Jason Wright

iopscience.iop.orgThe Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practiceThe Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practice, Wright, Jason T

18 Mar

My textbook on SETI is published! Please see if your libraries offer a free download—mine does! iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/97... If you prefer your books in corporeal form, you can now purchase them here ($30 paperback, $99 hardcover): www.amazon.com/Search-Extra... I hope you enjoy it!

Great animation illustrating the linking problem in planetary science! Remember there are *lots* of these moving objects in the images and we have to somehow match them all up across many observations across many years. Lots of hard work by planetary scientists to do this efficiently!

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory@rubinobservatory.org

Meet our Solar System's newest dwarf planet candidate: 2026 ED138! Orbiting past Pluto, scientists found it in NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory data from earlier this year. Early analysis suggests it's ~600–1500 km across, one of the largest found past Neptune!🔭🧪 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f...

53m

Fun factoid: the arc of the planet here is *not* because the planet's orbit is loopy or elliptical. You're seeing the parallax effect from the *Earth's* motion. The size of the (near) ellipse being traced out reveals the object's distance from the Sun. Without parallax it would be a short line.

rubinobservatory.orgNSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Reveals Its First Dwarf Planet Candidate in Our Solar System | Rubin ObservatoryIn the outer reaches of our Solar System, beyond the orbit of Pluto, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has spotted 2026 ED138 — a large, bright trans-Neptunian object that scientists have identified a...

New likely dwarf planet incoming! [Note: too small to be planet 9] [Not literally incoming to Earth, just metaphorically to the arXiv and many media outlets near you].

Meg Schwamb@megschwamb.bsky.social

Big bright dwarf planet candidate found by @rubinobservatory.org ! Let's go characterize! rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f... Whoo hoo!

Paging @emsque.bsky.social and tagging 🔭🧪

Jason Wright@astrowright.bsky.social

I am becoming more and more convinced that the most strategically sound choice for @publishing.aas.org is to divide our two flagship journals by AI use. In this dynamic landscape, any AI policy will be out of date by the time it’s approved by the board.

Also tagging @ethan-vishniac.bsky.social., @aussiastronomer.bsky.social Do you think the pubs committee would find this proposal interesting? Should I write it up?

I used to press ⌘-space on my mac, type in part of a filename, and the first hits would be the PDFs I was looking for. If that failed, Finder was an option and I could refine things there. This functionality seems to be gone. Searchlight seems to heavily favor content over filename. Workarounds?

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans

Getting the PDF I want from the filename is now a many-click journey that usually involves the search bar in finder. The old behavior was almost magical and I've come to rely on it. Does anyone know how to get it back? I know how to make it PDF-only but often my PDF isn't even on the list.

Jason Wright reposted

@astroroyalscot.bsky.social

Replying to @astrowright.bsky.social

You know I rather like this idea! Make it happen Jason 🙏

Jason Wright reposted

James Davenport

@jradavenport.com

My unpopular opinion is that a lot of the AI-driven “slop” that dips into our professional world comes from people who genuinely love astronomy and want to participate. It says something bittersweet about awe and life and the dreams we have as kids…

Paging @emsque.bsky.social and tagging 🔭🧪

Jason Wright@astrowright.bsky.social

It could also be that in the near future AI makes that task so easy that society journals have nothing special to offer, or that sifting through AI slop is too inefficient to matter. In those cases, the minimal-AI journal will distinguish itself as a home for slop-free, artisan science.

Talking about this with my group, I imagine two advisory boards with people on the opposite ends of the AI spectrum populating each. That way discussion can focus on how to make the journals serve their functions best and not on compromising and managing extreme AI disagreements

Paging @emsque.bsky.social and tagging 🔭🧪

Jason Wright@astrowright.bsky.social

I think in an ecosystem where AI can help conceive, execute, write, referee, and revise papers, the role of society journals needs to be to offer some sort of imprimatur guaranteeing a certain sort of quality.

Perhaps society journals can serve this function by doing the hard work of identifying and elevating AI-forward papers with good science. In that case, a well-refereed AI-forward journal will be extremely valuable to the community and the world.

And opinions are so fractured, I doubt any compromise policy will be acceptable to a majority. Astronomers are in the happy position that we can try both extreme policies and just see how well they work. This will help both authors and referees participate as they are comfortable.

@michael-w-busch.bsky.social

It could be that the non-AI journal atrophies because it simply cannot keep up. It could be that the AI journal descends into a bottomless sty of slop. Maybe both or neither. Regardless, hedging our bets like this I think fully addresses community concerns and optimizes chances we get it right.

