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davidkipping.bsky.social
David Kipping
@davidkipping.bsky.social
1.7K followers 110 following 200 posts
Astronomy, Exoplanets, Astrobiology, Cool Worlds Lab, Columbia University. Be kind to one another.
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davidkipping.bsky.social
David Kipping @davidkipping.bsky.social · Nov 16
Hi BlueSky! I'm a Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University where I lead the Cool Worlds Lab, studying exoplanets, exomoons & exolife and sharing our passion for science over YouTube.com/CoolWorldsLab. I post about my team's research, spicy hot takes and whatever's going on in my life.
davidkipping.bsky.social
#AstroHiveMind In my stats class we often code up an MCMC from scratch as a pedagogical exercise. Has anyone tried coding up a simple LLM or a different AI architecture? How did it go?
February 3, 2026 at 1:10 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
#AstroHiveMind In my stats class we often code up an MCMC from scratch as a pedagogical exercise. Has anyone tried coding up a simple LLM or a different AI architecture? How did it go?
February 3, 2026 at 1:08 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
I attended a meeting last week that was one of the most shocking of my career. Here’s the lowdown….

youtu.be/PctlBxRh0p4
We Need To Talk About AI...
YouTube video by Cool Worlds Podcast
youtu.be
February 1, 2026 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by David Kipping
treknews.net
"How many people does it take before it becomes wrong?
A thousand?
Fifty thousand?
A million?
How many people does it take, admiral?"

- Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Insurrection
January 25, 2026 at 7:18 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
It’s fascinating to see what would be the 3rd giant exomoon candidate reported using a wholly different method to transits: using astrometry. And it’s the biggest yet at 0.4 Jupiter masses. I’ve long punted on what defines a binary-planet vs a moon but this makes me wonder!

arxiv.org/abs/2511.20091
January 23, 2026 at 8:31 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Are these university rankings just tracking pure research output rather than impact? If so, it seems hardly surprising that Chinese institutes could gamify that and spam out papers.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...
Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip
www.nytimes.com
January 15, 2026 at 12:08 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
The future can often feel dark and dystopian. But what are YOU excited about for the future in the next few decades?
January 12, 2026 at 2:11 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Centrifugal force on the surface of this rapidly rotating asteroid would be 0.11g outwards! So almost Lunar-level anti-gravity…
vrubinobs.bsky.social NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · 27d
You spin us right 'round!

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory scientists at #AAS247 just announced the discovery of a record-breaking asteroid over 500m in size that spins once every ~2 minutes 🤯😵💫

It’s the fastest-rotating asteroid this big ever found! 🔭🧪☄️

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-r...
Cluster of irregularly shaped asteroids floating in dark space with a distant glowing star in the background.
January 7, 2026 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by David Kipping
theonion.com
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks https://theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-planet-with-conditions-that-could-sustain-rocks/
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks
January 6, 2026 at 9:15 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
In geopolitics, history keeps repeating itself. Different actors, different victims, but same themes. We seem unable to evolve past law of the jungle rules.
January 6, 2026 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by David Kipping
redshiftless.bsky.social
A little 3I/ATLAS update building on @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social's nice RNAAS from last week. Given its non-grav acceleration and the rate at which it's losing mass, you can work out its size. The answer: a diameter around 1 km, very typical for comets. arxiv.org/abs/2512.18341 🔭 🧪
The figure from the linked paper (three panels, each a plot of some quantity vs time in days). Here's an expanded verision of the corresponding caption: Non-gravitational accelerations (NGAs) and their corresponding mass loss rates. Top panel: Non-gravitational acceleration from the JPL Small-Body Database or the final line of Table 1 in T. M. Eubanks et al. (2025). Reported errorbars are shown, and extrapolations into the future or prior to October are shown as dashed lines. The figure shows 5 lines, converging on an acceleration of order 10^-8 au per day^2 for 3I/ATLAS. Middle Panel: NGAs from the top panel are translated into mass loss rates assuming 1 km diameters, with ζ = 0.5 and ρ = 0.5 g cm^−3. Additionally the JPL Dec 17 solution for other diameters (0.5 km and 2 km) are shown as dotted lines. Data points are from JWST (M. A. Cordiner et al. 2025), SPHEREx (C. M. Lisse et al. 2025), ALMA (N. X. Roth et al. 2025), TRAPPIST-North (E. Jehin et al. 2025), and Swift (Z. Xing et al. 2025). The plot shows a variety of data points scattered around the lines, mostly of order 10^4-10^5 g/s, with the 1 km curves passing close to the data points that measure CO2, and mostly above the other datapoints, depending on the model. Bottom Panel: CO2 production rates measured by JWST are treated as upper and lower limits, and observations where CO2 is inaccessible are shown as lower limits. Given these constraints, the range of Mdot values and hence diameters for two different reported NGA solutions is shown. The JPL solution is unable to simultaneously fit the upper limit from JWST and the lower limit from TRAPPIST-North. The plot shows the same thing as the middle panel, but with some additional interpretation, namely that some points should be considered upper limits and some lower limits. A red shaded region labelled Eubanks+ Accel shows a range of diameters from 820 to 1050 meters. A gray region labeled JPL Accel shows a diameter of 1100 m.
December 23, 2025 at 1:05 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2512.13743
a woman wearing a santa hat says " stop trying to make fetch happen "
ALT: a woman wearing a santa hat says " stop trying to make fetch happen "
media.tenor.com
December 17, 2025 at 3:28 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
The Eschatian Hypothesis

