Adam McMaster

That thing where people have a meeting later so they can’t concentrate, but with waiting for MCMC

twelvemountains.comA Pulsar Forms an Accretion Disk - Twelve MountainsNew X-ray spectroscopy apparently captured an accretion disk forming around a pulsar in an X-ray binary: Notably, these spectral features evolve from...

Spectroscopic observations may have caught an accretion disk forming around a pulsar in an X-ray binary www.twelvemountains.com/2026/10/a-pu... 🔭🧪

Deceased humans should not be in museums for the same reason living humans are not in zoos. They are *people*.

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arxiv.orgConfirming candidate self-lensing binary detections with radial velocity measurementsCompact objects in approximately edge-on binary orbits with stars are able to produce a self-lensing effect, amplifying light from their companion once per orbit. To date, five white dwarf self-lensin...

New paper from me on arxiv today: I did a bunch of simulations of radial velocity observations of self-lensing binaries to figure out how easy it will be to confirm the candidates from @blackholehunters.bsky.social 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2610.30203

The short version is that for the biggest lensing amplitudes we don't even really need RV to fit the physical parameters. And for the rest, with clever scheduling we can usually get away with a handful of RV observations.

If your takeaway from the recent security vulnerabilities is that LLMs are the problem, you are wrong. These vulnerabilities were there before the tools existed to find them in large numbers (some of them have been there for decades).

And I wouldn't assume no-one knew about them. The NSA and others wouldn't have told us if they had found them. They would have wanted to use them without us knowing. Has the NSA had shell access to every PHP server for the past 22 years? We'll never know.

inews.co.ukFive things you should do in a 'doomsday scenario' as UK's disaster plan revealedBritons told to store enough bottled water and tinned food for three days - and buy a wind-up radio

If anyone needs me, I’ll be figuring out where in my house I could possibly store roughly [does maths] 50 litres of bottled water inews.co.uk/news/politic...

scientificamerican.comThis star has the strangest sky in the galaxyThe newfound star S301 orbits the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole so closely that its view of the heavens gets twisted

My favourite part of reading this article by @philplait.bsky.social was learning the word “perigalacticon” www.scientificamerican.com/article/this...

The PHP vulnerability sounds bad. Honestly so glad I no longer run a web hosting company on days like this.

arxiv.orgNAPTIME: A Neural-Process Framework for Rubin Alert ClassificationThe Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time will produce a high-volume stream of irregularly sampled multiband alerts for which spectroscopic confirmation will be available only for ...

First time I’ve seen a backronym I like “We present NAPTIME (Neural Astrophysical Photometric Transient Identification and Modeling Engine)” arxiv.org/abs/2607.19236

Contact For Tax Purposes

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twelvemountains.comA Long Period Stellar-Mass Black Hole Binary in ω Centauri - Twelve MountainsI’ve got a bit of a backlog of unread journal emails, so I only just spotted this paper from July announcing the discovery of a new black hole orbiting a...

Someone has found a new black hole in ω Centauri, in a really long (94 year) orbit around a star www.twelvemountains.com/2026/10/a-lo... 🔭🧪

For fun I decided to test a few AI detectors with something that I had 100% written myself. 2/3 of them said it was definitely AI-generated. I'm a little offended, but also suspect they lean towards giving positive results to get you to sign up/pay for the full analysis.

universetoday.comThousands of Black Holes Could Be Lurking in Our Backyard—and You Can Help Find ThemAccording to stellar evolution models, there should be hundreds of millions of black holes floating around in our galaxy. But so far we’ve only found 70. That’s in large part because they are so hard ...

Another nice article about Black Hole Hunters, this one from Universe Today 🧪🔭 www.universetoday.com/articles/tho...

theguardian.comBadenoch denies ‘British Iron Dome’ plan – after Tories use phrase in press releaseTory leader says proposed ‘Britannia Shield’ would not be comparable to Israeli missile defence system

They used the phrase "Iron Dome" so people would know what they were talking about, says the shadow Defence Secretary, while explaining that the Iron Dome is not what they were talking about www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

iflscience.comIf You Want To Discover A Missing Black Hole In Our Galaxy, This Is Your ChanceAstronomers are asking people to get involved with a major hunt for stellar-mass black holes.

