scicomm

1y

#PPOD: Two large, pale discs can be seen in today's PPOD: one of them in the Atacama Desert, the other orbiting the Earth 384,000 km away. The latter is our ever-present Moon, faintly hanging in the clear blue sky. Next to it is the real star of the image: one of the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: Y. Villalon/ESO

#science #scicomm

A massive radio telescope dish, one of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array's (ALMA) 66 such dishes, is set against a clear blue sky above snow-covered ground. A half Moon is faintly visible next to the dish on the right-hand side at about the 2:00 position.

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1y

In this in-depth interview, Camille Bergin dives into humanity’s quest to discover intelligent life beyond Earth with SETI Institute CEO Bill Diamond. From scanning the skies for distant radio signals to unpacking the origins of life, this conversation covers the science, the tech, and the human urge to figure out if we’re alone in the universe.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQasqnKWZMM&ab_channel=CamilleBergin

#science #seti #scicomm

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1y

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.seti.org/press-release/whaleseti-curious-humpback-whales-approach-humans-and-blow-bubble-smoke-rings

A team of scientists from the SETI Institute and the University of California at Davis documented, for the first time, humpback whales producing large bubble rings, like a human smoker blowing smoke rings, during friendly interactions with humans. This previously little-studied behavior may represent play or communication.

IMAGE: Bubble ring created by a humpback whale named Thorn. CREDIT: © Dan Knaub, The Video Company

#science #scicomm

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1y

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.seti.org/press-release/unusual-stellar-nurseries-near-our-galaxys-center-puzzle-scientists

New research led by Dr. James De Buizer at the SETI Institute and Dr. Wanggi Lim at IPAC at Caltech revealed that, although the central part of our Galaxy has a much higher density of star-forming material than the rest of the Milky Way, in the Galactic Center, the current rate of formation of massive stars (those larger than 8 times the mass of our Sun) appears to be lower compared to the rest of the Galaxy.

#space #science #scicomm

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1y

In a recent #SETILive episode hosted by Beth Johnson, Dr. Ben Tutolo, an associate professor at the University of Calgary and a participating scientist on NASA's Curiosity Rover team, unveiled how an unassuming iron carbonate - siderite - is the key to unlocking #Mars's atmospheric secrets.

Learn more: https://www.seti.org/marss-ancient-carbon-cycle-how-rocks-mars-tell-story-vanishing-climate

#science #space #scicomm

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1y

#PPOD: This Magellan full-resolution mosaic shows an area 160 kilometers by 250 kilometers in the Eistla region of Venus. The prominent circular features are volcanic domes, 65 kilometers in diameter, with broad, flat tops less than one kilometer in height. Sometimes called 'pancake' domes, they represent a unique category of volcanic extrusions on Venus formed from viscous (sticky) lava. Credit: NASA/JPL

#space #science #scicomm

Black and white radar photograph of the surface of Venus showing two large circles on the left and middle, and a smaller one to the right. In the center of each circle is a small mound, the vent of each volcano. The surrounding surface is full of cracks.

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1y

#PPOD: Due to airglow, which is usually hard to see, the sky can glow like a giant rainbow. Disturbances like storms cause gravity waves, making airglow visible. The colors likely originate from various molecules: deep red from OH molecules at 87 km high, and orange and green from sodium and oxygen atoms higher up. This image was captured on Mount Pico in the Azores, Portugal, with Faial Island's lights in view. Credit: Miguel Claro | Dark Sky® Alqueva

#astrophotography #science #scicomm

The thick band of the Milky Way reaches up to the top of this image from the horizon, passing through rainbow-colored gravity waves in Earth's airglow. At the bottom of the picture, the nighttime lights of a nearby island light up the surrounding water and lower cloud cover.

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1y

Lithium was created in the Big Bang. Now, this light metal has become crucial for modern technology. The recent discovery of a massive amount of lithium in southern California could change everything. But at what cost? It’s “Lithium Valley” on Big Picture Science.

Listen: https://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/lithium-valley

#science #podcast #scicomm

This photograph shows scrub and trees in front of a body of water with tall hills on the opposite side. The sun is just out of frame, and a few puffy clouds are in the sky.

