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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 26d

"Ten years ago, scientists heard the universe rumble for the first time. That first discovery of gravitational waves began a new era of astronomy."

@simon-stevenson.bsky.social writes about gravitational-wave astronomy today

theconversation.com/10-years-ago...

#GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️

🖼️: C Knox

A portrait of Einstein and Hawking with a binary black hole in between. It is rather dramatic, and shows cool light-bending effects.

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Sep 1

My cake decorating skills aren't quite there yet, BUT a HUGE congratulations to @astroteagan.bsky.social for submitting her PhD.

Teagan Clarke @astroteagan.bsky.social · Aug 30

Occupation: Student'nt

Thanks @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social for making me the delicious cake and taking this photo of me being equally excited and terrified 5 minutes after submitting my PhD 🥰🎂🧑‍🎓

A photo of me in a green vest holding a pink cake with yellow sprinkles that says "p h done". I have a big smile with a slightly anxious look in my eyes

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

OzGrav @ozgrav.bsky.social · Sep 1

Congratulations to OzGrav's Deputy Director, Professor Tamara Davis AM, recipient of the 2025 Moyal Medal awarded by Macquarie University for her outstanding contributions to astrophysics and cosmology.

Read more here: lighthouse.mq.edu.au/media-releas...

Milestone Moyal Medal awarded to astrophysicist Tamara Davis

Professor Davis, an astrophysicist at UQ’s School of Mathematics, will receive the medal and deliver the 2025 Moyal Lecture on Thursday 9 October. Her lecture, titled ‘New light on dark energy: the…

lighthouse.mq.edu.au

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

Monash Astrophysics @monashastro.bsky.social · Aug 29

Front page news! 📰 Monash PhD researcher Christian Adamcwicz leads new LVK results revealing the mysterious 40 M☉ gap in black hole populations. Exciting clues about how the universe’s heaviest stars live and die! #BlackHoles #LVK #Astrophysics www.theaustralian.com.au/science/grav...

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @cosmicrami.com · Aug 26

Look at 'em all!

It's like a big blue Phoenix rising from the ashes of a sea of massive compact objects that slammed together to shake the very fabric of the cosmos!

👀👀👀

🔭

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · Aug 26

Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA observing run are out today!

We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars

📰 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082

🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4

New masses in the stellar graveyard plot, showing astronomical observations of black holes and neutron stars. The number of gravitational-wave observations of black holes is overwhelming. The plot is arranged to look nice, the horizontal axis has no meaning, but the vertical one shows masses. We have a significant range of masses from about 1 solar mass to over 200 solar masses for our largest merger remnant. New out today is a neutron star black hole binary GW230518_125908, as well as a lot of binary black holes.

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

The side effects are nuts, it’s always a difficult cost benefit analysis and I miss my life before.

Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

2 years into my long covid journey. Finding it very difficult to do science at the level I’d like 🫠

nzjanette @nzjanette.bsky.social · Aug 26

Can confirm. I’m 3 years and 4 months in and I’m here to tell you long covid is not for the faint of heart.

Long COVID is more than fatigue. Our new study suggests its impact is similar to a stroke or Parkinson’s

Long COVID isn’t just a bunch of lingering symptoms. A new study shows it can stop peoole doing what they want to do, and need to do.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · Aug 26

Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA observing run are out today!

We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars

📰 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082

🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

I have like 4 weeks!

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

Dr. Sharan Banagiri (he/him) @geodesicvoyager.bsky.social · Aug 26

The O4a results (GWTC-4) of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA are now out 🥳

We have 128 new candidates of which 86 have a false alarm rate of less this 1 per year

The new catalog results arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082

Update on black hole and neutron star population arxiv.org/abs/2508.18083

GWTC-4.0: An Introduction to Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC) is a collection of short-duration (transient) gravitational wave signals identified by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration in gravitational-wave data pro...

arxiv.org

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

The results of the 4th Gravitational Wave observing run are out! 👀 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18080, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18081, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18083, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18079

GWTC-4.0: An Introduction to Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC) is a collection of short-duration (transient) gravitational wave signals identified by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration in gravitational-wave data pro...

arxiv.org

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

Yes! I was super chuffed. Thank you so much.

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

Amazing!!!!

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @cosmicrami.com · Aug 25

A fun project I worked on during the weekend .... I made a new pulsar map!

The one used in the Pioneer and Voyager spacecrafts uses slower and less stable pulsars.

This one uses millisecond pulsars!

