Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Aug 23

@natastron.nature.com’s cover looks amazing this month! Read more about our study on interstellar turbulence here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

4 12

Reposted by Dr. James Beattie

Nature Astronomy @natastron.nature.com · May 14

Extremely high-resolution simulations reveal that interstellar medium-type turbulence significantly deviates from classical magnetized turbulence models. @astromagnetism.bsky.social et al.: https://bit.ly/43txE8a / https://bit.ly/3GP2csr

The spectrum of magnetized turbulence in the interstellar medium - Nature Astronomy

Extremely high-resolution simulations reveal that interstellar medium-type turbulence significantly deviates from classical magnetized turbulence models.

bit.ly

3 9

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · May 13

Self-similarity!

"I love doing turbulence research because of its universality,” says Beattie. “It looks the same whether you’re looking at the plasma between galaxies, within the solar system, in a cup of coffee or in Van Gogh’s The Starry Night."

www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/astroph...

Astrophysicists are exploring our galaxy’s magnetic turbulence in unprecedented detail using a new computer model

www.artsci.utoronto.ca

1 2

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · May 13

The cascade of kinetic and magnetic energy from large to small scales in galactic-style turbulence behaves significantly different to the theoretical models that we regularly assume work.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Published in @natastron.nature.com

2 7

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 27

🔥 Hot off the press 🔥 @michaelpgrehan.bsky.social, grad student in CITA’s plasma astro group (@bartripperda.bsky.social’s group) shows that relativistic reconnection is invariant to the underlying model: ideal, resistive MHD, MD, force free electrodynamics, doesn’t matter… arxiv.org/abs/2503.20013

Comparison of magnetic diffusion and reconnection in ideal and resistive relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, ideal magnetodynamics and resistive force-free electrodynamics

High-energy astrophysical systems and compact objects are frequently modeled using ideal relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) or force-free electrodynamic (FFE) simulations, with the underlying assu...

arxiv.org

2 1

Reposted by Dr. James Beattie

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · Mar 15

It’s depressing enough that so many people live in manufactured-reality bubbles where they could believe that universities are “factories of Maoist cadres.” Worse that one of them is an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

Eric Klinenberg @ericklinenberg.bsky.social · Mar 15

One columnist, a professional pundit, is living in a paranoid delusion. The other, a sociologist, is living in America.

11 20 160

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 14

Click to expand!

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 13

Growing magnetized Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities

A Kelvin Helmholtz instability growing in time from the bottom to the top of the visualisation.

2

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 13

Growing magnetized Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities

3

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 8

Unbelievable.

Yan Matusevich @ymatusik.bsky.social · Mar 7

Just got an email from the Fulbright Association. As of right now, funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Mar 8

This is crazy. As someone who was a FBer operating on a very tight FB budget, this would have been terminal. FB enabled me to connect with the people that offered me a job for my current position.

It’s so sad seeing much of what has made the US a leader in the research be forcefully deleted.

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · Mar 8

Many Fulbright scholars say they feel stranded after the Trump administration suspended their funding

Fulbright scholars were among those in programs administered through the U.S. State Department who learned their funding has been frozen.

woub.org

2

Reposted by Dr. James Beattie

Sen. Adam Schiff @schiff.senate.gov · Feb 26

Donald Trump's America is about getting what you want… if you’ve got billions to spend:

Citizenship, for a few million.

A tax cut for your corporation, if you've given a few million.

Even U.S. military protection, if you’ll give up mineral rights worth a few billion.

Anything for a buck.

160 400 1.9K

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Feb 26

My first poster since 2017… dynamos in merging neutron stars in NY this week 🤩🤩🤩

2 4

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Feb 22

Just ctrl+f’d \nabla in my latest work… 289 \nablas… that has got to be a record of some kind.

1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Feb 20

Last week we submitted a study to ApJL confronting the predictions from weakly compressible MHD theory with extremely high Re simulations and in situ measurements of Earth’s high beta magnetosheath, showing agreement between theory, simulation and observations. arxiv.org/abs/2502.08883

2 2

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Feb 7

Political commentary… we’re saturated 🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️. Turbulence commentary, ✅✅✅: I provided some comments to CNN on some latest advances using tensor networks to model high dimension PDFs in the context of turbulent mixing, check out the article edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/s...

Scientists make ‘rare advance’ in tackling the oldest unsolved problem in physics | CNN

Physicists have long tried to model the chaotic phenomenon of turbulence. Now, a team has pioneered a new quantum computing-inspired approach.

edition.cnn.com

2

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 29

Vegemite on pan-fried toast with truffle cheddar cheese. Bold flavours. Truffle upfront with long lasting Vegemite tail. Truffle reenergises Vegemite, bringing out the natural flavours of vitamin B. 8/10.

A piece of toast, covered in the Australian spread, Vegemite, accompanied by a pile of shredded truffle cheddar cheese.

1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 28

I would say that the most serious/compelling physics models are more closely related to the former. But I wouldn’t say phase transition, more like oscillating stuff related to the plasma around the neutron star (eg screening, jiggling plasmoids).

1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 24

Not for emission. Emission, eg radio emission, comes from plasma. Not from magnetic field. Electric field matters more because it is electric field that accelerates particles. Twisting probably not key effect for emission.

1 2

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 23

Coincidentally in this talk with Sasha Philippov rn

1 1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 23

You mean because there are too many emission models?

1 1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 23

One of my colleagues put it nicely — “obviously, pointing out that the Power Law in The Sky is not all Kolmogorov is a big result”

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 20

New study in preprint. In this study we test if supernova-driven turbulence, a large component of the turbulence in our Galaxy, resembles classical Kolmogorov-style turbulence, as it is regularly assumed. It does not.

arxiv.org/abs/2501.09855

So long Kolmogorov: the forward and backward turbulence cascades in a supernovae-driven, multiphase interstellar medium

The interstellar medium (ISM) of disk galaxies is turbulent, and yet the fundamental nature of ISM turbulence, the energy cascade, is not understood in detail. In this study, we use high-resolution si...

arxiv.org

5

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 21

Quite amazing — Cassiopeia A lights up the surrounding ISM with an expanding shell of light. This is not a projection of diffuse ISM, but a 2D slice in 3D. It is volumetric structure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfmX...

Cassiopeia A Light Echoes Time-lapse

YouTube video by Space Telescope Science Institute

www.youtube.com

1 1

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 20

New study in preprint. In this study we test if supernova-driven turbulence, a large component of the turbulence in our Galaxy, resembles classical Kolmogorov-style turbulence, as it is regularly assumed. It does not.

arxiv.org/abs/2501.09855

So long Kolmogorov: the forward and backward turbulence cascades in a supernovae-driven, multiphase interstellar medium

The interstellar medium (ISM) of disk galaxies is turbulent, and yet the fundamental nature of ISM turbulence, the energy cascade, is not understood in detail. In this study, we use high-resolution si...

arxiv.org

1 7

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 17

🙌🙌🙌🙌

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @cosmicrami.com · Jan 17

Star gutz + turbulence + magnetic fields = 🥹🥹🥹

3

Dr. James Beattie @astromagnetism.bsky.social · Jan 17

Anyone else completely left their \mathbf{…} era for \bm{…}?

1