Augusto Carballido

#PPOD: NASA's Perseverance rover has made history! On October 11, 2026, the rover reached a total distance of 45.22 kilometers across Mars, surpassing the 45.16-kilometer record set by its predecessor, Opportunity. 🧪 🔭

That moment when you’re about to go to bed and an intriguing scientific idea pops in your head…

The Andromeda Galaxy, low in the sky over New South Wales, Australia.

Ribbons and pearls 🎀 Ribbons of gas & dust wrap around the pearly centre of the galaxy NGC 1398.  NGC 1398’s spiral arms do not begin at its very middle, but stem from a straight bar instead. How many spiral galaxies share this feature? Find out: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1801a/ 🔭

Stellar nursery.

“Combined with stupidity and social media, ignorance produces farmyard chicks convinced they are imperial eagles.” —Arturo Pérez-Reverté

Airborne diseases like Covid are so tricky because transmission depends on so many crazy factors. One person with Covid may not have any detectable viruses in their breath. A single swab from another person may pick up 10 billion viruses! Review: paijournal.com/index.php/pa...

Are those Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities ON THE SUN?!?!

🚨BREAKING: the Senate will vote in A FEW HOURS on a bill keeping NASA funded & political appointees out of science grants. Without it, the government could shut down, a 46% NASA science cut, and political appointees would override peer review. Use your voice. ⬇️ www.planetary.org/advocacy-act...

Story time! Six years ago, my first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), came out. It was fun to write! I got to share all my cosmology fun facts and dig deep into all the ways the universe might end. I had SO much fun with it, I thought, "maybe I should write another book?" 1/?

mailchi.mp/psi/8gpf60v5...

Yay!

The Cabo Verde national soccer team is true inspiration. Fantastic job in the 2026 World Cup. 🇨🇻

Talk of terraforming Mars before we understand whether it holds clues to the presence of past life is irresponsable. Mars is a window into the geological past, and if there is even the slightest chance that it could contain evidence of ancient biology, we should not be meddling with it.

Can buildings fight airborne diseases the way they fight fires? I went to Washington to meet scientists showing off works in progress. Here's my report (gift link): nyti.ms/3SijML2

‘Alexa, cuéntame un chiste’: ¿cómo afecta la interacción con la IA a los más pequeños? theconversation.com/alexa-cuenta...

This is the most important thing you'll do today. Russell Vought wants to take OVER all federal grant making putting it under political control. Write to your members of Congress. Tell your friends to do so. And share, share, share. actionnetwork.org/letters/oppo...

A stunning visualization born from a collaboration with @manlius.bsky.social : 55,486 galaxies and 29,555 streamlines tracing how matter flows across our local universe, built on data from the CosmicFlows-4 project. Article in the first reply 👇

"This is the least transparent #NASA budget request I've ever seen — and I've literally looked through every single one since 1960." -- @caseydreier.bsky.social Love that slush fund line for "Mars Technologies" underwriting more Elon promises he can't keep. #space www.space.com/astronomy/na...

NASA absorbs but a tiny fraction of the federal budget, yet produces astounding scientific and technological achievements. The current administration wants (once again) to significantly reduce NASA’s budget. That achieves no savings, but it badly damages US space science.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-...

What he said. That’s orbital mechanics 👍. Thank you, Sir Isaac.

👇

“We will construct science outposts, we will drive rovers, we will do radio astronomy, we will found companies, we will bolster industry we will inspire, but — ultimately — we will always choose Earth, we will always choose each other." –Christina Koch, first woman to the Moon

Perspectives.

A simple celebratory post about completing my PhD went viral for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how I managed the backlash and used the attention to promote my research, says Juliet Turner go.nature.com/4sQu3uX

“The aurora borealis is the sun’s farts”. – Science teacher Image Credit & Copyright: Adrien Mauduit. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180621.…

Perspective.

x.com/mit_csail/st...

Imagine if the US collaborated with China on bringing back little pieces of Mars back to Earth, much like the US collaborated with the Soviet Union in the Apollo-Soyuz program during the Cold War.

You are here. We've breached 430 ppm CO2. #climatechange

Earth’s sky hasn’t always been blue, and won’t always be.

Please share far and wide.

There likely was a lake there billions of years ago and maybe, just maybe, tiny microorganisms lived on the lake bed and left chemical traces of their meals for humans to recognize.

Paper Quotes: "Because the biosphere, as a living system, processes information in ways nonliving systems do not, information-theoretic approaches can capture aspects of coupled system dynamics that might otherwise remain invisible to purely physical or chemical models".

#PPOD: This ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) gallery of faint debris disks reveals details about their shape: belts with multiple rings, wide smooth halos, sharp edges, and unexpected arcs and clumps, which hint at the presence of planets shaping these disks. 🧪 🔭

“Seeing is inference from incomplete information”. – Jaynes, E. 2003, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

The gas between the stars also moves.

"...in astrobiology, the lack of a non-biological explanation isn’t where life detection ends – it’s where it begins." Signs of ancient life may have been found in Martian rock – new study theconversation.com/signs-of-anc...

Microplastics are airborne too. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Finding iron biosignatures on another world wouldn't just confirm life exists elsewhere, it would reveal that the same fundamental chemistry... operates throughout the solar system." phys.org/news/2025-11...

One of the reasons why I go so hard on science misinformation/disinformation, is that as a working scientist it is frustrating to see your research misreported to push an agenda. For example, consider this piece of right-wing propaganda from The Telegraph that was just published

Timely reminder.

The decision by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downgrade its recommendations to protect infants from hepatitis B is a dangerous move that will harm children. Click here to read AAP's full statement: bit.ly/3Y9ZQJT

time.com/7335787/pand...