Til Birnstiel
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birnstiel.bsky.social
Til Birnstiel
@birnstiel.bsky.social
Professor for Astrophysics at LMU Munich. www.til-birnstiel.de
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
Just reviewed the demands letter the government sent to Harvard. Strong McCarthy vibes with this administration. Here are just a few of the most insane. Full letter here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25...
April 17, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
Very sad to hear of the passing of my former colleague astrophysicist Bob Kurucz from CfA.

Bob's expertise in stellar atmospheres was legendary. His countless hours of discussion on spectra with me during SSP coffee was effectively a free graduate level class taught by the grandmaster himself.
March 4, 2025 at 6:07 AM
World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject:

www.eso.org/public/news/...

Petition against it here:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject
On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the ...
www.eso.org
February 20, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
This may be the most important paper in the planet formation field in recent years - showing how to go from dust to a chain of massive planets 🟤🪐🔵🔵 If you are at
#Exoplanets5 you can talk to the first author, Tommy Lau 😉 arxiv.org/abs/2406.12340 With @birnstiel.bsky.social @stammler.bsky.social
Sequential giant planet formation initiated by disc substructure
Planet formation models are necessary to understand the origins of diverse planetary systems. Circumstellar disc substructures have been proposed as preferred locations of planet formation but a...
arxiv.org
June 20, 2024 at 11:25 AM
🥳Congratulations to Dr. @astrothomas.bsky.social for defending his excellent thesis with distinction! 👏Next up: @flatironinstitute.org Fellowship! They grow up so fast! 😅
March 19, 2024 at 6:45 PM
🚨⚠️ Job alert ⚠️🚨
Postdoc & PhD positions in computational astrophysics / planet formation in Munich. Details here:

jobregister.aas.org/ad/c541e053
Postdoc positions in planet formation at LMU Munich (up to 5 years) | AAS Job Register
jobregister.aas.org
January 6, 2024 at 4:57 PM
🚨My ARA&A review is out on arXiv. I did my best to summarize the state of the field but surely some parts will be outdated quickly! I hope you like it:

arxiv.org/abs/2312.13287
Dust growth and evolution in protoplanetary disks
Over the past decade, advancement of observational capabilities, specifically the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and SPHERE instrument, alongside theoretical innovations like...
arxiv.org
December 21, 2023 at 8:21 AM
⚠️ paper alert! 👇
What is the impact of dust grain growth on the vertical shear instability (VSI)?
@birnstiel.bsky.social, Hubert Klahr, and I found that the VSI is highly sensitive to the grain fragmentation velocity, which sets the max. particle size and thus the cooling times

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
December 13, 2023 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
Yo, Bayern, was geht?

www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/e...
November 18, 2023 at 12:06 PM
Today we were in Garching for the „Maus“ open House day with the kids. Good timing!

Congratulations to Ferenc Krausz!
October 3, 2023 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
Since so many have asked, here’s my hot take on the spherules Loeb found and the manuscript he’s loudly rushed to the world. These are pretty typical cosmic spherules. Had he done the *obvious*--a control sample 100 km away from the meteor--he’d have found the same thing. 1/20
September 1, 2023 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Til Birnstiel
Thanks to Dan Clery for this Science article on Avi's latest.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Lots of interesting details here! A few stand out to me.

1) The paper has been submitted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Ocean Science. That's good for the scientific process.
August 31, 2023 at 1:39 PM