Michael Busch

Planetary astronomer, studying piles of rock in space. Reader of books. Drinker of tea. He/him. This is a personal account. To bigotry no sanction.

Last Notes

2026-10-02 01:24:37 UTC

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That is ... not how the vitrification plant at Hanford works.

2026-09-12 21:37:48 UTC

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A new entry for @npub17v8…nhln 's list of "rich folks who pretend to be ranchers while not knowing anything" ?

2026-06-19 16:31:24 UTC

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Context for this one:
How does one measure the material properties of a rock pile in space, without damaging the very expensive robotic spacecraft?

2026-06-19 08:18:09 UTC

"Poke it with a stick." #ThingsActualScientistsSay

2026-06-17 19:36:47 UTC

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#subpost
No, the text generators cannot do statistics.
And it remains disappointing to witness people who should know better pretend that software can do things it cannot.

2026-06-11 18:59:47 UTC

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I appreciate everywhere where community emergency response is run by fire departments or medics rather than by cops.

2026-06-09 18:25:26 UTC

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No Blue Moon?

2026-06-05 15:54:10 UTC

I am glad to find the American Geophysical Union organizing its membership in opposition to the attempt by Russell Vought and OMB to upend all US government grant funding: https://agu.quorum.us/campaign/163877/
May other professional societies do likewise.

2026-06-05 14:09:07 UTC

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The people affiliated with the "LessWrong" apocalyptic AI cult - including several members of Anthropic's management - have been pretending that "self-improving AI" will magically happen for the last 25 years now.
It hasn't.
But the hype remains unconstrained by facts.

2026-05-18 00:30:20 UTC

Today in the Planetary Science Journal:
Schettino & Rossi 2026, "Potential Interaction of 99942 Apophis with the High Earth Orbit Population during the 2029 Close Approach" - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae5dc3
Please do not put any orbital debris where #Apophis might run into it.

2026-05-11 21:14:39 UTC

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Regarding what burning up Starlinks can do to stratospheric ozone, refer to Ferreira et al. 2024 - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280 .
And since SpaceX and similar groups assume continued frequent rocket launches to keep replacing the things, refer also to Revell et al. 2025 about rocket exhaust and the ozone layer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-025-01098-6 .
The effects persist for decades.

2026-04-21 21:27:08 UTC

There are exactly zero commercial supersonic aircraft in production and have not been for well over 20 years.
Nobody wants them.
Sean Duffy is simply blatantly lying, again.
But I am wondering who prompted this particular outrageous nonsense by Duffy and Trump.
QT Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com‬
2026 April 21
... Sean Duffy: "We're on the cusp of bringing back land-based supersonic flight. So supersonic flight from LA to New York in two and a half hours. Wild."
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mjznl3efu22l

2026-04-16 16:34:10 UTC

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If you should want another way to get planetary scientists to argue, here is another question:
Is Mercury a comet?

2026-04-16 16:32:30 UTC

Today in Research Notes of the AAS:
Lin & Sie 2026, "Mercury: A Planet by Solar Proxy?" - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae5e75
Provocative title aside, the interesting thing here is the review of how fast volcanoids get destroyed:
Tens of thousands of years for ~1 km objects and hundreds of thousands of years for ~100 m ones at 0.387 au.