Matt Bothwell

The first draft of my next book is done! Coming 2027…

I know it is written that Thou Shalt Not Get Too Excited About <3 Sigma Results, but this is — potentially — very cool. Crossing fingers that they might have found a hint of something real, and very much looking forward to what more data might bring… www.sciencenews.org/article/dark...

Well I think I am liking this new +ve PM! In response to @sarahrussellmp.bsky.social on Jodrell: "there must be a way to save #JodrellBank and I give her a commitment at this dispatch box - we will find it" Brilliant Burnham! Can you now save all the other epic projects that have also been cut 🙏🔭

Nothing like a call to go on BBC news to shake up a relaxing Sunday morning! I spoke about all things Nancy Grace Roman — how powerful it is, the amazing discoveries that await us, and the fact that all the data will be completely public. Bring on the launch :)

Arrived in northern Spain for the #eclipse and scoped out a viewing spot up in the mountains. The clouds have three days to move...

I always find it a bit odd that Hank Green positions himself as a general science communicator. Not biochem (which he has a degree in), but just, like, everything. All science. As an astro sci-comm person (with a PhD) I’d feel weird about positioning myself as an authority outside my own field…

The Guardian view on the Lovell telescope: budget cuts to physics are bad science and worse politics www.theguardian.com/commentisfre.... 🔭

Patterns in the Universe's "baby picture" contain evidence for dark matter. 🌌 Astronomer @mattbothwell.com reveals how tiny fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background help scientists determine what the early Universe was made of. Watch the full talk: youtube.com/watch?v=bLa3k0NoHvY

Venus and the moon putting on a good show this evening 😀🔭🧪

Currently needing multiple people across different departments to read and sign off an extensive risk assessment, all so a small group of adults can attend a daytime lecture and eat a packed lunch. What was that about admin bloat strangling universities?

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Tiny void

32 degrees in May is illegal, actually, so could you not

I’ve got a writing buddy today. He is not helping.

It's publication day for Mastering the Multiverse, the latest instalment of the Supervillain Academy series from @dkbooks.bsky.social! Black holes, time travel, wormholes, dark matter, and the big one: do we actually live in a multiverse? Available everywhere books are sold 😀🧪🔭

Incredible video made using images taken by the Artemis II crew shows satellites in orbit around Earth. This is at 30x speed x.com/i/status/205...

A recommended read by Hiranya Peiris: "[we] had a quality problem long before LLMs...publish or perish, citation metrics as proxy for impact, volume as proxy for productivity... have been producing incremental, poorly checked, & sometimes wrong papers for decades"🧪🔭⚛️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is from my Ri talk last year, all about the mysteries of dark matter. Always fun to give lectures in such a stunning venue 😀

A bit of a different take on the amazing Artemis II launch footage. Here I stitched clips from the four Solar Array Wing Cameras to make this panoramic video. This is during the later part of the Core Stage burn until MECO and stage separation, sped up to 10x. 🔭🧪 #Artemis

The new Artemis 2 pictures are stunning! 🧪🔭

Humans are going beyond Earth orbit with 2026 cameras instead of 1970s cameras. The images coming out of this mission are going to be stunning

I have a new book coming out next month -- my children's astronomy books have become a trilogy 😀 Want to know about time travel, black holes, wormholes, and whether we live in a multiverse? Mastering the Multiverse is out May 7th, and available to preorder now. 🔭🧪 dk.com/products/978...

Star Formation xkcd.com/3222/

The Science, Innovation & Tech committee have written the most amazing letter to DSIT/UKRI/STFC: "What is clear is that, despite your assertions to the contrary... widespread cuts have been proposed before adequate consultation with those affected was undertaken. This is wholly unacceptable" 💪🔭⚛️🧪

That really is… quite a letter. committees.parliament.uk/publications...

Rubin Observatory has started paging astronomers 800,000 times a night www.scientificamerican.com/article/rubi...

This is so cool! You can see that at solar maximum (around 2002, 2013, and 2024 ish) HST drops more rapidly, because the increased solar activity puffs up the atmosphere, increasing drag on orbiting satellites 🧪🔭

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Binary Star xkcd.com/3203/

Exclusive view into the heart of the ELT! 👀 This image captures the interior of our ELT, under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert. The main structure shown here will host the ELT’s five mirrors. Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2605a/ 🔭 🧪 📷 ESO/J. C. Muñoz-Mateos

This is obviously getting less airtime than normal on account of The Horrors, but it’s incredibly cool and exciting that within weeks people will be going back to the Moon after more than half a century www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking? Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me. 1/

Look at those feet

The train company website insists my journey isn’t delayed, even though it knows my train got in at 9:57, and the connection left at 9:56. Glad to know LNER thinks I can literally time travel

I’m going to be in Northern Ireland this February, talking about the search for alien life across the galaxy! If you’re around in Belfast, please come along 😀👽 nisciencefestival.com/event/the-gr...

Eww why is the Guardian running advertorials for Macdonalds. These fake paid-for articles seem so much more pernicious than just regular ads

100%. When I post about astronomy or books here, I get nice replies talking about astronomy and books. On X I get people telling me space is fake, NASA is lying, and people running crypto scams. Pretty easy choice

Feeling personally attacked by this week's Guardian Quiptic...

Some amazing Sun pictures today from our Cambridge Heliostat! The first image is white light, the second is H-alpha 🧪🔭

It was a huge pleasure to be back at the Royal Institution last month! I gave a lecture all about the mysteries of dark matter, which is now up on YouTube. 🧪🔭 (As a bonus, my demo actually worked, unlike in my 2021 Ri talk...!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLa3...

Woke up to an unsolicited email laying out a radical new theory that explains why quantum mechanics, relativity, and LCDM are all wrong. It started "I know this sounds like an email you'd get from a nutcase. But I'm actually a 75 year old electrical engineer!" What is it about retired engineers?