stephen wilkins

Many thanks to the entire team (especially Will Rope) for staffing the exhibit so enthusiastically and Goodwood/Catapult for creating such an amazing exhibit.

I am still recovering from an outstanding few days at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Was so much fun talking to lots of people (including @astro_timpeake) about the wonderful science coming from JWST.

@RoyalAstroSoc @NAM2023_Cardiff @SussexUni @ESA_Webb @NASAWebb @ESA_Euclid Flattering picture of me RAS ;)

The second half of tonight’s public event @NAM2023_Cardiff is from @SussexUni Head of Astronomy @stewilkins on @ESA_Webb @NASAWebb and it’s first incredible results, and what we can expect from @ESA_Euclid.

@Artstro_kate @chrisclovell I also used a Jellycat rainbow, rainbow wedding cake, and the world's largest wedding cake :P

Favourite moments from #NAM2023 so far: @stewilkins presenting a fabulous review on first stars and galaxies, featuring this Jellycat wedding cake to visualise galaxy surveys @chrisclovell describing the last year as "A fever dream of papers"

Obviously moderate people leaving UCU will only further lead to its radicalisation, but I can not remain a member.

@michelle_lmc Then you’ll have to change your twitter handle :P

@WillJRoper Next time, only 3 steps. Not enough danger that at that range.

What better way to celebrate passing your viva than a champagne duel with one of your supervisors (@stewilkins).

May the Fourth be with you to go vote

Introducing our @LewesLabour candidates in Lewes Priory Ward for town and district council elections Thurs 4th May. Labour won historic Lewes Town Council by-election last year and with voters' support we can now have even greater voice intown's future @Benetta @DannySweeney89

Introducing our @LewesLabour candidates in Lewes Bridge Ward for the town and district council elections on Thursday 4th May. They are committed to work for residents for better housing and resources for our young people and a safer community for everyone.

Was that you in that video eating an entire cake? … No, DEEPFAKE!

Random thought: with the advent of deepfakes, does this mean you can essentially do anything and simply claim it’s a deepfake?

The last two weeks have been particularly busy. One student passed their viva, I conducted a viva, another student submitted their thesis (and a fellowship application, and a paper), I resubmitted a paper, interviewed great people for a job, amongst a million other things.

This has been one of the busiest semester's in my career. Not only have we had all the wonderful JWST (and FLARES) data to explore but I've been teaching a new module.

@ChrisMihos @Astrono_Ray I care to disagree and see no evidence that disfavours the PBH scenario in Roper et al.

@Astrono_Ray Donkeys are not bovines! My work *clearly* rules out bovines! Geez, is *nobody* paying attention?

@npr247 @bmck_astro Not quite majority women, but certainly not what the IoP claim. Yes, physics has barely changed at all, including at undergrad. Unfortunately, the issue probably lies mostly with teachers / parents prejudices.

@stewilkins @bmck_astro Yeah, you know what, I though Maths was now majority Female. It’s an a IOP article. But I checked for Physics previously. It’s be basically ~20:80 since around 1997/98

The fact that the gender ratio in Physics A-level has remained horrendous and steady over the last 25 years, strongly suggests the UK Physics Community needs a deep rethink here... #education #space #physics #alevel #alevels iop.org/about/blogs/wh…

@bmck_astro @npr247 So... looking at the actual figures, it's 36083 for Maths. Only a factor of ~8 discrepancy.

@npr247 I mean yeah 1:3 for Physics sucks, but Maths is 1:15! Physics is reformable, but Maths needs taking out the back...

Will Roper's magnum opus. arxiv.org/abs/2303.17002

@MatBethermin @jgeach Indeed, that’s one of the main points of FLARES! :D

@stewilkins @jgeach I know, but we should not forget that z=5 is already very far in the past and still a period we need to well understand (especially the first dusty veryvmassive systems).

Oosh. We now live in an age where ‘much lower redshift’ means z~5 😬