Video of a small bird (Northern parula) that wants to hang out at our French door window.

(It brought larvae in its beak later that afternoon. I gave it the thumbs up of appreciation of its hunting prowess.)

#fensterfrieitag

@KellyLepo @nazokiyoubinbou High pressure is not a deal-breaker. The current limit for survivability is 1.2 GPa. We've done experiments at Very High Pressure (ca. 800 MPa) to see how life would adapt to high pressures at Titan's ocean bottom. (100 km of ice + 100 km of ocean.)

In habitability parameter space, pressure is not that bad. In comparison, cold can be a bigger issue. (Stabby-stab ice crystals that puncture cell membranes, for example.)

Just a reminder that Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically any genetic tech today, was only possible because of an extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. The value of basic #science cannot be predicted and often is realized decades after it's done.

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific
https://www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discovery-in-yellowstone-national-park-led-to-the-renowned-technique-of-dna-amplification-pcr

When there was a tan brown suit tūī in Hamilton in 2021, it made the news. Here’s the article. It mentions that the mutation is mostly seen in females.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/300370914/rare-mutant-brown-tui-being-seen-more-regularly-in-hamilton

#tūī #birds #nz

Every time I go to the local primary school for science outreach, I bring my pencil and notebook with me and emphasise how they're the most important tool in my research tool kit, and the pupils get all excited about that.

Key quote: "NASA is f***ed."

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/trump-pulls-isaacman-nomination-for-space-source-nasa-is-fed/

Viruses that roam the fungal kingdom https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/the-strange-viruses-that-infect-fungi

"today, scientists researching fungal #viruses are enjoying a golden age of discovery... finding all sorts of weird and wonderful interactions between #fungi and their viruses and even between fungal viruses and #plants or #animals. Most fungal viruses don’t seem to do much of anything to their hosts, but others cause sickness or offer surprising benefits."

EDIT: After you answer the poll, please reply with what your answer was, and what field you work in. With 70 votes in, the result shocks me!

Question for academics: if you read X±Y, what is your default assumption for what Y means if the authors didn't specify it?

(I just found out not everyone has the same answer, and I'm curious how widespread the "other" approach is.)

#Statistics

On May 26, 1970, to celebrate the birthday of Lenin, the former Soviet Union starts the secret project "SG-3" on the Kola-Peninsula.

The drilling project planned to study the Mohorovičić discontinuity, projected to be encountered at a depth of 15 kilometers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

🚨 #JOB ALERT 🚨

If you're an experienced communicator, passionate about #astronomy, and fluent in English and Spanish, there's a great job opportunity as ESO's Head of Communication in #Chile

Details here: https://recruitment.eso.org/jobs/2025_0041#

#scicomm #FediHire #astrodon #astronomy #science

The restored opening scene from the original release of Star Wars in 1977, with John William's memorable score.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJguy6wSYyI
2/n

In California, solar panels on farms generates 25 times more revenue than crops. Solar panels on California's Central Valley farms generate an average of $124,000 per hectare annually, a lucrative practice that already powers 500,000 households while saving enough water for 27 million people a year. Some farmers are doubling up, growing shade-loving crops beneath panels or grazing livestock, creating wildlife habitat while maintaining food production.
https://grist.org/climate-energy/farmers-are-making-bank-harvesting-a-new-crop-solar-energy/?ref=fixthenews.com
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Hubble image of Arp 82, also known as NGC 2535 and NGC 2536.

NGC 2535 is the grand design spiral at center and NGC 2536 is its smaller companion at the end of one of its arms.

The larger galaxy's inner arms have evenly spaced "beads on a string" star clusters. This suggests recent gravitational interactions created shocks that led to a burst of star formation.

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Dalcanton, Judy Schmidt
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/48021402058/

#ArpGalaxy #Galaxy #Space #Astronony

“What the wasteland warlord actually wants is a platform that is robust, easy to repair, fuel efficient when compared to its payload capacity, which can move lots of cargo and people and which can be fitted with heavier weapons.

And behold, providence offered forth the perfect vehicle of its wrath and fury: the Toyota Hilux.”

https://acoup.blog/2025/05/23/collections-the-logistics-of-road-war-in-the-wasteland/

Did.a video on the raw milk thing!

Contents: media literacy about agriculture & lots of talk about poop. Because cows

https://youtu.be/piB_DdO2D6I?si=LWwsq-t3jP_Wftg8

Prescient Warnings About Helene Didn’t Reach People in Harm’s Way.

Here Are 5 Lessons for the Next #Hurricane

After four months of reporting, ProPublica found that the warnings about Helene were eerily accurate.

Yet, local residents remained largely unaware of the enormity of danger approaching as the storm closed in.

#weather #safety #government #news
https://www.propublica.org/article/hurricane-helene-lessons-evacuation-orders-messaging

Everything I learned about planets when I was 5 was a lie.

Consider Venus: New analysis finds evidence of ongoing volcanism and tectonics! This is not the geologically dead acid-trip of a world we were taught about. It is alive and needs new radar maps ASAP.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-magellan-mission-reveals-possible-tectonic-activity-on-venus/

Letting no job opening go unshared:

https://explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/535584/director-astraeus-space-institute,

U-Florida (Gainsville), Director, Astraeus Space Institute

They're looking for an experienced PhD (or equivalent) who can be cleared for KSC access without escort, and work cross-disciplinary within Space Science.

I am going to give Mastodon another shot and try to get active here :) Goal: post one cool (at least to me) thing per day.

Lets begin: last week I was at the Asteroid Radar Modeling Workshop in Spain (https://sites.google.com/view/armw25/) where I learned a lot about planetary radar data and started working on asteroid shape modeling based on said data.

Attached the fruit of my labors - my WIP shape model for the near-Earth asteroid Agni. Not yet perfect - I will continue refining it!

10/10 workshop!

@siltala Very cool! Are there any other data that an be used to map onto your shape model? Dielectric constant? Emissivity?
(How different are the two lobes property-wise?)