The Timberwolves are 30-6 in the last 36 games in which Julius Randle has played.

The Harvard visa ban is shooting ourselves in the foot. Harvard is a magnet of global talent. I was a predoc at Harvard & then a NASA Sagan fellow there before joining Columbia, so I am one of the many immigrants who was trained and drawn to the US by that incredible institution.

Breaking news: Staff at the National Institutes of Health have issued a declaration calling on their director to depoliticize the agency and reverse spending cuts. scim.ag/3FN7HHK

Congrats to Dr. Yao Tang (left) and Dr. Sagnick Mukherjee (right) for recently defending their PhDs with me at UC Santa Cruz. Both did impressive work to understand the physics of exoplanets.

17% transit depth! A Saturn-size transiting exoplanet around a small 0.2 M_Sun star: arxiv.org/abs/2506.07931

When the room reservation gets made by someone outside of the sciences.... 😜

Today, NSF announced an add’l 500 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program awardees for the 2025-2026 cohort, bringing the total to approx 1,500. #NSFGRFP supports grad students as they pursue their dreams, build STEM skills, & become the next generation of innovators & leaders.

Yesterday the 1st-year Astrophysics majors in Astronomy 9 presented their 2-quarter-long group research projects. This class, started by Ruth Murray-Clay, has been a huge success in slowing the leaky pipeline that drives some out of STEM majors.

....meanwhile, in Chile....the 39-meter (128-feet) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) project is humming along. Note the white pickup truck in the upper left, for scale. Amazing.

A big Rubin Observatory party at UC Santa Cruz today. Important leadership from our Physics department for this transformational observatory.

The Red Menace had laid low for nearly a year before returning this morning to the Firecracker 5K race! 21:16 time, a 6:51/mile, his 2nd best effort ever! The only disappointment was that the classic pancake breakfast has now been converted into breakfast burrito distribution.

Am I the last to know about this multicolor watermelon thing?

Abstracts close this Friday for the Fall 2025 STScI Science Workshop on Atmospheric Escape and Replenishment. We'd love to see you in Baltimore in November! Check it out and let me know if you've any questions. stsci.edu/contents/event…

Day 1 underway at the Other Worlds Laboratory (OWL) 🦉 Exoplanet Summer Program at UC Santa Cruz. Building and fostering collaborations in exoplanet science!

I said "no" to a thing!

The mascot is out and about on this misty morning!

Some additional visitors for the Other Worlds Laboratory, exoplanet summer program at UC Santa Cruz. This is our 7th year of creating and fostering collaborations in exoplanet science at UCSC.

Dr. Artem Aguichine, having his French citizenship questioned by Dr. Nour Skaf, after slathering his croissant in peanut butter.

Not good app.lookout.co/story/santa-cr…

What is even happening?