The 2nd presentation in today’s first #AAS238 presser looks at ways to find planets by looking at the composition of stars.

A Statistical Search for Chemical Signatures of Planet Formation in Sun-like Stars
Jacob Nibauer (University of Pennsylvania)

1/ There was a lot of chemistry in this talk, but the bottom line is this: If you have two stars that formed from the same kind of stuff, then the star that forms rocky worlds will have less of the stuff needed to make those planets then a star that didn’t make planets.

2/

First presentation looks at CHIME and Fast Radio Bursts!

Fast Radio Bursts: From a Handful to Hundreds with CHIME/FRB
Kiyoshi Masui (MIT), Alex Josephy (McGill University) & Mohit Bhardwaj (McGill Univ.)

1/ CHIME is a cool Canadian radio array nicely tuned to the colors of radio light where whatever is causing Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are doing their primary bursting.

We really don’t know a lot about FRBs. They are (astronomically) pretty new discoveries, every obs is needed.

2/

Ok, seminar stuff about this giant new shiny IR telescope that may or may not launch later this year.

So far, it’s the same info seen since I was in grad school, but with better images & animations.

Reminder, JWST was supposed to launch in 2007.

No, I’m not bitter.

1/ This presentation is acknowledging how ALMA is really doing amazing science that we really thought would have to wait until JWST launched.

Scientists will find a way to science!

This ground-based array is using its limited wavelengths to see star+Planet formation.

2/

The first presentation of this presser is:

The Molecular Content of Planetary Nebulae: The Next Level
Kate Gold & Deborah Schmidt

and we are starting with super pretty images. I *need* to find this mosaic of Planetary Nebulae.

1/ We know basics of Planetary Neb (PN). Middle mass stars stop fusing materials in their core, exhale their atmospheres into nebulae, & that material gets recycled into future gen of stars. Since the PN are made of material enriched in the star, they have lots of MOLECULES.

2/

From galaxy mergers we now turn to Black Hole mergers.

TMaximum Black Hole Mass Across Cosmic Time
Jorick Vink

This is a weird system with 2 larger then necassarily steller mass systems merging into an intermediate mass Black Hole!

Q - What is max mass of Star/BH?

1/ It was thought that as steller masses increase, steller winds increasm causing more and more material to be lost through wind, and lower the max mass of the star. BUT… is this always true?

No - stars with lots of metals have more possible spectral lines and lower max mass

2/

Well, I made the release I wanted:

A Merging Galaxy Triple Hosting a Potential Dual Active Galactic Nucleus
Jonathan Williams

Basically - models being done to sort how systems merge and evolve and now compared to Data of 3x merger

1/ This is a striking system. The bright cores are 9100ly apart and appear to be AGN.

The fainter system appears to be a dwarf galaxy that has perhaps already passed between the other two cores.

2/

Now for release I most looked forward to:

Eta Carinae's Change of State as Seen by Hubble from 1998 to 2021
Kris Davidson, University of Minnesota

Eta Car failed to go SN in the past but will likely go boom in the future. AND it’s only 7500ly away.

1/ Davidson reminds us at #AAS238 presser that Eta Car was one of the brightest stars in the sky… until it wasn’t. In 1800s there was a great eruption but then the star fadded away… only to slowly rebrighten again. It continues to work its way back to bright.

2/

Presser 1, story 1

Auroral Electrons Surfing on Alfvén Waves
James Schroeder, Wheaton College, IL

This is a student publication in Nature Communications!

Key Q: Why do electrons accelerate to Earth where they trigger Aurora?

Answer… that’s this research…

1/ For past 40 years Alfven Waves - waves of plasma oscillating along magnetic field - thought related to Aurora by transferring their energy to electrons that then rain on atmosphere.

Haven’t been able to see if Alven waves occur with aurora or cause aurora… until now.

2/

My husband just spent 48 hr at the hospital due to something he ate. He got there by ambulance (Good times). He is now randomly coughing and I’ve lost hope in health care. Here’s a thread on why:

Ambulance staff put a mask on him and were double masked. From here, badness.
1/ The hospital is allowing guests. Because it’s so cold outside they aren’t doing temperature checks at the die. Since I had the insurance card, in I went, double masked.

And I find my husband without a mask.

2/

There are entire countries w fewer new cases than the WH-orbit. (Source covid19.who.int/table?tableCha… )

For instance
Country Cases in last 7/days
Rwanda 35
S Sudan 34
St Martin 29
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius & Saba 25
Cen.l African Republic 25
Equatorial Guinea 24
Malawi 24
Eritrea 23
/n

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1313584345769291779

(Cont)
Country Cases in last 7/days
New Zealand 23
Viet Nam 20
Bhutan
19
Jersey 19
Mauritius 17
Benin 17
Faroe Islands 15
Liberia 15
Gambia 15
St Barthélemy 14
Comoros 13
Turks & Caicos Islands 13
Sudan 13
Liechtenstein 11
Monaco 11
Djibouti 11
US Virgin Islands 10
Yemen 10

2/n

I’ve been ready through @doctorow’s “Makers” for the past several weeks. (I stopped tweeting about it once I was a good way in because joining part way in is very hard).

Tonight, watching the world burn, I struggled with “do I read or do I admit I’m broken??”

1/n @doctorow Thing is, I had to ask myself, if I didn’t go online and read, what was I going to spend my night doing? Scrolling thru Twitter? Playing Animal Crossing? Both? Probably both. That doesn’t exactly put anything positive into the world.

It is privilege to sit & do nothing.

2/n

1 - I’m going to listen to books the rest of the day because the news is hurting my brain.

2 - Folks are talking about how our economy is going to tank in part because we offshored our industry.

3 - I’m going to out myself as a long time dem socialist before continuing.

Thread Back when I started college in 1992, I was an international relations major in @jmcmsu. As part of our election-year course work we read the latest books by @paulkrugman & @RBReich, Bush & Clinton’s economic advisors. This had 3 out of the classroom effects on me.

/1