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1y

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.seti.org/news/skymapper-and-seti-institute-team-up-to-map-the-entire-sky-all-the-time/

Today, the SETI Institute announced a strategic collaboration with SkyMapper, the world’s leading decentralized global astronomy and space science network. Together, they plan to deliver continuous, real-time astronomical data to scientists, educators, and enthusiasts worldwide.

#astronomy #science #scicomm

SETI Institute and SkyMapper logos against a starry night sky over the silhouette of a building and a field. Text: Today, the SETI Institute announced a strategic collaboration with SkyMapper, the world’s leading decentralized global astronomy and space science network.

Edited 1y ago

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1y

Could a “great act of moral imagination” save our imperiled watersheds and their rivers? Writer Robert Macfarlane presents the case for why rivers are alive, on this week's Big Picture Science.

Listen here: https://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/the-rights-of-rivers

#science #podcast #scicomm

Photograph of a river flowing over mostly hidden rocks amid a forest.

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1y

No new #SETILive #podcast this week, so let's go back to April 1 and an interesting exoplanet called HD 20794 d with an eccentric orbit. The temperature differences make it a great place to study a planet's potential habitability! Listen to the whole show: https://sites.libsyn.com/462636/super-earth-laboratory-using-hd-20794-d-to-understand-habitability

#science #scicomm

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1y

Our upcoming #SETILive interviews look at a new #LaserSETI exhibit and observatory location, the stunning artwork created in honor of this year's #DrakeAward recipients, and new science that reveals how #Ceres froze. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for notifications: https://www.youtube.com/SETIInstitute

#science #sciart #scicomm

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1y

Our bodies are marvels of evolution, yet evolution is not a perfect engineer. It works with what it’s got, which explains our sore feet and aching backs. We look at our complicated evolutionary past and What Moves Us on this week’s Big Picture Science.

Listen here: https://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/what-moves-us

#podcast #science #scicomm

Photograph of a man running, seen in silhouette, against a yellow sunset. The blue of the sky above the horizon is dotted with tiny clouds.

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260d

This week's #NewBooks at the library:
- For my birthday back in December, I treated myself to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from The Folio Society.
- A review copy of Simon Lamb's The Oldest Rocks on Earth: A Search for the Origins of Our World from Columbia University Press (a review is forthcoming).
- A second-hand copy of Peter Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection from Oxford University Press. This one was withdrawn from the holdings of the nearby Devon Libraries, but has found a welcome home with me.
#Books #Scicomm #Geology #EarthSciences #Evolution #EvolutionaryBiology #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, standing up, Frankenstein, showing a black silhouette of a humanoid figure in shredded clothing against what would be white rocks. The book is bound in blue cloth and is standing in front of a blue marbled slipcase.

In the middle, lying down, The Oldest Rocks on Earth, a paperback showing a colour photo of a mountainous landscape (to be specific, a view of the Makhonjwa Mountains in northwest Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Africa.

On the right, standing up, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, a hardback showing drawings of ammonites on a pale pink background, with a white-bordered square with an ammonite drawing on a pale orange background in the centre.

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238d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Three more books I bought during my employer's January sale of overstock:
- Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek (@Tomozaurus, @mojoceratops),
- Extinctions: Living and Dying in the Margin of Error
- and Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences from @themitpress

#Geology #Archaeology #MassExtinction #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek, showing dark grey / blue hardcover book with a colour illustration of Tyrannosaurus rex, here reconstructed as a beefy dinosaur with a bulging skull, rather than a skinny reconstruction that shows the contours of bones.

In the middle, Extinctions: Living and Dying in the Margin of Error, showing a white hardback with a colour photo of a polar bear across the bottom and a trilobite fossil across the top.

On the right, Rock, Bone, and Ruin, showing a yellow hardback with. Each word of the title is cut out of a black-and-white photo of a rock, the bones of a tail, and a ruin (what looks to be the Colosseum) .

