Dark matter passes a new cosmic test, while MOND fails On cosmic scales, only dark matter (or something equivalent) gives us the Universe we observe. Now, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect agrees.

Dark matter passes a new cosmic test, while MOND fails

A new cosmic test has finally, with CMB and large-scale structure data, become realistic: using the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect to test dark matter vs. MOND.

Guess who wins?

bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro #darkmatter #MOND

Freu mich diesmal auch dabeizusein!

Pint of Science AT Bringing researchers to your local bar or cafe to share the latest happenings in the world of science.

Very excited to be part of this year's #PintOfScience festival in Vienna (May 18-20). Many interesting topics and fun opportunities to chat about science pintofscience.at

Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations of Jesus Christ Our 4th most-read article of 2022. CALENDAR 2027 3/31/24 4/13/25 4/5/26

"By week one, I was already tired of his anti-rich, pro-Samaritan bullshit. I wanted to take a course in Christianity, not liberalism."

Just realising that @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social 's classic crackpot index criterion #15 might need an update. AI readily solves this little obstacle: "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".

A shark head out of the water. Its mouth is open. It looks like it's screaming.

🦈 Rare picture of a shark stepping on a Lego.

#MadeMeSmile 🤭

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

The flimsy case for evolving dark energy Is dark energy evolving with at least 99.99% confidence? Despite the quality of recent data, scientists have every reason to be skeptical.

The flimsy case for evolving dark energy

There's been a lot of talk about evolving dark energy, and how DESI data demands it.

But the case for this remains somewhat weak, while the true underlying puzzles remain unsolved.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#physics #astro #space #darkenergy

Black holes aren’t black A half century after the discovery of Hawking radiation, we are still dealing with the quantum puzzle it exposed.

So happy to finally share this: I made a long-form comic about Hawking radiation for Physics Today! Although it's a short read, I hope it sucks you in ;)
physicstoday.aip.org/features/bla...

it's not a pigeon, it's a feature...

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content “In recent months, more and more administrative reports centered on LLM-related issues, and editors were being overwhelmed.”

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA, Citing Trump’s Attack on Science

Not so marvelous news.

~95,000 scientists have left the federal government since the Trump regime took over.

Watch as the Crab Nebula changes over time with Hubble. Two images, taken 25 years apart, show the ongoing expansion of a supernova remnant: https://news.stsci.edu/4bAN6m4 🔭

Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms

Christ on an electric bike.

Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/c...

Good move!

www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cn...

Illustrated graphic with the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory atop its site on Cerro Pachón beneath a sparkling night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way stretching from lower left to upper right. Sprinkled throughout are many "Data alert!" popups, labeled with icons that represent supernovae, asteroids, hungry black holes, and more.

A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.

The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨

On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍

A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

Article screenshot: LIGO Legacy: 10 incredible gravitational wave breakthroughs to celebrate observatory's landmark 2015 find By Robert Lea published September 14, 2025 A lot has happened in gravitational-wave astronomy over the past decade. An illustration of binary black holes ringing space-time with gravitational waves (Image credit: LIGO/T. Pyle)

What has happened in the 10 years since #GW150914?

@space.com picks their top 10 discoveries. What are yours?

www.space.com/astronomy/li... by
@robleascijorno.bsky.social

#GW10Years 🔭 ⚛️ 🧪

The Case of the Mysterious Citations Mysterious citations are routinely appearing in peer-reviewed publications throughout the scientific community. In this paper, we developed an automated pipeline and examine the proceedings of four ma...

A review of the proceedings from four major computer-science conferences showed that none from 2021, and all from 2025, had fake citations.
arxiv.org/abs/2602.058...

#AI #LLMs #Hallucinations #Misconduct #ScholComm

The image shows Katherine G. Johnson smiling working at the Spacecraft Controls Branch of NASA in 1966.

🧪 🔭🧵 #histsci
#February11 is International Day of Women & Girls in Science. So I would like to highlight Katherine Johnson, #NASA mathematician and computer scientist.

A biography➡️ nasa.gov/centers-and-...

She was a trailblazer in the quest for racial equality and, as a champion of STEM education,

UK government proposes 30% budget cut to astronomy and physics research: 'It's pretty disastrous' "You can't have a cut of that scale and not expect to see a massive impact."

More on catastrophic cuts to UK astronomy & particle physics. Costs of facilities & international subscriptions go up so grants line and individual projects are cut. If the Government is serious about backing science & technology, they need to fix this. www.space.com/astronomy/uk...

Are we destroying our window to the cosmos? Satellite trails could make space science nearly impossible, say astronomers | BBC Sky at Night Magazine Projected 560,000 satellites could overwhelm future observatories. Astronomers worry satellite trails will mar every view of the Universe.

Elon Musk et al are totally fucking up the night sky ALREADY and they plan to make it worse 🔭

www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/satelli...

Perhaps it was coincidental timing, but nothing underscores the collapse of the Washington Post like firing most of the Pulitzer prize winning #climate reporters the very same day as their opinion pages publishes a BS screed by climate misinformer Bjorn Lomborg.

Here's the data:

Starts With A Bang podcast #125 - Large-scale structure The seeds of cosmic structure that were planted back during the Big Bang grew into the cosmic web we see today. What is it telling us?

Starts With A Bang podcast #125 – Large-scale structure

Here at the start of 2026, the biggest puzzles in the expanding Universe are the Hubble tension and the question of whether dark energy evolves.

Two cosmologists, me and Kate Storey-Fisher, discuss.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro

Eine Geburtstagsparty für die Schrödingergleichung gibt's am 22-23 Jänner am @esivienna.bsky.social

www.esi.ac.at/events/e596/

Cartoon showing academic publisher at the end of a plank over the black void, supported by the weight of academics on the land-end, while one turns away (saying 'fuck this'), the publisher says: 'You will write papers for us & pay us to publish them. You will review those papers fo free. You will also pay us to read those papers'.

How recently have we understood the Universe? While humanity has been skywatching since ancient times, much of our cosmic understanding has come about only recently. Very recently.

How recently have we understood the Universe?

The Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years.

But it's really only over the most recent millennia, centuries, and decades that humanity has understood it at all.

bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #universe #cosmos #astro

Brightest-ever lensed supernova reveals astronomy's coming revolution With the observation of SN 2025wny, a lensed superluminous supernova, astronomy's future comes into sharp, exciting focus.

Brightest-ever lensed supernova reveals astronomy’s coming revolution

Astronomers found our first gravitationally lensed superluminous supernova.

With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory now operational, hundreds, maybe thousands more should be coming.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #supernova

It's as if there is a pattern...