Mike Brown

scientificamerican.comMike Brown is very sorry, but Pluto still isn’t a planetOn the 20th anniversary of Pluto’s infamous demotion, Mike “Pluto Killer” Brown explains why any reversal of that decision would be driven more by nostalgia than science

24 Aug

My thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the correction of Pluto’s classification (edited by the fabulous @leebillings.bsky.social )

soon it will be so oversubscribed that no one applies anymore. -- yogi berra, probably.

JWST Observer@jwstobserver.bsky.social

STScI received 3,203 GO proposals for 138,460 hours (with an additional 8,971 Pure and Coordinated parallel hours requested). This corresponds to an oversubscription of 18:1 with respect to the 7,700 hours offered in #JWST Cycle 6: ow.ly/uqAt50ZWSwG

Kids! Don’t let this happen to you! Remember to clear your orbit before going to bed!

Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️

19 Sept

Just realized my wildlife cameras at the house will do just fine with no internet; I just have to pull the card and download the data each time I go to the house. We will still have (delayed) wildlife updates !

Mike Brown@plutokiller.com

We are doing a little house renovation/post-Eaton fire cleanup and have moved out for the next ~8 months. Which means I won't even know if Patch is around or not or if the new mama bear and cub come visit or if the bobcat family sticks around. It's a little sad. Maybe I'll post old pictures.

Mike Brown reposted

@snarkysillysad.bsky.social

18 Sept

Bear mama makes herself comfortable: 🔊 #AGoodPlace Source: The Weather Channel

I think they don’t even know that Patch is the Offical Pool Bear of Bluesky (Also, Patch is awol and plausibly near the end of his expected lifespan and it makes me very very sad) Bears in Los Angeles Are Getting Their Close-Ups, Ready or Not

nytimes.comBears in Los Angeles Are Getting Their Close-Ups, Ready or Not (Gift Article)California has 60,000 black bears, and they are venturing far from their usual habitat in search of food and shelter. It’s the humans who have to adapt.

theguardian.comForbidden planet: was Pluto’s 2006 demotion a big mistake?Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate

31 Aug

um, no? calling it a planet in 1930 was the actual mistake. but we fixed it and are all good now thanks.

The Guardian@theguardian.com

Forbidden planet: was Pluto’s 2006 demotion a big mistake?

25 Aug

In Entebbe and headed home from Uganda today and thought I had posted my last wildlife picture, but no. My backyard camera caught a brand new mamma bear and cub. We have definitely not seen them before! I hope they decide they like the neighborhood and consider taking a swim.

25 Aug

Having a mom and cub is great but makes us more vigilant of our protocols about stepping out the back door at night. Don’t want to get between those two.

24 Aug

It is fun for my @scientificamerican.bsky.social piece to drop as I was literally hanging out with this guy

19 Aug

The lions-don’t-sleep-tonight update. After hearing lions all night long we had to leave at 5am. I sat on the porch for 15 minutes before and heard nothing. When our escort arrived I told him I thought the lions had left. Oh no they are right there, pointing his flashlight 200 yards away to 8 lions.

As a reward here are some absolute queens from the safety of the handover

**Landrover

They marched in a line down to the pool. Here are my 5 am pix from the lodge porch with a flashlight. There were many many lions, even if all you can see is fuzzy blobs past the pool. It was an interesting night I must say.

18 Aug

Drama in camp tonight. We are in a “tent” camp (aka cabins with canvas walls) and are not allowed to go from the main dining tent to our tent without a (spear) armed escort. Which seems a little over kill, right? Here is a “tent” with our daughter on the patio

There is not much left of the buffalo

19 Aug

Also: that’s a wildebeest not a buffalo. And also also: the lions were all around tonight too. I watched them stroll by 10 feet away.

Moral of the story: sometimes security theater is actually security (but TSA remains mostly theater)

It is a buffalo carcass. A lion pride took it down sometime overnight. Basically everyone heard it. The lions were still there in the morning when the closest people opened their door. But then they left. We saw the line of them marching away.

And here was the view this morning. Spectacular, no?

18 Aug

Except if you look in the middle of those two “tents” there is something oddly red

17 Aug

I have no pithy comments today except that I just saw baby cheetas sleeping with their mother in the shade of a tree in the Serengeti and now I might be ok for a long time

16 Aug

I don’t remember the movies well but somehow this makes me think of some scene from Planet of the Apes and I fear it will not end well for us humans. Also this was the largest baboon troop I’ve ever seen. Slightly intimidating.

