Brian Williams

Many pro astrophysicists receive unsolicited letters from amateurs with new but subtly wrong physics theories, often about relativity and from retired engineers. This cute new paper is a perfect reply & I love how it uses cyclotrons & transponders & radar 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2605.21660

A team of South Korean researchers suggested the universe's expansion may have entered a deceleration phase, caused by the influence of dark energy weakening over time, but the new study says those conclusions were the result of a scientific misunderstanding. Read more 👉 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

lol apparently ESA's comms team has different rules for language compared to ours 😂

House SS&T Dems just issued a report re NASA and the FY2026 budget: "Mission Aborted: How NASA Illegally Implemented the President's Budget Request Without Congressional Approval." Calls on Isaacman to "defend" NASA and not do the same w/FY2027 request. democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do...

Science Committee Democratic Staff Report Reveals Details on NASA’s Illegal Implementation of Trump’s FY2026 Budget Request Without Congressional Approval. democrats-science.house.gov/news/press-r...

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

I meant to post this at the LOS moment but baby duties got in the way. Just imagine this post like an hour ago... "David Copperfield has about 40 minutes to pull off the funniest magic trick of all time"

One thing that amazes me is that two of the three American astronauts on board Artemis II graduated from public universities: Christina Koch earned three degrees from NC State, and Victor Glover was a defensive back on the Cal Poly football team. We are not going anywhere without public education.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center: NASA-JAXA’s XRISM Telescope Clocks Hot Wind of Galaxy M82 science.nasa.gov/missions/xri...

I saw the dress as white and gold I heard Laurel, not Yanny and .0026 is my best result (average of several tries probably .0032 or so). I'm almost 44 What's My JND? 0.0026 Can you beat it? www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...

NASA HQ has declared the AXIS Probe study ineligible for selection, and we will not proceed to the final stage of review. A letter to the community from AXIS leadership is below. I'm sorry that this happened. The astronomical community deserves better. I hope this is the beginning, not the end.

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

It moves! We can watch as the Kepler supernova remnant changes over a quarter of century in X-rays from Chandra. #aas247 chandra.si.edu/photo/2026/k...

Here's the Chandra press release for this cool - and also hot - new movie. chandra.si.edu/photo/2026/k... #AAS247

🆕 XMM-Newton & XRISM observed an extraordinary blast from a supermassive black hole 💥 They spotted a bright X-ray flare erupting from the gigantic black hole lurking within NGC 3783. As it faded away, fast winds emerged, raging at speeds of 60 000 km per second 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

Good on Penn Jillette. Having to come to terms with your entire political identity and philosophy being wrong is not easy and most people could never do it.

Footage from Bradenton, Florida of Starship launch

heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xrism/p... The XRISM cycle 2 approved target list has been released

As usual with this issue, Harris is calling for a compromise that already exists. Every sporting body has standards for how long athletes must be on hormones before they can compete as women. The problem isn’t that we’re ignoring ‘reasonable concerns,’ the problem is that republicans are lying.

Cosmic wind of change #XRISM makes an unexpected discovery: winds from neutron star discs are quite different from those around supermassive black holes. The discovery could reshape our understanding of the most extreme environments in the Universe 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

the person behind this unhinged, anti-factual editorial is set to decide coverage at one of the nation’s major news networks

New XRISM paper published in Nature reveals that high-speed winds from supermassive black holes are clumpier and more energetic than expected, helping us learn how black holes and galaxies coevolved. Plus the spectrum is amazing 😲😲😲 www.xrism.jaxa.jp/en/topics/sc... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New life phase entered

The AO for XRISM Cycle 2 is now open; deadline May 15th. This is a *6-month* cycle. Proposals should assume gate valve closed. The team continues to evaluate the feasibility of another operation to open the GV. Proposals for lab astrophysics are also solicited. nspires.nasaprs.com/external/sol...

Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

New backdrop delivered just in time for AAS. Stop by the XRISM booth next week, and come to our Special Session Monday morning at 10:00-11:30 to see new results!

Hello world. I'm on here now.