megschwamb.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I have been trying to formulate some rules for giving good talks and fundamentally it’s this: tell a story. People like stories, and they will listen to you if they trust you are telling them.

submitted 18 hours ago • 15 comments

Meanwhile, it's my turn on Asteroid Patrol this morning, so I'm posting in one window while controlling the IRTF from 3 other windows, all while sitting in my bathrobe and eating @jagrier.bsky.social's experimental waffles. Currently we're looking at 2021 PS2 to determine what it's made of. 🔭 1/

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

ADS/SciX has been experiencing a DDoS attack. This attack resulted in several orders of magnitude higher levels of traffic than usual. We have increased our resource scaling capabilities and blacklisted the 100s of thousands of offending IPs and the issue is hopefully resolved.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

More details here blogs.esa.int/rocketscienc...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

☄️ 🔭 The impact probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 has dropped from 2.8% to 0.16%. Thanks to new observations, Earth is now at the edge of our shrinking ‘uncertainty window.’ If this trend continues, the risk may soon reach 0%.

submitted 2 days ago • 39 comments

Good news: asteroid 2024 YR4 has dropped from 3 to 1 on the Torino scale, with impact risk now significantly reduced; source: cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Please help us get the word out: our 6 wk astrophysics 🧪🔭summer research program for international MSc students is open for application! Note this is aimed at students from disadvantaged regions or under-represented groups in astro! I will host one position on black holes ⚫️! aspire.science.uva.nl

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

The odds of an impact by 2024 YR4 in December 2032 have dropped to 1.5%, according to CNEOS. cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/detai...

submitted 3 days ago • 9 comments

I lost my job at the National Science Foundation yesterday, along with 167 of my colleagues, including some dear friends. This was the best job I've ever had, and I thought it would be my last. The PI community has been sympathetic and supportive, without exception. I will miss working for you.

submitted 4 days ago • 604 comments

Every scientist, long before they were a scientist, was a little kid who stood in front of a fish tank or stared up at the stars or turned over a rock to look at the bugs underneath and said “wow”. On the best days, working in science still feels like that.

submitted 4 days ago • 27 comments

Let go from a science agency? Submit your story here.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This video for ESA explains why I am not worried yet anout 2024 YR4, but we definitely need to keep getting observations to refine our understanding of its orbit now and when it comes back close to the Earth in 2028 youtu.be/3_6Ff_2eBAk?...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Changes in NASA's workforce, by year, since 1959. Today will mark the largest involuntary reduction in staffing since the end of Apollo. The difference is that, right now, NASA is trying to spin up a Moon program instead of end one.

submitted 4 days ago • 8 comments

Tonight I was talking about 2024 YR4 (and why not to panic yet) and about how planetary astronomers find and study potentially hazardous asteroids in my Astronomy on Tap Belfast talk.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Survived my Astronomy on Tap talk and my lipstick did not run. Lots of awesome questions from the audience

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Ready for Astronomy on Tap in Belfast tonight as part of NI Science Festival

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Today on the #arXiv : Nesvorny et al. 2025, "A Spiral Structure in the Inner Oort Cloud" - arxiv.org/abs/2502.11252 Presenting an interesting idea about the arrangement of objects in the Oort Cloud, but also concluding that it is difficult to test.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I don't know if this funding proposal I'm writing is going to be successful, but I do love the title: " Into the Unknown: Exploring the Solar System Revealed by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time"

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Congratulations Astronaut McFall! Great to see @esa.int pushing boundaries in the human exploration of space. 👨‍🚀🙌

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Some of you may live in one of these states and fall into these categories or, sadly, might anticipate falling into one of them. 🛰️ 🧪 🔭

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

A new round of the Lise Meitner Excellence Program for #tenuretrack group leaders opened today - please consider applying! The program aims to recruit and promote exceptionally qualified female scientists. www.mpg.de/lise-meitner... #LiseMeitnerGroups #WomeninScience #ScienceCareer

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Job opening: Supervisor of the Asteroids and Small Bodies Section the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) careers.jhuapl.edu/jobs/56655?l...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Working at NASA is a dream for many around the country and even the world. Positions don't just get created. They are extremely rare and highly competitive. The folks that get them are _the_ best at what they do. What do they do? 1/6

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

I was hoping that my first bsky post would be more cheerful. I recently joined NIH (NIEHS) as a PO. I fought hard for this position and was so excited to support health science from a new vantage point… I picked up my life and moved to NC. Unfortunately, my time at NIEHS was short lived.

submitted 7 days ago • 28 comments

Happy 61st

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

I’m seeing an awful lot of posts from people on Bluesky responding to despairing scientists with the words “please keep going, the world needs you”. Scientists cannot keep going if we can’t keep a roof over our heads and our mouths fed.

submitted 7 days ago • 15 comments

Sunday plugs: the next edition of Huh, That’s Funny, our Oxford science/comedy night is 27/2 - tickets still available! wegottickets.com/f/13643/ The night before I’m at @greshamcollege.bsky.social : waiting list and free online tickets here: www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/big...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

It was not on my bingo card to get a little kid come up to the build the asteroid booth at today’s outreach event and go “do you know about the Kuiper Belt?”. Buddy, you just made my day.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Other things I did this week: I gave feedback on a co-authored paper draft, I started the steps towards a grant proposal, and a new collaboration/project I am co-leading is starting to have some forward momentum. (plus the usual slew of meetings and telecons). I am ready for the weekend

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

First week of teaching intro undergrad physics thermodynamics is done, exam questions and resit exam questions are written.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Reliably hearing that NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs are being cut. Did you want to be a scientists? Well, thanks to Musk, now you can’t.

submitted 9 days ago • 10 comments

Measuring the Distances to Asteroids from One Observatory in One Night with Upcoming All-Sky Telescopes (Fernandes et al submitted) arxiv.org/abs/2502.07881

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

<5 years post PhD & looking for an astronomy fellowship in Australia? The DECRA Fellowship is an ARC fellowship with resources similar to prize fellowships like the Hubble - can take to any uni, and our group at Macquarie in Sydney could be the right place for you!

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

when you use the wrong there/their in an email and see it later. grrr

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

The Guardian view on campus cuts: academics pay a high price for Westminster’s mistakes www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

The @laist.com folks wrote up a nice piece about the work my former team did, the impact we had on teachers and future scientists and engineers, and what our layoffs mean to local educators. laist.com/news/educati...

submitted 11 days ago • 4 comments