Notices by Prof Heino Falcke (hfalcke@mastodon.social)

Just got this news on the #NASA budget proposal by the president. #Astrophysics gets hit by a sledgehammer.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/trump-white-house-budget-proposal-eviscerates-science-funding-at-nasa/

#Astrodon #Astronomy

*  ~50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion
for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a
science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.

* A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; (1/3)

Our Dutch cafeteria really serves the worst vegan food and I even eat it …🤔
@Radboud_uni

My colleague Michael Wondrak has conducted an evaporation experiment of Ferrero-Rocher chocolate confection and compared it to our predictions for evaporation via a Hawking-like gravitational pair production, that we published recently https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024arXiv241014734F/abstract

Unfortunately, the results don’t quite match the theory. Evaporation happened much quicker. Not sure why 🤔.

#astrodon #physics #hawkingradiation #astrophysics #chocolate

This betrayal on open stage, the free world will never forget.

Red, white and blue land 🤣🤣🤣?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1161

I wonder how our partners at #Harvard who are co-operating the Greenland telescope will call it now ?🤔 GLT->RWBLT?

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities-technology/telescopes-instruments/greenland-telescope
#astronomy #Astrodon

Hi Astro folks, I stepped out of the train in Nijmegen this morning and was blinded by a bright persistent light in the sky. Any ideas what this might be? 🤔

Interesting. I get #Phishing messages via WhatsApp from a Brazilian number that asks to confirm my credit card for an #AirBnB booking in Germany quoting the correct dates, apartment and my name. Clearly they have my personal booking data, except my credit card number … 🤔
A bit scary. Maybe be careful when using AirBnB?
#Hacking #infosec #Datensicherheit

Help! My granddaughter asks why the spoon in a glass of water looks bigger than in air. How do I explain geometric optics and the reflective index of water to a 2 ½ year old … 😳🙈?
#physics #scicomm

Some of the young scientists in the team who led the new Event Horizon Telescope polarization results and their culinary inspiration …. That has become sort of a tradition since some people misinterpreted our ring of fire as an orange donut 🤷🏼♂️ Not sure what happened to the color though.

(From left Freek Roelofs, Sara Issaoun and Angelo Ricarte. The first two did their PhD with me. So nice to see how they continue to take leadership in such a big collaboration 😊).
#Astrodon #astronomy

Me: Searching for galaxy NGC 4038 on Hubblesite.org

Google: „You got to be a robot“!

#astrodon #astronomy

@petersuber what‘s the point of no embargo? Embargo is an effective measure to give equal access to journalists and give them time to properly research a topic without having to go into a rat race 🤔

@petersuber Fields a different. In our case an embargo is usually 2 days only. In most cases those two days won’t change the course of the world. However, it gives journalists the chance to check a story and collect independent- sometimes critical- voices. This gives better science reporting and increases trust rather than having to race after the next hype. Moreover, you are sneaking something into the open science discussion that doesn’t belong there.