Dr Adam McMaster
@adammc.space
I’m an astronomer at the University of Southampton. Finding black holes with the help of citizen scientists at https://black-hole-hunters.org
I write about astronomy at https://three-alpha.space
I write about astronomy at https://three-alpha.space
Pinned
First light for the 4MOST spectrograph
But what will it actually see?
three-alpha.space
One amazing type of observations can tell astronomers a huge amount. So how does it work? three-alpha.space/p/first-ligh... 🔭🧪
One amazing type of observations can tell astronomers a huge amount. So how does it work? three-alpha.space/p/first-ligh... 🔭🧪
First light for the 4MOST spectrograph
But what will it actually see?
three-alpha.space
November 15, 2025 at 1:20 PM
One amazing type of observations can tell astronomers a huge amount. So how does it work? three-alpha.space/p/first-ligh... 🔭🧪
You know you’re emailing an academic when you get an out of office message saying they can’t reply, followed three minutes later by a detailed reply
November 12, 2025 at 2:40 PM
You know you’re emailing an academic when you get an out of office message saying they can’t reply, followed three minutes later by a detailed reply
Happy “my neighbours won’t let me get my kids to sleep” night to all who celebrate
November 5, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Happy “my neighbours won’t let me get my kids to sleep” night to all who celebrate
This black hole has one bright jet and one that’s too faint to see. The reason is relativity and the weird things that happen near the speed of light 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/a-black-ho...
A black hole with just one bright jet
Thanks to relativity we can't see the other one.
three-alpha.space
October 5, 2025 at 12:25 PM
This black hole has one bright jet and one that’s too faint to see. The reason is relativity and the weird things that happen near the speed of light 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/a-black-ho...
Reposted by Dr Adam McMaster
3. this is not the moment for an incredibly expensive increase in state surveillance infrastructure to be run for profit by private tech firms just before Labour ushers in an (even more) authoritarian right wing government.
FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.
FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.
September 26, 2025 at 8:28 AM
3. this is not the moment for an incredibly expensive increase in state surveillance infrastructure to be run for profit by private tech firms just before Labour ushers in an (even more) authoritarian right wing government.
FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.
FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.
Our supposedly left wing government torching civil liberties because they’re incapable of stopping the far right from setting the agenda apple.news/Af2BhztikQ3u...
'BritCard' digital ID will be made law for all adults in bid to tackle small boats — The i Paper
No 10 believes a mandatory ID card system will help stop illegal immigrants working
apple.news
September 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Our supposedly left wing government torching civil liberties because they’re incapable of stopping the far right from setting the agenda apple.news/Af2BhztikQ3u...
Exciting news guys! I just got followed by someone who is only following 74k other people
September 20, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Exciting news guys! I just got followed by someone who is only following 74k other people
There were recently new images of two similar sounding but very different objects, the Butterfly Star and the Butterfly Nebula. I explain the difference 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/butterflie...
Butterflies in space
Two very different objects that sound remarkably similar. So what's the difference?
three-alpha.space
September 20, 2025 at 12:40 PM
There were recently new images of two similar sounding but very different objects, the Butterfly Star and the Butterfly Nebula. I explain the difference 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/butterflie...
History is full of powerful dictators, all remembered as villains. Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Caesar. Imagine what would have to be wrong with you to want to add yourself to that list
September 19, 2025 at 8:35 AM
History is full of powerful dictators, all remembered as villains. Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Caesar. Imagine what would have to be wrong with you to want to add yourself to that list
"If we are quiet enough, they are sure to forget we are here. They’re not just looking for pretexts at this point, to do what they were always going to do." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
A Beautiful Day for Saying Nothing
That chill in the air isn’t Jimmy Kimmel’s show being suspended. It’s just autumn!
www.theatlantic.com
September 18, 2025 at 9:47 PM
"If we are quiet enough, they are sure to forget we are here. They’re not just looking for pretexts at this point, to do what they were always going to do." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
Love this. LIGO is more likely to detect gravitational waves at night and during weekends. It's also less likely to detect things on Tuesdays. All because the detectors are more likely to be running at certain times/days. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2509.11849
Can LIGO Detect Daylight Savings Time?
Yes, it can.
Catalogs produced by networks of Gravitational-wave interferometers are subject to complicated selection effects, and the gold-standard remains direct measurements of the detection prob...
arxiv.org
September 17, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Love this. LIGO is more likely to detect gravitational waves at night and during weekends. It's also less likely to detect things on Tuesdays. All because the detectors are more likely to be running at certain times/days. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2509.11849
Sorry, can't work today, too busy screaming at the state of the world
September 16, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Sorry, can't work today, too busy screaming at the state of the world
Out for a nighttime dog walk and caught the eclipse through the clouds 🔭
September 7, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Out for a nighttime dog walk and caught the eclipse through the clouds 🔭
Objectively harder to read with Liquid Glass
September 7, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Objectively harder to read with Liquid Glass
A 36 billion solar mass black hole was recently discovered. That’s hard to imagine, so I’ve worked out how wide it would be compared to the Solar System. It’s, um, rather large 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/the-bigges...
