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juliangough.bsky.social
Writes novels (Connect), children’s books (Rabbit & Bear), and strange, unclassifiable things (Minecraft’s End Poem). Currently writing a creative non-fiction book, exploring the idea that our universe evolved, called The Egg and the Rock.
71 posts 962 followers 73 following
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You HAVE to watch this video! They've developed adaptive optics for a solar telescope in California. That means they can adjust for all the wiggle and wobble of the air above the telescope, so they've been able to capture images as sharp as if the telescope were in space. STUNNNNNING!!! Plasma rain!

submitted 2 hours ago • 0 comments

Pranav Satheesh reports for @astrobites.bsky.social on a new method being used to explore the relationship between the mass of a supermassive black hole and the properties of the galaxy it inhabits. aasnova.org/2025/06/03/j... 🔭

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Anyone remotely interested in #cosmology, #evolution, or #philosophy should read this deeply insightful, highly entertaining, beautifully written post by Julian Gough @juliangough.bsky.social, who's taken cosmological natural selection (originally by Dr. Lee Smolin) to a new, fascinating level.

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Yes, that would be pretty much my take on this. If our universe evolved, then the laws of physics will be fine-tuned for an outcome. They won’t be symmetrical or beautiful in themselves, just as a tiger’s genes aren’t beautiful in themselves. The beauty is in the outcome: the tiger, the universe.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Well, Blowtorch Theory is currently number one on Hacker News for some reason, and getting the usual grumpy reaction you’d expect from those guys. Feel free to join in and tell them they’re wrong! news.ycombinator.com

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

So great to see @juliangough.bsky.social's This Lake Is Fake (brilliantly illustrated by the peerless Jim Field) shortlisted for the Alligator's Mouth Award. www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/article...

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

Biology is the first half of the periodic table coming to life. Technology is the second half of the periodic table coming to life.

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

Hopping on my bike to come home.

submitted 111 days ago • 2 comments

I wrote a piece about children's books for the Irish Times that may interest parents. It's a deep dive into an invisible problem with children’s books, that makes it unnecessarily hard for kids to start reading on their own. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book... I hope you like the piece.

submitted 173 days ago • 1 comment

@seanmcarroll.bsky.social Ah! You're on here, too. (I signed up a while ago, but have only just started exploring.) I do enjoy your podcast, though we would probably have a few philosophical disagreements (but that just keeps it interesting). I may bother you with some questions at some point...

submitted 204 days ago • 0 comments

@runningastronomer.bsky.social I do like faint galaxies. Would love to talk to you sometime about the little red dots that the James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding in the background of everything. (My theory: extremely early AGNs, but I'd love your better-informed take.)

submitted 205 days ago • 1 comment

@drbecky.bsky.social Lovely to see you here! I've greatly enjoyed some of your videos. I might ask you a few questions about black holes sometime, if that's OK. (They feature rather a lot in the book I am currently writing.)

submitted 205 days ago • 0 comments

The more I dig into the history of dark-matter-as-theory, the more irritated I get. The Bullet Cluster? Evidence for collisionless dark matter. Great. Abell 3827? Evidence for self-interacting dark matter. Fantastic. Both “support” dark matter – even though they point in opposite directions.

submitted 205 days ago • 1 comment

Not more rapidly than @juliangough.bsky.social expected, theeggandtherock.com strikes again 😀

submitted 370 days ago • 1 comment

I processed my emotions, and now I’m worried that one day they’re going to discover that processed emotions give you cancer.

submitted 695 days ago • 1 comment