Mark McCaughrean
For me, I suspect a good fraction of my night owl habit stems from my focus being easily broken by noise & general hubbub.
This was even more evident working at home during the pandemic, when Tigger’s quest for attention became hugely annoying.
Once the focus is broken, it takes ages for me to get back into the zone. Hence working late into the evenings & night, after most have gone home & the din has subsided, has always been when I’m at my calmest & most productive.
It’s who I am 🤷♂️🦉
Mark McCaughrean
As a chronic night owl, often working beyond midnight & going to bed after 2am, I’ve always found society’s stereotyping of larks & owls fascinating & not a little annoying.
The general tenor is that larks are industrious, serious people, while owls are lazy & frivolous.
Coming in to work late as an owl gets tsk-tsk’d by larks, but of course when they leave at 5pm, they don’t see the other 6-8 hours you’re at work.
And when larks organise early meetings, they sneer at your grumbles.
Mark McCaughrean
I mean, it’s good to see the science backing up what I always felt to be self-evident … 🦉🤷♂️🤪
Mark McCaughrean
Yes, I did read the caveats at the end of the piece & the need to control for additional variables.
While the headline that night owls have superior cognitive function is amusing, it’s not the main point for me.
It’s that larks & owls exist & just work differently – this needs to be respected.
And everyone agrees that the most important thing, whether you’re a lark or an owl, is getting enough sleep.
Which is why I *hate* early morning meetings & have banned them from my future life 😤
Mark McCaughrean
In the November 1932 German federal elections, the NSDAP won 33% of the vote.
These were the last free & fair elections before the Nazis seized power in 1933.
Remember: fascists don’t need to win a majority of the votes to end democracy.
They just need to split the opposition.
Fingers crossed that French left & centre right voters truly understand this before the second round.
#BackToTheFuture
#LearnFromHistory
#HowTheHellIsThisHappeningAgain
Mark McCaughrean
This article is a good lesson in reading between the lines to avoid the Mars colonisation manifest destiny hype.
Just because an organism can avoid being killed by martian conditions, doesn't mean it can actually live & thrive there.
These mosses needed Earth-like conditions to revivify them.
As my ESA colleague Nicol Caplin says about tardigrades, which can survive in outer space when dessicated, being extremotolerant is not the same as being an extremophile.
Mark McCaughrean
@TimeLime And as Anna points out in that piece, the world is suffering far greater "vandalism", both to the environment & arguably to many great human cultural artefacts, in the name of profit & status quo.
For me at least, the big question is what if anything will lead to a meaningful societal pivot on climate change. Is it really going to take the deaths of millions from heat & the flooding of major cities? And if that happens in India or Africa, will Europe & North America actually care?
Mark McCaughrean
@TimeLime Again, I think a lot of what Just Stop Oil are doing is actually short of vandalism, as with the Van Gogh painting, but the misrepresentation & vituperation that comes their way often seems deliberately confected by vested interests.
And as Anna's interview shows, it's not pointless at all – they are bringing huge attention to the most important issue facing us & even though Just Stop Oil themselves are vilified, it is having a positive coat-tail impact on ER, Greenpeace, etc.
Mark McCaughrean
It’s depressing just how eager everyone is to condemn folks throwing coloured cornflour at some rocks.
At worst, it’s performative “heritagism”, designed to avoid reactionary flag-waving nationalists questioning your patriotism.
At best, it lacks perspective.
This’ll wash off & Stonehenge has survived much greater indignities at human hands over the millennia.
And it will long outlive us as our civilisation crashes thanks to continued inaction over climate change.
Mark McCaughrean
@TimeLime I'm not disputing that the public reaction may be negative, but I think we need to be careful about quite how far we're being led by the nose to form such "outraged" opinions.
Much as the powder spread at Stonehenge yesterday was removed quickly, the tomato soup thrown at Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" did no actual damage as there was a glass cover over the painting.
This interview with Anna Holland, one of the people who did the latter, is worth reading, IMO.
Mark McCaughrean
“This one is small. But the one out there is far away. Small … far away.”
As seen on the Karlsplatz in Heidelberg on a rainy June Friday afternoon.
Mark McCaughrean
If you don’t see the connections between the rapidly-increasing impacts of climate change & the rise in reactionary nationalism yet, trust me, you will.
Because both are going to get much worse. Worse than most people dare contemplate.
Mark McCaughrean
I’m an Apple shareholder & have lived in the Apple ecosystem for more than 20 years. I am a big fan of the company.
But this advert for the latest iPad is a travesty, a cloth-eared & heartbreaking metaphor for the way that Silicon Valley & get-rich-quick tech bro culture are homogenising, monetising, & even destroying true human creativity, not liberating it as they love to claim.
Delete it, Tim Cook.
Mark McCaughrean
Nothing else matters.
Almost 80% of IPCC climate scientists believe we're heading for 2.5ºC of warming this century; 50% say 3ºC.
These are objectively disastrous numbers.
Over 70% say that lack of political will is to blame; 60% also blame vested corporate interests.
I'd add the demagogues, populists, & their cronies, weaponising denialism for their own short-term selfish gains.
History will judge our generation very harshly.
Mark McCaughrean
Sunday evening sounds in The Netherlands.
2. Frogs & nightingales serenading the sunset around a dune slack between Noordwijk & Wassenaar.
From today''s rather lovely 77km ride up the Leidsevaart & back through the coastal dunes.
#SoundOn 🔉
#CyclingLife 🚴♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱
#FieldRecordings
#NotALotHappens
#EnvironmentalSounds
Mark McCaughrean
Heads up 👀
China is due to launch their Chang’e 6 mission in the next couple of hours 🚀🛰️
It’s the first to attempt the return of samples from the lunar far side, in the scientifically very interesting South Pole-Aitken Basin region 🌑
There are some European experiments on-board & some of my ESA colleagues are at the launch site 🤞
There’s a livestream on CGTN & I’m due to be on at 09:30UTC / 11:30CEST.
Mark McCaughrean
Last night's sunset had some spectacular colours, but as a physics & cloud nerd, something else caught my attention 👀
Close to the horizon, there was an obvious semi-sinusoidal wave-like structure ∿∿∿
Very likely due to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability between two atmospheric layers moving at different speeds, leading to fluctus clouds 🌊🌊🌊
At least 10 peaks & troughs can be seen 🙂👍
#CyclingLife 🚴♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱
#Photography 📷
#CloudAppreciationSociety ☁️
Mark McCaughrean
Looks like that volcanic fissure near Grindavik on the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland finally unzipped tonight 😳
Some pretty spectacular imagery on the various live web streams right now 🌋
Mark McCaughrean
A twist of fate separates light from dark.
Mark McCaughrean
Here’s the BBC’s online take on the images & what they mean for the Euclid mission by the redoubtable Mr Amos, with some quotes from my dark energy scientist friend, Isobel Hook, ESA director of science, Carole Mundell, & yours truly.
If you’re in the UK, then you should be able to watching us effusing more about these first images in a long segment by Becky Morelle in the Six & Ten O’Clock News 🙇♂️
Former Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency / JWST Science Working Group Interdisciplinary Scientist / Co-founder Space Rocks / New worlds ahead / Opinions very much own Now living in a hilly part of Germany & very much missing regular cycling with the wide horizons & big skies of The Netherlands 😢🚴♂️
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