Had a nice chat about Black Hole Hunters with @drcarpineti.bsky.social yesterday 🧪🔭 www.iflscience.com/if-you-want-...

There's a new version of Black Hole Hunters! Check it out below 🔭🧪

University of Southampton@unisouthampton.bsky.social

Want to help discover a black hole? Our scientists are calling on amateur astronomers to join the Black Hole Hunters project. No telescope needed - just a phone, tablet or laptop and your curiosity. 🔗 https://tr.ee/Pu83kY @spacesouthcentral.bsky.social @ukspaceagency.bsky.social @esa.int

lbc.co.ukApple ordered to pay £4.3bn over claims it used vibration technology without permission | LBCMark Zuckerberg’s company insisted it had not used the audio firm's vibration tech and would appeal the jury’s verdict.

LBC appears to think Apple is run by Mark Zuckerberg www.lbc.co.uk/article/appl...

The passage of time is an affront to all of us and this will not be tolerated

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Having a day where I found something very potentially very interesting and dropped everything to look into it. Probably nothing

There's an extra "very" there, but you know what, it's so uncertain at this point it actually is very potential

theconversation.comIn the race to roll out 6G, the UK and Europe are caught between technology’s superpowersFor the UK and Europe, the rollout of 6G is creating a geopolitical dilemma.

6G will be "designed to be AI native" whatever that means. Maybe they should add blockchain too?

twelvemountains.comCOBALT-BLUE: A Fast and Accurate Model for Gravitational Self-Lensing Binary Systems - Twelve MountainsIt hasn’t been reviewed yet, but we have a new paper out on the arXiv led by my colleague Danny Dixon: We present COBALT-BLUE, a fast public model for the...

I'm excited that this is out, the self-lensing binary model we're using to search for black holes orbiting stars 🔭🧪 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/coba...

twelvemountains.comDid the 1054 Supernova Cause a Plague? - Twelve MountainsAn interesting idea. If the supernova that created the Crab Nebula also created a gamma ray burst, that could explain apparent widespread radiation sickness...

The 1054 supernova (Crab Nebula) may have killed a bunch of people with radiation 🔭🧪 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/did-...

iopscience.iop.orgPhotometric Colors and a Rotational Modulation of HD 38451Photometric Colors and a Rotational Modulation of HD 38451, McMaster, Adam, Norton, Andrew J., Dickinson, Hugh J.

This was rejected by arXiv for being too short. "This particular submission was found to not meet the moderation standard for a complete, self-contained research article of archival interest." I expected that as it's not the first time, but it's still irritating. 🔭🧪

Adam McMaster@adammc.space

New research from me (well, actually, from my PhD thesis). HD 38451 is a star which inexplicably changed colour in the 1850s. It is known to be rapidly rotating, based on spectroscopy. It turns out the TESS light curve shows a tiny rotational modulation too 🧪🔭 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Meanwhile they accept dozens of April Fools jokes. Sure some of them are worth a chuckle, but I often just skip the arXiv on 1 April because I don't want to waste the time.

They are also publishing a growing number of single-author "white papers" (opinion pieces) on the use of LLMs in astronomy. That's not necessarily bad, but they are not research and it's inconsistent to publish those while rejecting actual research for being too succinct.

iopscience.iop.orgPhotometric Colors and a Rotational Modulation of HD 38451Photometric Colors and a Rotational Modulation of HD 38451, McMaster, Adam, Norton, Andrew J., Dickinson, Hugh J.

21 Sept

edition.cnn.comTrump says proposed triumphal arch will double as military complex | CNN PoliticsPresident Donald Trump on Sunday provided a new reason behind his proposal to build a 250-foot triumphal arch directly across Arlington National Cemetery, saying the structure would double as a “top g...

20 Sept

He has the bullshitting ability of a toddler edition.cnn.com/2026/09/20/p...

@jayhulmepoet.bsky.social

19 Sept

When they suggest making it a crime to stop refugees from drowning, this is exactly how they intend to pick and choose who lives and dies. Putting aside how morally reprehensible it is to selectively allow certain people to die, there is no way to tell who is a refugee *before* you rescue them.