Jason Wright reposted

Peter K. G. Williams

@pkgw.bsky.social

Likely the most important thing I've ever written — if you're an academic and the AI mania unsettles you, here's my best shot at presenting some intellectual tools that might help you articulate why. arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251

Jason Wright reposted

Michael Busch

It is apparently still necessary to explain how Nikolai Kardashev's scale was intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive: articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1964SvA.... "The figures arrived at seem to be inordinately high..."

articles.adsabs.harvard.eduarticles.adsabs.harvard.edu

thestatetheatre.orgArrival - Screening and Expert Q&APlease join the Penn State Eberly College of Science and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the State Theatre at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4, for a free screening of the 2016 film…

State Collegians! Mark your calendars for November 4 at 6:30pm at the The State Theatre for a FREE screening of Arrival followed by expert Q&A about SETI by me, science journalist @nadiadrake.bsky.social, astrobiologist @jmacalad.bsky.social, and Bowling Green linguist Sheri Wells-Jensen.

So a documentarian asked to do an interview with me about technosignatures in the Solar System. It seemed high quality and legit so I said yes. After a pretty standard interview in my office he asked me to look at pictures on his phone and comment on them… oops!

Anyway, I'm more careful about these things now. He seemed offended when I accused him of misleading me about his intentions when asking for the interview, but any sympathy I have is gone now that his mask is off.

Turns out the guy is a "pyramids on Mars" crackpot and was making an Ancient-Aliens style pseudoscience documentary. I told him I was uncomfortable with this and that I was revoking my consent to use my likeness in his documentary. That made him pretty mad.

He ended up using footage from the interview anyway and now I'm in a documentary against my permission. General counsel at Penn State didn't seem to think there was much we could actually do. Anyway, he's now in the Other Place mocking me and crowing about using his footage of me.

sites.psu.eduThe Center for Extraterrestrial Integration to Society ResearchSo there’s a strange door on campus! I was first alerted to it by an undergraduate in my SETI course, and since then a few people have asked me about it. It’s next to stairs connecting the...

I HAVE NOW BEEN BEHIND THE DOOR! It's an emergency egress from the bookstore and its basement storage area. The other side has literal cobwebs on it so it hasn't been opened in ages. Maybe more to come…

Jason Wright@astrowright.bsky.social

So apparently there's a "Center for Extraterrestrial Integration to Society Research" at Penn State? Why wasn't I informed?! 🤣 sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

The switch to SciX is not that painful, especially now that the site is almost as fast as ADS. Much easier than other transitions in the field! And all of your account info ports just fine.

Meg Schwamb@megschwamb.bsky.social

Into the era of SciX. I switched over a few months ago knowing the transition was coming. The only way to make all astronomers use SciX is really to shutdown down NASA ADS. I think the SciX interface builds on what's great about ADS.

I'm assuming the arXiv will switch over at some point? @steinly0.bsky.social? (Also, is @arxiv.bsky.social an official account? It certainly acts like one but I don't see any indication it's official.)

Just earned my 365 day streak badge on hard mode with The Program, a longer streak than WordleBot’s! It’s strange to me that WordleBot can lose at all, when theoretically perfect play exists that never loses. WordleBot minimizes guesses, not losses.

Jason Wright@astrowright.bsky.social

NYT games working very hard the past several days to break a lot of Wordle streaks! Still going strong following my Program over here!

This is great.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io

This point regarding AI-produced proofs is of course not new, but is beautifully put here. www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-the-en... @quantamagazine.org

I agree with this. We have an extremely efficient peer-review process by most standards (1 reviewer, 1-2 month turnarounds, very high acceptance rates) but any time proposal rates drop below 15% the community is collectively wasting time.

Bruce Macintosh@bmacastro.bsky.social

This graph represents probably more than a hundred thousand hours of work by our community. Every year when I look at it I think our current proposal model is broken.

And AI is going to make this problem SO MUCH WORSE. Another thing that AI is going to have to break is double-blind reviews. That's a great model when you can assess a team's ability to do the work from the text of their proposals. AI breaks that.

With AI text you need to know what the "author" understands and can do and what the AI just did for them. The only way I can see to do that is to look at credentials and prior output of the author. That destroys so much work we've been doing to unbias reviews!

Bruce Macintosh@bmacastro.bsky.social

This graph represents probably more than a hundred thousand hours of work by our community. Every year when I look at it I think our current proposal model is broken.

Perhaps a multi-step process would help—low-effort first round followed by detailed followup. Restricting the final proposal to just what reviewers need to judge the science is good too—save the technical stuff for accepted proposals.

But more and more I become sympathetic to admitting that the false precision we employ right at the line to decide who gets time/money/whatever is not worth the effort and we should just accept it's basically random and roll the dice to save us all a ton of effort.

Astro BlueSky: Be my boss! Penn State Astro needs a new department head and I need YOUR help to find them. Who is your ideal department head? Who can maintain a vibrant, collegial, politics-free atmosphere that supports all members (undergrads, grads, staff, all kinds of faculty)? 🧪

Now here's the kicker: sometimes the best leaders are the reluctant ones. My guess is that the best candidate won't even notice the ad has been posted, because they are happy where they are or don't want to move "up" into leadership. So that's why I need YOU to tell me who they are!

You can email me at astrowright at gmail or DM me or send a carrier pigeon—whatever you like, please send me your names! [and I won't tell them you did!]