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241d

She rode through London in a coach pulled by eight white bulls, wore dresses that scandalized Samuel Pepys into near-incoherence, and published critiques of both Hobbes and Descartes. She also wrote science fiction 152 years before *Frankenstein*. Her name was Margaret Cavendish — the woman who kept writing the future while her century tried to close the door.

https://oddlet.com/p/5cb

#Histodons #HistSci #SciComm #History #SmallStories

The Woman Who Wrote the Future

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233d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: three more books from my employer's January sale
- The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Paul D. Brinkman from the University of Chicago Press;
- Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins, a wonderfully illustrated book by John Gurche from Yale University Press;
- Rethinking Human Evolution edited by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a volume in the Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology from @themitpress.

#Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Anthropology #HumanEvolution #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books.

On the left, The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush, showing a hardback with a two-tone black and blue cartoon illustration of a dinosaur peering into the window of an apartment building. This is a famous period engraving by Motty, published in 1886, that shows Iguanodon roaming the streets of 1880s Paris.

In the middle, Shaping Humanity, a black hardback showing a lifelike colour drawing of an ape looking directly at the viewer. The ape is reminiscent of an orangutan, except it has dark-brown to black skin and orange sclera surrounding its black pupils.

On the right, Rethinking Human Evolution, a black hardback showing a collage of fossil human skulls executed in a reddish-ochre colour.

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168d

New review! As this handsomely illustrated book shows, the evolutionary history of mammals in Africa is far more interesting than you would think at first blush.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2026/05/26/book-review-the-rise-of-mammals-in-africa/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Fossils #Mammals #Biogeography #Scicomm @bookstodon

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198d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: A toss-up of three different titles
- Having reviewed a biography about Edgar Allan Poe, I determined that Thomas Olive Mabbott's version, originally published by Belknap Press, is probably one of the more authoritative collections of Poe's work. I managed to find a 1979 hardback original of the first volume via eBay.
- I found a very affordable second-hand version of Cambridge University Press's Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond in their Cambridge Planetary Science series.
- One more book from my employer's January clearance sale is Muhammad H. Zaman's Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens, published by Harper Wave.

#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Gothic #Poetry #Astronomy #Astrodon #Microbiology #Disease @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1: Poems, showing a hardback with a faded red dust jacket with a drawing of a black crow with wings outstretched.

In the middle, Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond, showing a casebound hardback showing an aerial photo of a cloud-covered pine forest with a meteor streaking across the sky.

On the right, Biography of Resistance, showing a hardback with a slate-grey dust jacket with a stylised drawing of a bacterium. Numerous yellow dots are encircling a red globular structure that has many spiky arms sticking out in all directions. A circle drawn in a dashed line is all that is keeping the two apart.

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218d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Two more books bought in my employer's January clearance sale. Drew Harvell's Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease from the University of California Press, and Benjamin von Brackel's Nowhere Left to Go: How Climate Change Is Driving Species to the Ends of the Earth from The Experiment.

In the middle is another of Jack Yeovil's Dark Future novels, Route 666, that I bought off eBay after listening to Jordan Sorcery discussing it. I put your theory to the test, Jordan, but it seems your podcast did not drive the price up, as I was the sole bidder and paid a tenner for this.

#Books #Scicomm #MarineBiology #ClimateChange #Warhammer #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, standing up, Ocean Outbreak, showing a hardback with a colour photo of a diseased red starfish lying on coastal rocks. In the background, you can see the surf breaking on the rocks against a clear blue sky.

In the middle, lying down, Route 666, showing a small red paperback with a colour illustration of a woman with short-cropped blonde hair in a blue jumpsuit with a yellow shawl around her neck. She is holding a shotgun in her right hand and is cradling a helmet in her right hand. A convoy of trucks can be seen behind her, while a gunslinger with a wide-brimmed black hat can be seen behind her right shoulder. She is looking directly at the viewer. Her picture is framed by a concrete-grey gothic frame studded with skulls, eagles, and bolts.

On the right, standing up, Nowhere Left to Go, showing a yellow hardback with a graphic of half a wireframe globe with a range of animal illustrations in different colours drawn along the globe's periphery.

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218d

At six, she wanted to cut her hair and disguise herself as a boy to attend university. At her teens, forty scholars were assembled to examine her at once. She was self-taught. She passed. When the Church made her stop writing, she signed her vows in her own blood. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: the Tenth Muse who wrote anyway.

https://oddlet.com/p/p4g

#Histodons #HistSci #SciComm #History #SmallStories

The Nun Who Signed in Blood

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45d

67 days later... I finally finished reading Darwin's Descent. I knew I would spend a significant amount of time with this book, but this is still a new personal record. Thoughts are being committed to paper, but for now, here is the obligatory mugshot. Annotations galore! Especially if you consider (second photo) that I ended up annotating both Darwin's original text and the numerous annotations.