The biggest black hole ever discovered
But just how big is it, exactly?
three-alpha.space
September 6, 2025 at 10:53 AM
A 36 billion solar mass black hole was recently discovered. That’s hard to imagine, so I’ve worked out how wide it would be compared to the Solar System. It’s, um, rather large 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/the-bigges...
Pretty sure this "vulnerability" in python-future is nonsense. Supposedly vulnerable because it imports "test" and an attacker could create a file named "test.py" in sys.path. But if the attacker can do that they could spoof literally any imported module github.com/advisories/G...
CVE-2025-50817 - GitHub Advisory Database
Python-Future Module Arbitrary Code Execution via Unintended Import of test.py
github.com
August 14, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Pretty sure this "vulnerability" in python-future is nonsense. Supposedly vulnerable because it imports "test" and an attacker could create a file named "test.py" in sys.path. But if the attacker can do that they could spoof literally any imported module github.com/advisories/G...
In a growing number of slack channels I no longer need, for no reason other than I only think of them when someone says something and it would look passive aggressive to leave right after
August 11, 2025 at 7:31 PM
In a growing number of slack channels I no longer need, for no reason other than I only think of them when someone says something and it would look passive aggressive to leave right after
We learned last month that Betelgeuse probably has a small, hard to see companion. But how do stars end up in binaries, anyway? The answer is all in how stars form in the first place 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/a-companio...
A companion on Orion's shoulder?
The red giant Betelgeuse might have a tiny companion, but how did it get there?
three-alpha.space
August 9, 2025 at 6:08 PM
We learned last month that Betelgeuse probably has a small, hard to see companion. But how do stars end up in binaries, anyway? The answer is all in how stars form in the first place 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/a-companio...
Apparently GPT-5 is a PhD-level expert on "everything" yet it can't correctly identify an incorrectly folded light curve of a pulsating star. It looks nothing like an eclipsing binary or an exoplanet. I think my job is safe for now 🧪🔭
August 8, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Apparently GPT-5 is a PhD-level expert on "everything" yet it can't correctly identify an incorrectly folded light curve of a pulsating star. It looks nothing like an eclipsing binary or an exoplanet. I think my job is safe for now 🧪🔭
I assume it's a technical limitation, but it seems crazy that it's so hard to separate commands from data in LLMs. It's like the old phone system where you could get free calls if you whistled the right way.
A number of authors have been caught including hidden prompts directed at any AI tools used to review their papers. 🧪☄️
'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers
Instructions in preprints from 14 universities highlight controversy on AI in peer review
asia.nikkei.com
July 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
I assume it's a technical limitation, but it seems crazy that it's so hard to separate commands from data in LLMs. It's like the old phone system where you could get free calls if you whistled the right way.
My son (4) asked me to build him a den. Luckily he drew me a detailed plan of how it should look 😬
July 27, 2025 at 6:35 PM
My son (4) asked me to build him a den. Luckily he drew me a detailed plan of how it should look 😬
How can we tell interstellar objects are actually from outside the solar system? Partly because we understand how gravity works (more or less) 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/we-know-it...
We know it came from interstellar space, but how?
We have now detected three interstellar objects, but how do we know they're not just regular comets?
three-alpha.space
July 26, 2025 at 2:38 PM
How can we tell interstellar objects are actually from outside the solar system? Partly because we understand how gravity works (more or less) 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/we-know-it...
Oh cool, Rubin managed to detect 3I/ATLAS before anyone knew it existed. It's going to find *so many* of these, isn't it? 🧪🔭 www.universetoday.com/articles/app...
Apparently Vera Rubin Captured Images Of 3I/ATLAS Before It Was Even Discovered
Sometimes serendipity happens in science. Whether it’s an apple falling from a tree or a melting chocolate bar, some of the world’s greatest discoveries come from happy accidents, even if their storie...
www.universetoday.com
July 22, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Oh cool, Rubin managed to detect 3I/ATLAS before anyone knew it existed. It's going to find *so many* of these, isn't it? 🧪🔭 www.universetoday.com/articles/app...
AI chat bot will no longer call itself Hitler #NotTheOnion www.theverge.com/x-ai/707442/...
Grok will no longer call itself Hitler or base its opinions on Elon Musk’s, promises xAI
Grok’s responses must come from ‘independent analysis,’ not Musk’s stated beliefs.
www.theverge.com
July 15, 2025 at 6:43 PM
AI chat bot will no longer call itself Hitler #NotTheOnion www.theverge.com/x-ai/707442/...
Recently, two different papers have claimed to have found the Universe’s “missing matter” with very different methods. What’s going on? Have they both found the same thing? Let me explain 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/has-the-un...
Has the Universe's missing matter been found?
Two teams have claimed they've found missing protons and neutrons.
three-alpha.space
July 12, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Recently, two different papers have claimed to have found the Universe’s “missing matter” with very different methods. What’s going on? Have they both found the same thing? Let me explain 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/has-the-un...