Michael Busch / is on Nostr

Planetary astronomer, studying piles of rock in space. Reader of books. Drinker of tea. He/him. This is a personal account. To bigotry no sanction.

Last Notes

2024-08-15 17:38:46

Cool science.
Not aliens.
"Cold hydrogen clouds in the galaxy emit faint narrowband radio signals similar to those shown here, detected by the Arecibo Observatory in 2020. A sudden brightening of one of these clouds, triggered by a strong emission from another stellar source, may explain the Wow! Signal." - https://phl.upr.edu/wow
Via @npub1hfz…2ymh .

2024-06-25 20:50:38

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The paper concerned, Brown & Mathur 2023, came out last year: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/acef1e .
Mysteriously to me; the press release promoting it was released four days after another paper, Vokrouhlický et al. 2024, was released. That paper was written in response to Brown & Mathur and explains how many versions of MOND are inconsistent with the observed structure of the outer solar system (just like they are inconsistent with so many other things): https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad40a3/meta

2024-06-25 19:56:03

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There was that press release last week that unaccountably claimed "Planet Nine is MOND" ?

2024-05-02 15:20:22

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UCLA: Police shoot at students with rubber bullets.
UW Madison: Police assault a professor.
@PioneerPress
headline for AP reporting: "Violence erupts on college campuses from UCLA to Madison"
Again: Get new headline writers, Pioneer Press.

2024-04-30 17:25:49

I looped past the @DivestUMN protest today.
The bike path was clear. The sidewalks were clear. The encampment is neatly on one end of the lawn.
@PioneerPress' headline for this is "universities struggle to clear protestors".
Get new headline writers, Pioneer Press.

2024-03-25 16:36:23

I read that last year, [@baldur](https://toot.cafe/@baldur) described the currently-popular text generators as an automated cold reading con: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/ .
That is very reminiscent of discussions of the ELIZA chatbot from 1964.
60 years on and it is the same scam.