@coreyspowell
Fascinated by things very big, very small, and beyond the limits of the human senses. Founder of OpenMind: www.openmindmag.org Creator of the Invisible Universe column: https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/
I regret to inform you that asteroid 2024 YR4 will not be hitting the Moon in 2032. New observations by JWST indicate it will miss by 20,000km.
Sorry, fans of big lunar explosions. π§ͺπ
www.esa.int/Space_Safety...
Here's the full paper on the search for Mars lightning.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...?
Mars MAVEN spacecraft (illustrated) in orbit around the Red Planet.
Before NASA lost contact with MAVEN, the orbiter detected "whistler" waves--evidence of lightning on Mars.
Mars would join Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and (probably) Venus among planets with lightning. Apparently it goes with the atmosphere. π§ͺπ
www.sciencealert.com/lightning-wh...
Engraving of the Colosseum of Rome as it appeared in 1855
I had no idea: The Colosseum used to be a huge bowl of wildflowers before it was scrubbed and sanitized.
An illustration of the Einstein Probe spacecraft.
The Einstein Probe is part of a growing effort by China to support ambitious astronomy and astrophysics programs. It was created in collaboration with ESA, CNES, and the Max-Planck Institute, which share in the results. π§ͺπ
ep.bao.ac.cn/ep/
The long-term X-ray light curve and spectral evolution of the bright x-ray object EP250702a.
The mystery object was extremely luminous, flared, and then faded within three weeks (graph below). All of that is consistent with a catastrophic encounter between small, dense star & a mysterious in-between black hole, hundreds or thousands of times the mass of the Sun. π§ͺπ
arxiv.org/abs/2509.25877
The field of the bright x-ray flare EP250702a as seen by the Einstein Probe.
Last summer, China's Einstein Probe detected an unusually fast, bright x-ray signal.
It might have come from an exotic, previously unseen type of cosmic disaster: a white dwarf star being torn apart & consumed by an intermediate-mass black hole. π§ͺπ
dailygalaxy.com/2026/02/firs...
Oh thank God I'm not the only one
Crenshaw is losing in part because he refused to denounce vaccine mandates.
A peek at the lunar eclipse (happening now!) for those who can't see it themselves. π§ͺπ
Eclipse timetable for March 3, 2026.
There's a lunar eclipse happening early tomorrow morning for people across North America.
I find many of the graphs confusing. Key idea: East coasters will see the eclipsed Moon setting at sunrise. West coasters can watch the full eclipse high in the west. π§ͺπ
www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/luna...
No kidding! The urge to make a drawing around your fingers seems to be a common link between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern Homo sapiens.
a, The proposed modern human migration routes from Sunda to Sahul; the northern route through Wallacea is delineated by the red arrows, and the southern route is delineated by the blue arrow21. The red dots represent the areas with Pleistocene rock art in eastern Borneo and southwestern Sulawesi. b, Map of Sulawesi showing the location of dated rock art sites in Southeast Sulawesi: (1) Liang Metanduno, (2) Liang Pominsa, (3) Gua Kaghofighofine, (4) Madongka 3 rock shelter, (5) Waburi 1 rock shelter, (6) Lia Bunta rock shelter, (7) Gua Anawai, (8) Gua Mbokita and (9) Gua Berlian. m + MSL, metres above mean sea level.
It's hard to measure the ages of early rock art. It's even harder to know who made it. Was this the work of Denisovans? Island-hopping modern humans?
We're still struggling to piece together the early history of our species. π§ͺ
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Figure from Oktaviana and coworkers (2026) showing the oldest panel from Liang Metanduno. At left is a photo showing the locations of calcite sampling and associated U-series ages; at right is a hand-drawn rendering to illustrate the handprints. The bird figure and human figure were added to this panel long after the handprints.
It's striking to me that the earliest examples of rock art are hand stencils. Someone outline their fingers to announce: "I exist! I am here."
This one, from Sulawesi island in Indonesia, is ~68,000 years old, making it the oldest known cave art in the world. π§ͺ
www.johnhawks.net/p/rock-art-m...
Thanks for the tip. Listening now and--yeah, I needed that!
A page from a copy of βThe Compendious Book on Calculation by Restoration and Balancingβ showing a geometric justification.