15 Aug

I have not yet been eaten by the leopard who hangs around our camp at night but I might end up getting eaten by lions because I really think they need belly rubs

13 Aug

The sun is setting and I am in one of the darkest spots on earth and I am not allowed to go outside at night because apparently there are leopards hanging around 🐈

14 Aug

Achievement unlocked: not eaten by leopards

15 Aug

Two day streak: not eaten by leopard. New badge: the survivor

Current status

Look. I’m headed to the tropics tomorrow. And the fact the I am drinking a gin and tonic is only for its antmalarial properties, ok?

6 Aug

My updated class THE SCIENCE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM is now LIVE and COMPLETELY FREE at www.coursera.com/learn/solar-system 27 hours of lectures, full quizzes, full exam. And free. You can’t even pay if you want to. Or you can just find the lectures on YouTube any time.

6 Aug

ugh audio isn't synced after the upload, natch. But, trust me, the **actual** class audio is synced.

5 Aug

I already posted this yesterday but it is an extraordinary picture that I need to reshare. Tony Yap, a Caltech grad student, is showing Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 16 astronaut, a sample that he (Tony) is currently measuring zinc isotopes on. The sample was collected by Harrison Schmitt. From the moon.

5 Aug

Some favorite pictures from Harrison Schmitt’s visit today. See alt text for details!

youtube.comAn Afternoon with Harrison SchmittYouTube video by Caltech Astro

4 Aug

Wanna hear a talk by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt? It's being lived-streamed here at 2pm PDT. Wanna see ME do the intro and talk a (very) little bit about geology on the moon?Same place. Wanna NOT see me do the intro? Start at about 2:05pm Also viewable after the livestream. I think.

@import-astrory.bsky.social

4 Aug

I will mentioned bears precisely twice in the intro.

Mike Brown reposted

Ryleigh Davis

science.orgNeptune’s inner moons and rings are exposed icy body interiorsTriton’s destructive wake exposed clay-like minerals from within ancient icy worlds, now reaccreted as Neptune’s inner moons.

My new paper is out in Science Advances! Neptune's inner moons preserve clay minerals from the deep interiors of ancient icy worlds, exposed by Triton's catastrophic arrival. Here's the story and what it tells us about the violent history of the Neptunian system. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

caltech.eduNeptune's Inner Moons May Be Shattered Remains of Ancient Icy WorldsNew findings from Caltech researchers suggest Neptune's smallest satellites formed from the shattered remains of an original moon system that was destroyed when Triton was captured by Neptune's gravit...

This is a super cool paper (and last chapter of her PhD thesis) from my now-graduated student @import-astrory.bsky.social I would explain more but, really, the headline kind of does the job.

Last night was the annual summer dinner and awards presentation for my research group. It was a nice dinner outside on the lawn, but the awards, of course, are the highlights. Follow along (I think the last one is the best though I am perhaps biased)

Finally: me! I am proud to have received the Non-detection Lifetime Achievement Award for a sustained and distinguished record of not finding Planet Nine. It is a picture frame with a picture of Planet Nine (it is a picture frame with nothing in it)

Just like an end-of-season AYSO pizza party, everyone gets a prize.

Matthew Belyakov received the Emergency Interstellar Response Prize for immediately abandoning all previous research save save an ISO from Loebification (ahem). It is an ambulance sporting important bumper stickers

Swaroop Chandra received the Golden Lego Reconstruction Award for restoring order from a thermodynamically favored state. It is a pile of golden Lego, natch. Where did I find golden Lego, they asked. Did no one question the gold spray paint in the lab

Merritt McDowell received the Periodic Table Starter Kit Award. Contents may become scientifically interesting when exposed to sufficient energy. It is a heroically mounted containers of Morton’s salt along with a CO2 canister and a pencil, obviously.

Ashma Pandya received the Chemistry Supremacy Award for believing that all planetary science is chemistry plus bookeeping. It is a perfect facsimile of a commercial box of sodium bicarbonate (actually it’s just a box of baking soda from Target)

Bella Mueller received the Sack of Troy Prize for once again making the Trojans do all the work. It is a gold horse because I didn’t have any wooden ones.