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Two weeks ago, Canadian Dave Williams and I released our latest : "Why Am I Taller? What Happens to an Astronaut’s Body in Space."

It's a fun romp through and with a literal space doctor (that would be Dave; I'm a space journalist.) I'd love to see our book appear in more , so do make a request at your local! Or, if you want a copy, do support your local bookstore. :)

ecwpress.com/products/why-am-i

By the time Gaia DR4 is released in 2025 I expect that my virtual starship will have a full range of tools for exploring and presenting the data as a WebXR immersive experience.

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The galaxy orbits that we have computed and published in our "Action Dynamics of the Local Supercluster" paper are used in the amazing version 3 of the super popular "Star Size Comparison" video (the vortex version)... Another beautiful job by #morn1415 ! Check out also the featuring of Laniakea ;0)
video: youtu.be/KEHCCsFFIuY?t=393

research paper: doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa95
press release by the University of Hawaii: hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aI

#galaxies #universe #cosmology #astronomy #astrophysics

One thing I like about my new Instagram account is that you understand the subject at a glance.

I wish my Twitter (or Mastodon) homepage looked this nice.

instagram.com/thespaceshipper/

@JVWest
I dunno, the name does suggest a gaming focus

An interesting inclusion on the @RollsRoyce
stand was a graphic of their new gas cooled 1-5MWe microreactor, intended for land and marine applications, which is related to a BWXT-led prototype programme to deliver in 2024 1/2 bwxt.com/news/2022/06/09/BWXT-

RT @Rainmaker1973@twitter.com

Earth is the only planet in our Solar System where fire can exist. In fact, while we know about a lot of hot things existing in the universe, Earth is the only known celestial body that has enough oxygen to support a combustion

[read more: buff.ly/3pKKiMv]

🐦🔗: twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/stat

RT @TheSpaceshipper@twitter.com

For All Mankind (Season 2, 2021)
In case you don't know, I highly recommend this show. :)
#scifi #forallmankind #spaceships

🐦🔗: twitter.com/TheSpaceshipper/st

In the 16th century some navys would take a ship, pack it to the scuppers with high explosives, then try to maneuver said ship into the enemy fleet and light the fuse. The hope was to destroy the entire fleet with one ship. A "hellburner".

It seems to me this would be an irresistible concept for a scifi space opera with interstellar battlefleets. I cannot recall any examples but I sure there must be some.

warhistoryonline.com/instant-a

3a/ I meant to write "GURPS Unnight" right up there.

I wrote GURPS Uplift, two editions, but it is out of print, alas.

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A fast rising tidal disruption event from a candidate intermediate mass black hole: arxiv.org/abs/2209.00018 -> Death of a star reveals midsize black hole lurking in a dwarf galaxy: news.ucsc.edu/2022/11/dwarf-ga

A fast rising tidal disruption event from a candidate intermediate mass black hole

Massive black holes (BHs) at the centres of massive galaxies are ubiquitous. The population of BHs within dwarf galaxies, on the other hand, is evasive. Dwarf galaxies are thought to harbour BHs with proportionally small masses, including intermediate mass BHs, with masses $10^{2} < M_{BH} < 10^{6} M_{\odot}$. Identification of these systems has historically relied upon the detection of light emitted from accreting gaseous discs close to the BHs. Without this light, they are difficult to detect. Tidal disruption events (TDEs), the luminous flares produced when a star strays close to a BH and is shredded, are a direct way to probe massive BHs. The rise times of these flares theoretically correlate with the BH mass. Here we present AT2020neh, a fast rising TDE candidate, hosted by a dwarf galaxy. AT2020neh can be described by the tidal disruption of a main sequence star by a 10$^{4.7} - 10^{5.9} M_{\odot}$ BH. We find the observable rate of fast rising nuclear transients like AT2020neh to be rare, at $\lesssim 2 \times 10^{-8}$ events Mpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$. Finding non-accreting BHs in dwarf galaxies is important to determine how prevalent BHs are within these galaxies, and constrain models of BH formation. AT2020neh-like events may provide a galaxy-independent method of measuring IMBH masses.

arxiv.org

@nyrath Oh, I wrote "Uplift" instead of "Unnight."

Alas, GURPS Uplift is unavailable, even as a PDF, due to licensing.

Many of the alien psychology and trait stuff ended up in later editions of GURPS Space!

@StefanEJones
The alien species psychology creation rules were particularly impressive.

5/ GURPS Alphabet Arcane is another collection of 26 entries, with spells, artifacts, and such for fantasy RPG campaigns.

I'm really proud of some of these, particularly the Condor Boy items. CB was a legendary kid hero who walked to the edge of the earth with the help of special boons.

warehouse23.com/products/gurps

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If you download your Twitter archive it arrives wrapped as a static HTML page, which is not very useful for doing anything with, and worse: it requires the original account to be still active to do useful things like enlarge the images since they use t.co links.

So here's a Python script to convert a Twitter archive to markdown or other formats: github.com/timhutton/twitter-a

Now you can archive your tweets in any way you want.

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