Nicholas Wogan

@methanoJen @MaggieAstronomy Excited to see your paper!

@methanoJen @MaggieAstronomy Oh nice! I suppose one slight caveat is the methane detection on K2-18b. Some might argue the planet is a water world with a habitable ocean. But, others think it is a gas-giant with no habitable surface. Regardless, the planet is 2.6 earth radii, so kinda different situation.

@methanoJen @MaggieAstronomy That statement is correct! Where does that quote come from?

@david_kipping @MaggieAstronomy wrote a great paper on the CO2-CH4 biosignature: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2… Overall, a biological methane flux could stand out as unique compared to possible abiotic sources. Other gases, like CO, are relevant as well.

Question for my biosignature colleagues... CO2 and CH4. How robust is this pairing as a biosignature? Mars has a CO2 rich atmosphere and CH4 has been claimed. But abiotic alternatives have been suggested, so doesn't this undermine its utility as an exoplanet biosignature?

Several coauthors and I wrote a paper about the recent JWST observations of the K2-18b exoplanet: arxiv.org/abs/2401.11082 . Thesis: JWST observations of K2-18b can be explained by a gas-rich mini-Neptune with no habitable surface

@cosmobiologist “Light on water zone” - Kevin Zahnle

Remember, there's nothing about the "habitable zone" that means a world there must be habitable or inhabited. Nor does it mean that worlds outside of that region must be uninhabitable or uninhabited. It's a presumptive and misleading term.

@pauldauenhauer This thread is confusing to most people outside academia. This is the total $ needed from a granting agency (like NASA) to support a grad student a 1 year. But, students can also be supported by teaching assignments. That money comes from the university (via undergrad tuition)

@miquai I enjoyed this podcast episode, which argues we don’t have free will youtu.be/u45SP7Xv_oU

Do we have free will?

@cosmic_mar Both are good for different problems

Astronomy, circa 2023 🫠

@miquai It’s annoying how this seems to be true for lots of topics

#OverheardAtCarnegie: “The more you understand about planet formation, the more you understand that we don’t understand much about it.”

@miquai You have accomplished the impossible!

"This is a superb, bold, broad, and transformational article. . . . I have no negative critiques of this paper. It is clearly written, careful, and never confused or confusing. . . . Publish this paper as it is if the authors so choose." 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

@miquai Looks really good!

I'm launching a new personal website 🚀 miquai.myportfolio.com I would be honored if you gave it a test drive. Please let me know if anything breaks or could be improved! 💛

@OkayHughes @toomanyspectra Ha! I need to copy-paste this virtually everywhere.

@toomanyspectra [opinions redacted for reasons of future hirability]

love to find out that the hundreds of dollars I spent on food at AAS won’t be reimbursed because it was “too close to my institution”. hate this place!!!!!

@Jmendezcarvajal @Blag @SpamYoghurt1JK @fortranlang Ya, gfortran works great on M1 in my experience.

@Blag @SpamYoghurt1JK @fortranlang Ohh finally found someone sharing experience with M1. Have you tired GCC on the M1. 8 haven’t pulled the trigger with the M1 because I’m not sure if the ecosystem needed for scientific computation is not available for M1z

Coding in #fortran is really refreshing ☺️

@HumanBott @jjfplanet Ya haha it won’t die. I’m ok still using fortran 77 libraries. There are lots of good ones (e.g. SMART). But I hope in the future new code can be Fortran 90 or more recent standards.

@NicholasWogan @jjfplanet "Old FORTRAN can die" ... Can it, Nick? In spite of many folks' wishes, evidence supports the contrary.

Is the python backlash here? A new postdoc I met, just out of grad school, lives and breaths Fortran and gnuplot!

@bariweiss It seems to early to write this kind of article. To get the full (honest) story, it might have been a good idea to wait until the dust settles in a few weeks.

I can’t look away from this story: commonsense.news/p/the-32-billi…

@thomaschattwill I’m a little tired of people trying to draw conclusions about our greater culture from anecdotes. Of course stuff like this happens. There are billions of people in the world.

Parenting is crazy

@OmicsOmicsBlog @toomanyspectra Another assumption is that all 4^-281 RNA strands are equally likely. This is also probably not the case. Certain environments may select for a small subset of these many possibilities.

@toomanyspectra Not much at all First, it would be 4^281 - there are 4 nucleotides not 10 But that is making the assumption that there is one and only one such sequence. Almost certainly a wrong assumption

it takes 281 nucleotides to make an RNA strand that can reproduce. the odds of those molecules coming together in the right order is therefore on the order of 10^-281? seems kinda wild/unlikely? am I mathing correctly here?

Real footage of a grad student trying connect her research to the existing literature.