@profannawatts
Professor of Astrophysics @ Univ. of Amsterdam. Neutron stars, pulsars, dense matter, X-ray astronomy. Mom, Migrant. "Particles in stars blah blah". Does science with NICER on the International Space Station and schemes for EVEN BIGGER SPACE TELESCOPES.
Ja, waarom? De korte versie: boeren in intensieve landbouw kunnen alleen overleven door steeds verder op te schalen. Dus pakken ze de sloten erbij. Desnoods illegaal en ten koste van biodiversiteit.
Mooie illustratie van @laurensvangurp.bsky.social VK (hoewel: realiteit is meer plaatje 2).
Kabinetsplannen om vaderschapsverlof te versoberen 'stap terug voor gendergelijkheid' - nos.nl/l/2605267
I have now identified more than 100 bloody buckets just to be allowed to read journal papers in SciX.
ai:du This makes me so angry and sad. π‘π’
A group of astronomers peering at a rack of compute nodes.
A huge treat to get a tour of Dutch supercomputer Snellius as part of our X-PSI team hack week! A chance to salute the hard-working nodes in person. Thank you @itcooperativesurf.bsky.social !
Why does quantum chromodynamics get quote marks?! It's a real thing! And definitely easier to understand than American politics.
You can already find the mass-radius samples for our headline run in a Zenodo. We'll update this with a full reproduction package in due course!
zenodo.org/records/1874...
Egg colours Purple: chocolate goop Blue: nuts? Indeterminate Teal/green : crunchy white stuff ( vanilla) Pink: strawberry Dark orange: white choc and caramel
X-PSI spring hack week is underway! The most important part of the hack board? Identifying the chocolate egg flavours in the hack snack tin.
The results are - incoming pun klaxon - much nicer! Results for the different geometric models are more consistent, and tension with other results, for the statistically preferred model, is reduced. Phew!
New NICER neutron star results this morning, led by Yves Kini! For the first rotation-powered millisecond pulsar we ever reported on, PSR J0030+0451.
More data (6 years!), background constraints fully incorporated, and improved sampling. #highenergyastro ππ§ͺ
arxiv.org/abs/2602.23743
Family movie night, Apollo 13. Kids - thankfully - loved it. There would otherwise have been ructions.
Unsurprisingly, Marko has already written something⦠/3 www.ejiltalk.org/the-american...
A trailblazer (which I did not appreciate enough when I sat in her lectures!).
ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...
Sigh saying E = m c squared Energy = milk times coffee squared
Wise words from the hoardings on the building site of the new Graz Centre for Physics
I've been aware of this impending change - which hits my dual national kids - for months, as soon as I realised I couldn't get them an ETA on their Dutch passports. I am quite bemused that many of my friends missed it.
But they *did*, and the consequences suck... so fixing it seems wise?
Plaque saying " Ihrem mitgleide in den jahren 1869-1873 und 1876-1890 Ludwig Boltzmann die philosophische fakultΓ€t der universitΓ€t Graz"
Hanging out with the Big Physics Cheeses in Graz....
It's awful isn't it?
Gift link from the NYT story about Axel and Epstein. When I was at Columbia he ran a lab where sexual harassment of women was business as usual. We all knew. We all warned each other.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/n...
Not open to anyone needing a visa, is that right?
Ik begrijp dat de inkrimping van de veestapel afhangt van de vraag of βwe de
boeren meekrijgenβ. Dat hoor je nou nooit bij bezuinigingen in de zorg of sociale zekerheid. Dan maakt het niets uit wat de betrokkenen ervan vinden.
Our institute is being renovated so we're packing up to move to a temporary location. Cue a LOT of clearing up....
Well maybe reading a final draft of a PhD thesis to a little BLΞΖKPIΠK? It's a tough one.....
Does anything spark more joy than despatching old exams to the shredder? I think not.
βMooie woorden, weinig dadenβ, kopt Volkskrant. Met de huidige plannen worden klimaat- en stikstofdoelen niet gehaald. Die conclusie trekt PBL op basis van het coalitieakkoord dat vol ambitieuze woorden staat. Het verschil tussen cijfers en woorden.
YES! I used to do this and it was amazing for mom sanity. Light pottering and coffee in town, maybe a pedicure? Bliss.
Read the whole thread. Then pre-order Chandaβs book.
I havenβt yet gone looking to see if the professors who ultimately convinced me that higher ed wasnβt a place I wanted to be due to their behavior are in the files. But what Chanda says resonates deeply nonetheless.
Oh I'm so sorry to hear this! Give that poor kitty baby all the hugs.
Chart of Physics doctorates earned from 1978 to 2024, with a steady increase in the number of women but overarching trends closely tracking the number of men earning PhDs
Chart showing doctorates earned in astronomy from 1978 to 2024 with women making steady gains and closing in on parity, and an overarching increase in number of PhDs earned linked to the increasing numbers of women entering the field.
The AIP stats team has released its latest data of physics & astronomy PhD trends, with breakdown by gender. What is extraordinary to me is how clearly the overall trends exhibit an important gender dimension, and that that story is quite different between physics and astronomy.
That's awful. I'm so sorry.
We have fondued. It was spectacular. #Bern