Peter Denton

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A picture of text from Terry Pratchett's "Eric." The highlighted part says "'What're quantum mechanics?' ' I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."

Sometimes it feels like that, yes.

Nice!

Closet to us... that we know of!

Ahhhhh!!!!!

Text stating that Gwenhaël Wilberts Dewasseige won an astronomy prize and a photo of her surrounded by 19 men.

"Woman receives astronomy prize; has to stand for photo flanked by 19 men"

(Gwenhaël Wilberts Dewasseige won the Paul and Marie Stroobant prize in theoretical or observational astronomy)

The whole world did that for 1-2 years once, but then we all collectively deleted it from our memories

Statistical isotropy of the universe and the look-elsewhere effect Recently, Jones et al. [arXiv:2310.12859] claimed strong evidence for the statistical anisotropy of the universe. The claim is based on a joint analysis of four different anomaly tests of the cosmic m...

I cannot comment on the technical details of this, but I very much like the idea of considering a look elsewhere effect on the number of studies done. arxiv.org/abs/2602.10178

(See also the statistical significance of the 750 GeV diboson event, haha)

SNEWS

SNEWS on @xkcd.com !

xkcd.com/3208/

There were many alternative acronyms proposed, including POTATOES: POinting to ThAT Old Exploding Star

Avi Loeb, professor at Harvard, wanted to meet with Epstein seven years after Epstein pleaded guilty to child prostitution.

Sounds about right.

I read an article about how a CEO of a sizable company implemented putting NNTR in the subject of emails.

NNTR=No Need To Respond

This cuts down the need to send "okay got it" emails.

It also tells me that some CEOs can actually improve things so what's the excuse the rest of them have?

Cosmologist Carbon Dating: xkcd.com/3205/

A picture of the album cover for Return of the Champions" by Queen + Paul Rodgers

Peter's Acronym of the Day is also Peter's Title of the Day:

"Return of the CHAMPs"

CHAMP = CHArged Massive Particle

arxiv.org/abs/2602.06681

Actually now those names don't appear at all. Some files have been removed in the last two days.

I saw some names I know appear, but they were in a file that indicated that it was Lawrence Krauss's skype list and nowhere else, which (maybe this is my prejudice) I don't think is an indication of bad behavior.

Seems like "everything" should be "anything" in the original quote.

This Saturday, we're not just breaking the coldest temperature record for that day, we'll probably shatter it.

Exploring the Dangers of AI in Mental Health Care | Stanford HAI A new Stanford study reveals that AI therapy chatbots may not only lack effectiveness compared to human therapists but could also contribute to harmful stigma and dangerous responses.

Just as a fairly obvious FYI: hai.stanford.edu/news/explori...

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars?

These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research.

So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

Your colleagues should be doing this. If not, get better colleagues.

Check out Robert's discussion here: bsky.app/profile/mcne...

I'm glad you found it useful! I'm happy to chat more if it is still confusing.

The slides to that talk are here: peterdenton.github.io/Talks/25.12..... And if you shorten the url, you can find the slides for all my talks.

As a side benefit, if the American midwest ever built enough of these, it'd double as the world's best cosmic ray detector.

Atmospheric Muon Measurements Near Tornadic and Non-Tornadic Storms in the US Central Plains Tornadoes and other severe weather hazards affect thousands of people every year. Despite this, the details surrounding tornadic processes including formation, decay, and longevity are not well unders...

Paper of the day: muons + tornadoes. They actually storm chased with a muon detector and detected tornadoes!

I'd imagine the optimistic goal of such a program is to tomographically map the pressure drop in the atmosphere of a storm cloud before it forms a tornado

arxiv.org/abs/2601.20182

Peter's Acronym of the Day:

"NO LESS: Novel Opportunities for Light Exotic Searches at the SPS"

I have literally no notes, this is perfect.

arxiv.org/abs/2601.17119

The role of public interaction is important in other ways too, including locally. Brookhaven Lab was almost shut down in the 90s (the tritium leak). Part of the issue was little to no interaction with the local community.

The new operations team prioritized this (continues to today) to great effect

I'm not really sure how people can claim a preference for the normal ordering with cosmo data when the best fit point is incompatible with neutrino oscillations in the first place!

I thought we all agreed to stop writing things like this.

The Issue with Special Issues: when Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self The recent exceptional growth in the number of special issues has led to the largest delegation of editorial power in the history of scientific publishing. Has this power been used responsibly? In thi...

Interesting discussion on the arXiv today: arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563. This puts into more clear words what I have felt. That special issues are pretty obvious citation grabs by the editors, contributors, and the journal itself.

Have you ever asked yourself, "what can I do to improve my writing?"

One of my top recommendations is to study from the best. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham jail is truly a masterclass.

www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen...