about how our economy is going to tank in part because we offshored our industry.
3 - I’m going to out myself as a long time dem socialist before continuing.
Thread
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This is your friendly reminder that Earthworms aren’t native to North America, and this continent was forever changed by this fast reproducing fish bait.
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