arxiv.org/abs/2512.09970
The Eschatian Hypothesis
The history of astronomical discovery shows that many of the most detectable phenomena, especially detection firsts, are not typical members of their broader class, but rather rare, extreme cases with...
arxiv.org
December 12, 2025 at 7:36 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Heading to gay Paris tomorrow! Let me know your favorite things to do
December 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
#CoolWorlds Podcast Episode 28 is out! With Néstor Espinoza, in which we discuss JWST, Exoplanet Atmospheres & Molecule Detection...

youtu.be/bZ7Hge0OUTE
#28 Néstor Espinoza - JWST, Exoplanet Atmospheres, Molecule Detection
YouTube video by Cool Worlds Podcast
youtu.be
December 5, 2025 at 11:00 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
The US tax code makes no sense. So if you own and AirBnB-out a second/third/etc home, you get a massive tax break via depreciation + offsetting maintenance/utilities. But you own+live in one house you get none of that. And if you rent it’s even worse. Isn’t this backwards??
December 5, 2025 at 8:24 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Just get on with it already, you coward
astrokatie.com Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · Nov 27
Anyway here’s a cheerful piece about how the Sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth (but not by exploding, so, you know, there’s that)
Here’s how the Sun will end all life on Earth
Our home star won't go supernova, but the end of its life will be no less spectacular.
www.sciencefocus.com
December 3, 2025 at 11:24 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Public health warning that I am not interested in your pet theory that you developed with ChatGPT
November 24, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by David Kipping
aeon.co
With more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered, confirming an exomoon would open new questions about how planetary systems form, and maybe even where life could exist. Watch this converation between physicist Brian Greene and astronomer @davidkipping.bsky.social at the World Science Festival
Why exomoons could be astronomy’s next big breakthrough | Aeon Videos
Exoplanet discoveries have reshaped astronomy. Are exomoons next? Brian Greene in conversation with David Kipping
buff.ly
November 22, 2025 at 11:30 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
What a defense…

#NYT #EpsteinFiles
November 22, 2025 at 8:25 AM
davidkipping.bsky.social
youtu.be/QCKrUZeiTJo?...
JWST Searched for Exomoons - Here's What We Found
YouTube video by Cool Worlds
youtu.be
November 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
The rise of “hyper-authorship” has neutered the correlation of publication metrics vs academic accolades. “The mean # of coauthors per pub, averaged across highly cited physicists, was 121 in 2004. It rose to 952 in 2019, with 10% of the scientists having >2,441 coauthors per pub on average”.
November 19, 2025 at 7:05 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
Some poor civilizations probably live in Bootes Void and think the universe must be playing a cruel joke on them.
November 13, 2025 at 10:21 PM
davidkipping.bsky.social
If 3I/ATLAS is an alien Trojan horse, then why would there be any anomalies at all? Surely they could dress it up to be identical to our typical comets.
November 12, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by David Kipping
astrowright.bsky.social
I've summarized the truth about Loeb's 10 "anomalies" about 3I/ATLAS in one post.

Thanks to @deschscoveries.bsky.social @michael-w-busch.bsky.social @cometary.org and @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social for contributing their expertise!
Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained
Avi Loeb continues to claim that 3I/ATLAS has many anomalous behaviors that lead to the conclusion that it “might” be an alien spacecraft.  He carefully hedges the probability that it is a spacecraft ...
sites.psu.edu
November 10, 2025 at 12:22 AM