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Evolution #Darwin #CharlesDarwin #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @princetonupress @princetonnature @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the right, The Descent of Man, showing a white oblong hardback with a colour photo of a fan of brown bird feathers with noticeable eyespots (these belong to the argus pheasant). The book is heavily annotated with coloured Post-it notes.

On the left, two books: "Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection", a white hardback with a period black-and-white cartoon illustration of a woman in Victorian garb seen from the back, holding a small umbrella. Her head, back, and the umbrella are covered with coloured peacock feathers.

In front ot it, lying down, is "A Most Interesting Problem", showing a white hardback with the title written across the spine.

A top-down photo of three books lying on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

In the centre, "The Descent of Man", showing a white oblong hardback resting, page open, on a bookstand that is not visible. The book is open on a random page to show both columns of text on each page densely annotated with coloured Post-it notes.

On the left, two books, one lying on top of the other. On top, "A Most Interesting Problem", showing a white hardback with two monotone colour illustrations of a chimpanzee skeleton in yellow and a human skull in green. Partially visible underneath is "Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection", a white hardback with a red box that contains the title in white font and the author's name in black font. The illustration on the cover is hidden by the book lying on top.

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192d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Another three books from our January clearance sale, some of which have been review candidates for some time now.

- Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything – and Endangered the World, a shocking and eye-opening reportage written by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman and published by Hurst Publishers.

- Making Faces: The Evolutionary Origins of the Human Face, written by Adam S. Wilkins, published by Belknap Press. Not one I was planning to review, but I find it very hard to pass up a bargain on an interesting book on human evolution and physical anthropology.

- Unfit for Purpose: When Human Evolution Collides with the Modern World, written by Adam Hart, published by Bloomsbury Sigma. One of several books that explores the mismatch between our evolutionary legacy and the modern world we have created for ourselves. I expect them to be amusing reads all!

#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #EnvironmentalIssues #PalmOil #PlantationForestry #FoodAdditives #Evolution #HumanEvolution #PhysicalAnthropology #Anatomy #PopularScience @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books.

On the left, Planet Palm, showing an orange hardback with an abstract colour illustration of an orangutan's face, its eyes made out of two palm oil fruits.

In the middle, Making Faces, showing a black hardback with a colour photo of a hominid skull lying on a bed of sharp black rocks (possibly basalt shards).

On the right, Unfit for Purpose, showing an orange hardback with a series of black silhouettes showing a variation on the classic march of progress meme. The last two human figures are of a walking man hunched over while holding a mobile phone, and a woman sitting on a chair hunched over while holding a mobile phone.

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213d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Three more books from the January clearance sale of my employer:
- The Rise of Horses: 55 Million Years of Evolution from Johns Hopkins University Press (one I might just review in tandem with a more recent book on horse evolution. At some point.)
- Extraction to Extinction: Rethinking our Relationship with Earth's Natural Resources from @sarabandbooks.
- The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World from WH Allen. Somewhere there is a review series brewing about long-term thinking (no, not *that* sort of long-termism!)

#Evolution #Horses #NaturalResources #ResourceExtraction #Environmentalism #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, standing up, The Rise of Horses, showing a lime-green hardback with two black-and-white illustrations. At the top is an anatomical muscle study of an adult horse. At the bottom is a horse skeleton.

In the middle, lying down, Extraction to Extinction, showing a white paperback that has several bands with squiggles and lines alternating with the title, subtitle, and author name.

On the right, standing up, The Good Ancestor, showing a white hardback with the title and author name in a red front and the subtitle in a black front. A single, small, green acorn is shown towards the bottom, its cap oriented towards the bottom.

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211d

I've just published my April story for @forbes. It's all about non-exhaust emissions and covers lots of recent research into their extent in our cities and their impact on our health

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2026/04/12/most-of-the-microplastics-in-urban-air-come-from-tires/

#science #scicomm #emissions

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