Robin Ince@robinince.bsky.social

I was going to write a long poem about the revolting racism and aggression in England - but it turned out to be very short “Let the children drown Can’t you see they’re brown” Remember how many times Farage was on QT - remember ITV putting him I’m a Celebrity - every little helps the brutality

Adam McMaster reposted

Jay Hulme

19 Sept

Got incredibly bored and read up on the Falkland Islands and their entire history of settlement and like... What do you mean? We are? Actually in the right? On this one??? This is an unfamiliar feeling as an Englishman. I don't know what to do about it.

edition.cnn.comExclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN PoliticsThe episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war

The US has a history of starting wars based on false intelligence, so that part isn’t new. What’s new is the way the intelligence was fabricated edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...

news.sky.com'Millisecond' software error caused air traffic outage that grounded thousands of flightsNATS, the UK's major provider of air traffic services, said the software defect led to corrupted data which affected flight data updates, requiring restrictions.

A bug that "happened in the space of a millisecond" and was limited to "a specific part of our flight data system, that we have traced to a small subsection of coding". All complete bollocks that tells you nothing about what went wrong or whether it should have been avoidable

In over two decades of working as a programmer, this is the first time I've ever heard someone quantify an error by the *length of time* it took to execute. That's not a thing.

They're trying to imply that it happened so quickly they couldn't have done anything about it, relying on the layperson knowing nothing about how software is designed or tested.

theguardian.comMilitary aircraft reportedly blamed for UK air traffic control outageMeltdown that grounded thousands of flights caused by ‘spurious’ flight data being entered into system, report says

12 Sept

Was it the military aircraft that created an air traffic control system with insufficient input validation and error handling? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

twelvemountains.comFallacy Friday: Argument from Authority - Twelve MountainsWe’re going with a classic this week, the Argument from Authority: An argument from authority … is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority...

11 Sept

Fallacy Friday: Argument from Authority www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/fall...

Adam McMaster reposted

Ygrene

@ygrene.bsky.social

11 Sept

it will be really frustrating if ai does destroy civilization after we've worked so hard to do it ourselves

twelvemountains.comWhy Would You Let an Agent Do Your Research? - Twelve MountainsThere’s a recent article by Natalie B. Hogg, Agentic research is oxymoronic, arguing that research is only research if the interpretation of the results is...

11 Sept

Why should we do our own thinking about our scientific results? It has nothing to do with whether LLM-generated research is really research. It's about what makes humans human. "Everything we do ... is an attempt to make sense of things, and if we hand that over to machines, then who are we?" 🧪

twelvemountains.comNeutron Star + Dark Matter Halo = Neutron Star Inside a Black Hole? - Twelve MountainsAn interesting idea. A neutron star surrounded by a dark matter halo which is dense enough (but not too dense) could form an event horizon while staying a...

10 Sept

Neutron Star + Dark Matter Halo = Neutron Star Inside a Black Hole? 🧪🔭 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/neut...

9 Sept

Hey hey, you know how computers have notoriously never worked as intended? Well, wouldn't it be great if they could also do absolutely anything, fully autonomously, with no oversight?

twelvemountains.comWhat to Do with Politicians - Twelve MountainsAlfredo Carpineti makes the bold argument that we should not fire them into the Sun: It is not surprising to see people wishing to catapult those...

9 Sept

What to Do with Politicians www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/what...

twelvemountains.comJodrell Bank Saved by Man from Manchester - Twelve MountainsI missed this in the news until it was posted by Peter Coles: Three days ago the latest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Andy Burnham, gave a...

8 Sept

Apparently the Prime Minister has committed to saving Jodrell Bank. I don't believe he cares about science, but I do believe he cares about Manchester 🧪🔭 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/jodr...

twelvemountains.comHawking - Twelve MountainsDespite the public persona, Hawking was not a nice person. The Guardian has a review of a recent book which has more details and is worth reading. I found...

8 Sept

Hawking: You don’t have to be great to be famous 🧪 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/09/hawk...