Seeing a broken world and developing ways to reintegrate it so that it makes more sense...quite a legacy for the 9th-century Islamic mathematician Al-KhwΔrizmΔ«, who established the modern system of algebra. π§ͺ
mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/...
Cover page of a manuscript of al-KhwΔrizmΔ«βs Ninth Century book Algebra. Al-KhwΔrizmΔ« has been falsely claimed to have been the inventor of algebra, but the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus had written an algebra text in the Third Century, and in any case a form of algebra had been in use long before then. Moreover, in his introduction, al-KhwΔrizmΔ« says clearly that the work he presents is a compilation of what was known at the time. However, his book Algebra was the first such in Arabic, it did put algebra βon the mapβ, and it did initiate the chain of books that leads to present day algebra. Moreover, Islamicate scholars who followed him did much of the early development of algebra. Thatβs quite a legacy. Images of al-KhwΔrizmΔ« in circulation are all works of fiction.
I learned algebra without ever thinking about where it came from. Algebra literally means "reunion of broken parts": using logical reasoning to discover what is unknown.
It's a tool for clarity of thought...among many other things.
Great essay by Keith Devlin at link. π§ͺ
maa.org/math-values/...
Mary Everest Boole (11 March 1832 in Wickwar, Gloucestershire β 17 May 1916 in Middlesex, England) was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole. Her progressive ideas on education, as expounded in The Preparation of the Child for Science, included encouraging children to explore mathematics through playful activities such as curve stitching.
Mary Everest Boole married mathematician George Boole. He died of pneumonia when she was 32, taking care of 5 young daughters She continued writing and researching math for another half-century, without access to any traditional academic support. π§ͺ
mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/...
This is a wonderful thread of quotes from Mary Everest Boole, a pioneering mathematician and (I'd argue) developmental psychologist. She beautifully describes the power of mathematics for seeing beyond appearances and, especially, for providing tools to define exactly what we do not know. π§ͺ
A formative part of the GenX experience was listening to the radio and hearing a whole genre of boppy top-40 songs about "...and then the nuclear bombs started to fall and everybody died."
Giving off a strong torta vibe, tbh
I'm all for encouraging people to look at the sky, but it's misleading to call these planetary lineups "rare."
The last one was in 2025. The next one happens this August.
starwalk.space/en/news/what...
buy want sweat man
shirt can where?
I know, it's a cool thing to know. Also: I'm hungry now
I like where you're going!
A chivito is a Uruguayan steak sandwich.
In case you're wondering about the name "Dracula's Chivito": One researcher who studied the object is from Transylvania, the other from Uruguay. A chivito is a Uruguayan steak sandwich.
This artist's impression of the Gomezβs Hamburger system shows the stacked layers of gas and dust as they rotate around a young star. ALMA observations provide a direct view of its vertical structure at millimeter wavelengths, enabling astronomers to map the locations of millimeter-sized dust grains and several gas-phase molecules, which are arranged in distinct layers. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/P.Vosteen
This space hamburger is called Gomez's Hamburger (or "GoHam"). It's another big one, 20x the size of the solar system; within it, astronomers can track carbon & sulfur molecules that trace the planets forming within.
(This one's an illustration.) π§ͺπ
www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-rel...
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the largest planet-forming disk ever observed around a young star. It spans nearly 400 billion miles β 40 times the diameter of our solar system. Tilted nearly edge-on as seen from Earth, the dark, dusty disk resembles a hamburger. Hubble reveals it to be unusually chaotic, with bright wisps of material extending far above and below the diskβmore than seen in any similar circumstellar disk. Cataloged as IRAS 23077+6707, the system is located approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth. The discovery marks a new milestone for Hubble and offers fresh insight into planet formation in extreme environments across the galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Kristina Monsch (CfA); processing: STScI/ Joseph DePasquale
I can't even, so I'm looking at...space hamburgers.
Celestial objects that resemble hamburgers are often edge-on views of infant planetary systems. This one, "Dracula's Chivito," seems to be creating a giant set of planets, 40x the size of our solar system. π§ͺπ
www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/nasas-h...
What if you count all the pulsars in NanoGrav?
Converting Artemis III into a lander test-flight seems like a smart (essential?) step. Sticking to that revised schedule will be quite a challenge, though. Can Boeing come through?
