K2-18b Does Not Meet The Standards of Evidence For Life arxiv.org/abs/2508.05961

The problem with “aliens” as a hypothesis is that it has what I call Unbounded Explanatory Capability (UEC). There’s not a single phenomenon or event one cannot explain with aliens, God of the Gaps. When used as an anomaly bandaid, it’s a shell of a theory, lacking real substance

For the investor seeking the smallest possible returns

Today, August 15, 2025, marks the 48th anniversary of the Wow! Signal, and our Arecibo Wow! team has just revised its properties — they’re not exactly what we once thought. (1/n) phl.upr.edu/wow #AreciboWow #WowSignal #Astrophysics #SETI

How do you score? math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crac…

So much human culture, history, mythology, and biology is tied to the stable, cyclical orbits and balanced appearance of the Moon and sun in our sky. Can you imagine how different life would be if we’d somehow evolved to live on the moon of a gas giant with a view like this?

Terence Tao: "This is not a routine policy shift - it is a deliberate dismantling of the institutions, funding, and freedoms that have sustained American science for generations."

Another awesome exploration by my friend Adam 👇

We pointed JWST at Uranus - astronomers stared long and hard at it. And boy do we have a massive discovery concerning Uranus. I’ll see myself out…

The Universe is bitter and cruel, brutal and chaotic. But somehow in all that mess, there are rare instances - here and there - where it bears fruit.

What are you spending the most time using?

The US Supreme Court has derailed researchers’ efforts to reinstate almost $2 billion in grants issued by the NIH. The court’s decision represents a remarkable reversal, allowing the Trump team to proceed with its science cuts. go.nature.com/4fSQfPV

Apparently we’re a top 10 Columbia University podcast! millionpodcasts.com/columbia-unive…

I challenge each of us to ask ourselves the following. What do you love more - what you want to be true, or what is actually true?

Most interstellar propulsion concepts need impossible energy. But P(David|Kipping) ∝ P(Kipping|David) P(David) has developed a new way to travel to the stars. T.A.R.S., a deceptively simple, radiometer-inspired engine that could send probes to other stars.

“It is fundamentally impossible to ever establish alien life at some threshold odds ratio, Ocrit, unless we deem the prior probability that some as-yet-undiscovered natural process could explain the event is less than 1/(1+Ocrit)” iopscience.iop.org/article/10.384…

I’m actually glad to not be included…

It’s that time of year when you need to wake up