Might make a few more changes to it. Also thanks to folks who gave feedback on v1.0.

#Pulsars

🔭📡

A series of radial solid lines, followed by binary encoded dashes and vertical stripes. The radial lines encode the distance to the pulsars, the binary stripes encode the pulsar period and period derivative. THere is a key in the top right that indicates the scales used. The title says "Millisecond Pulsar Map - August 2025"

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Aug 26

Thanks for tuning in!!

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ASTRON @astronnl.bsky.social · Jul 17

An international research team led by @astrosanne.bsky.social at ASTRON, identify a mystifying Long-Period Transient with 100% polarized radio emission, suggesting new type of cosmic radio source: www.astron.nl/astronomers-...

Astronomers uncover white dwarf system emitting bright radio pulses with strange rhythm | ASTRON

Researchers identify a mystifying Long-Period Transient with 100% polarized radio emission, suggesting new type of cosmic radio source. A team of astronomers at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for…

www.astron.nl

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

OzGrav @ozgrav.bsky.social · Jul 17

Congrats to Natasha Van Bemmel on winning an MNRAS Student Prize. The MNRAS editors selected her first‑author paper, An Optically Led Search for Kilonovae to z~0.3 with KNTraP, as one of six best student‑led publications this year, what a debut!
#OzGrav #Swinburne #MNRAS #NatashaVanBemmel

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Fun Fact Science with Kovi @funfactscience.com · Jul 17

It's a 'no' from me dawg

Wikipedia screenshot:
Betteridge's law of headlines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not. The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions.

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OzGrav @ozgrav.bsky.social · Jul 16

GW231123: Heaviest black‑hole merger yet detected in gravitational waves.
~100 M☉ + ~140 M☉ → ~225 M☉ remnant, spins near physical limit.
“This blip forces us to rethink how very heavy, rapidly spinning black holes come to be.” – Prof Eric Thrane
Read: www.ozgrav.org/news/ligo-de...

LIGO Detects Most Massive Black Hole Merger to Date - OzGrav

Gravitational waves from record‑breaking black holes challenge current astrophysical models The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has observed the heaviest black‑hole merger ever detected,…

www.ozgrav.org

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · Jul 16

Unsolved Physics Problems

xkcd.com/3115/

Comic. The Three Types of Unsolved Physics Problem (First panel) Vague. PERSON [next to curved diagram] What is the nature of time in quantum gravity? Is it a background parameter, a dynamic aspect of spacetime, or an emergent phenomenon? (Second panel) Precise. PERSON 2 with short hair [device with equation below: 71Ga + νe → 71Ge + e- .] Why does the *S.A.G.E.* Gallium Neutrino Capture Experiment produce only 75% as much germanium as predicted? (Third panel) Cursed. PERSON 3 with white hat [rectangular block with hairs growing out of it labeled Zinc Whiskers] Why does some metal randomly grow hairs? It keeps causing short circuits and we have no idea what’s going on. OFF-PANEL: Is this a joke? PERSON 3: No! Please help!

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Reposted by Rowina Nathan ✨

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · Jul 14

The @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration is happy to announce the detection of the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves 🕳️🕳️

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Sylvia Biscoveanu @sbisco.bsky.social · Jul 14

In this morning’s plenary at #GR24Amaldi16, Amanda Farah introduces the newest (and most massive and likely most rapidly spinning) @ligo.org - @egovirgo.bsky.social - KAGRA event, #GW231123! Read more about this exceptional event in the discovery paper: arxiv.org/abs/2507.08219

Amanda Farah at a podium in front of a slide introducing GW231123

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Rowina Nathan ✨ @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social · Jul 14

Great talk from Lia Medeiros on the event horizon telescope results! Black hole shadows were not something I had thought much about before, it kinda feels like the Universe is putting on a shadow puppet show 🕳️💫 @ioppublishing.bsky.social

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · Jul 14

🔊 Two really massive black holes, COLLIDING💥!

LIGO has seen ~300 of these collisions since 2015, but this one is HUGE creating a black hole 256x the mass of the Sun. It's likely the merging black holes were themselves the by-product of previous mergers 🤓🔭🧪

ℹ️: www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes

Ripples in space-time from collision recorded by gravitational wave detector forces a rethink of how the objects form

www.theguardian.com

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · Jul 13

Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes

Ripples in space-time from collision recorded by gravitational wave detector forces a rethink of how the objects form Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes that spiralled into one another far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together to form an even more massive black hole about 10bn light years from Earth. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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