[As an aside, the Cambrian period was named after the latin version of Cymru, the actual name of my homeland of Wales, where the rocks of the period were first studied]

Whilst I love dinosaurs, my favourite period is the Cambrian!

The Southern Cross spotted on the way home.

William Jones (mathematician) - Wikipedia

The first person to use pi was Welsh mathematician William Jones in 1705 not Euler.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

Just remember that the dark side of the moon has the same metaphorical meaning as the dark side of the force and you will be ok. #astro #astrosci

> I mean you don’t get paid much on a PhD but trying to finish one with no income and sourcing new income seems like it will just extend finish times?

Opposite - lack of funding means people tend to finish up.

See my last post - there's also a finite pot of scholarship money (and usually decreasing) so extending duration means fewer scholarships awarded.

I agree, but I think Parkinson's Law comes into play - PhDs expand to fill the funding available. In the UK, for a couple of years, they decided to give 4-yr PhDs and people took 4-yrs. The end of a scholarship is probably a great motivator for finishing (and unis care about completions).

Three years is the *scholarship* duration (plus an extension) - the latest date (at USyd) is 4 years. The reason for this is that once you go past this point, you cost the University rather than bringing in funding.

Earlier papers on cosmological time dilation would use the word dilatation instead. Whilst they mean the same, I am glad the field has settled on dilation. #astrosci

I read about the Storegga Slide and end of Doggerland years ago in this book, published about 20 year ago.

Are you going to be on the Sunshine Coast in May? Do you want to hear me warble on about science and technology? Have I got the event for you!

Interesting perspectives on cosmology from Virginia Trimble in 1983. #astrosci

Astronomically speaking, that's reasonable....

Time to start advertising my next book to be released in Australia at the end of June (right cover) and the US in September (left cover). A most wonderful Christmas present!

#scicomm #physics #cosmology #science

I tell people that where I am from, Churchill is seen as a villain, not a hero, and they seem rather flabbergasted...

Don't worry - I teach them classical mechanics in their first year and put them right.

Often physics undergraduate students.

I think it's interesting that people tell you that rockets can be used in space because of conservation of momentum, and so you don't need an atmosphere to push against, but if you ask them how and where the force is applied to the rocket, they just give you a quizzical look.

No it isn't.

A Bayesian Exploration of the Mass of Ursa Major III: Kinematics, Rotation and their influence on the Mass to Light Ratio We investigate the kinematics of the potential ultra-faint dwarf galaxy (UFD) UMa III/U1 using Bayesian inference to search for the signal of any potential intrinsic rotation. The magnitude of rotatio...

New paper on the arXiv - first by PhD student Tim Adams

arxiv.org/abs/2602.17957

My haul from the excellent Wyrdbooks in Wentworth Falls

Has anyone seen a more glorious sewer cover?

Snap!
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018PASA...

Used to be called Shrove Tuesday and/or Pancake Day back when I was young...

There's no obvious reason for choosing that metric signature!

I made this for my PhD (sometimes last century), which shows microlensing in the Einstein Cross. It's still out there, being used :) - hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Astro/...

[Doesn't he say that it lacks a right edge??]

The line of totality in 2028 passes a few hundred metres from my School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

Brits take the Gulf Stream for granted, but to understand it's importance you just have to realise that the Titanic hit the iceberg 10 degrees *South* of Britain.