Claire Lamman
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clairelamman.bsky.social
Claire Lamman
@clairelamman.bsky.social
2K followers 350 following 190 posts
NSF postdoc at Ohio State, expert in cosmology and procrastibaking
ClaireLamman.com
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clairelamman.bsky.social
Even in the middle of Columbus ❤️
Faint but unmistakable pink sky with green low on the dark horizon
November 12, 2025 at 3:35 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Happy 4th! I made a patriotic pie, celebrating America's leadership in space sciences (historically).
A pie with a dark berry filling. It's decorated with what can generously be described as an art-deco JWST.
July 4, 2025 at 11:13 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Someone please talk me out of this impulse buy so I can view the
@vrubinobs.bsky.social images.
A mildly convincing fake TV ad for a 734" TV, shown next to two American football fields and a tiny tiny person for scale. Text reads: Big screen for big data. The only way to view images from the world's largest camera. Equivalent of 400 4k TVs. 25 tons. Make sure to measure your living room first. For the low price of $42! (42 factorial)
June 23, 2025 at 5:39 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Just finished 22nd grade :)
Smiling girl in crimson PhD robes in front of an old telescope dome (CfA's Great Refractor).
May 30, 2025 at 2:40 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Dark chocolate cookies!
Dark cookies with a spiral texture and thin white frosting grid. Topped with a large and small pearl-like sprinkles.
May 7, 2025 at 11:52 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
I did it!
Smiling girl with paper making her a doctor
May 2, 2025 at 8:35 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 32:
My thesis matters a lot. It's 100% baryons. Included is drawing of thesis with title "I found something NEW"
April 28, 2025 at 3:33 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
I have a paper out today! I'll be honest, this one is really aimed at a handful of people in my field. But I did manage to make a paper annotation that a wider audience might enjoy (linked in the arXiv comments section). arxiv.org/abs/2504.16076
The first page of a scientific paper, slightly faded and covered in cartoons and annotations. Text embedded in the version linked in arXiv.
April 23, 2025 at 11:54 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 31:
Ancient Egyptians used the star Sirius to predict when the river would flood. Anyone who didn't believe in astronomy was in de Nile.
April 21, 2025 at 12:43 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 30:
I think my defense will be a natural end to these weekly jokes. So... only 2 more left!!
One of the earliest records of an astronomer frustrated with poor seeing is the song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
April 14, 2025 at 3:37 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 29:
I don't like thinking about what's "outside" the universe. But dark energy appears to be weakening, so I guess it doesn't suck as much as I thought.
April 7, 2025 at 2:16 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 28:
Q: How do you organize a PARTY in OUTER SPACE?! A: (in increasingly cramped handwriting) invest decades of your career, write white papers, develop a science plan, perform a preliminary tech assessment, raise billions of dollars, hire engineers, develop critical technologies, keep raising money, create prototypes, request peer review, cry, revise, manufacture hardware, put years into testing, fail many tests, cry, revise, find a rocket, organize a launch date, scrub, try again, launch, begin commissioning, calibrate...
March 31, 2025 at 3:41 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 27:
The sentiment of... a friend...
The real tension in cosmology is my lack of re-tension when reading all these long papers
March 24, 2025 at 3:48 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
ALSO today, DESI has made all its DR1 data public! There's millions of spectra from both galaxies and Milky Way stars. Dig in! 🌌
A butterfly of colored dots, showing galaxy positions trace out large-scale structure. Credit: Claire Lamman / DESI A smaller butterfly of stars, overlaid on the galactic plane. Credit: Claire Lamman and Sergey Koposov / DESI
March 20, 2025 at 1:06 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Here is a "contour" plot that summarizes what these new measurements have to say about the behavior of dark energy, + my annotation. Either a lot of people are misunderstanding something big about the data, the Universe is playing a cruel trick on us, or LCDM is wrong.
A plot of two parameters of evolving dark energy: w0 and wa. Credit: Cristhian Garcia-Quintero/DESI A cartoon annotation of the same plot, explaining how the contour lines don't overlap with where LCDM falls on the plot. Credit: Claire Lamman / DESI
March 20, 2025 at 1:06 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
DESI measures their size in the sky, their size along the line of sight, and their redshift. These tell us how fast the universe grew at different times. (This has a lot going on and isn't needed to understand the rest of the thread. From the third paper here data.desi.lbl.gov/doc/papers/)
A plot showing the size of the universe as a function of time. Arrows demonstrate that the transverse size of BAO constrain the BAO's distance, and their size along the LOS constrain the rate of expansion. Credit: Claire Lamman / DESI
March 20, 2025 at 1:06 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
DESI's DR2 BAO results are out!!
TL;DR... 1/n
@desisurvey.bsky.social
A blocky lambda symbol crumbles as it is pulled apart by creatures representing Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, the Cosmic Microwave Background, and supernovae. Caption reads "something has to give..." Credit: Claire Lamman
March 20, 2025 at 1:06 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 26:
In honor of some DESI results coming out this week ;)
@desisurvey.bsky.social
A plot of the 2-point correlation function with a snake tracing out the BAO peak. Caption reads "BAOconstrictor"
March 17, 2025 at 3:28 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 25:
Old joke bc I'm ⛰️traveling⛰️
Why is it tricky to edit a paper about Near Earth Objects? A: it's hard to keep track of all the comets.
March 10, 2025 at 4:54 AM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Sign in front of rally which says "thank science for..." And doodles of many applications
March 7, 2025 at 6:41 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 24:
#ParkerSolarProbe
Parker Solar Probe leaping across classic urban obstacles and strait into the sun. Caption reads "Parkour Solar Probe".
March 3, 2025 at 5:28 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 23:
When writing about spaghettification, be sure to cite all the relevant sauces. Featuring a drawing attempting to depict a pile of spaghetti getting slurped into a black hole.
February 24, 2025 at 4:59 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 22:
To peer into deep space, astronomers must go to extreme (focal) lengths
February 18, 2025 at 6:53 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 21:
A major collision in Mars' early history caused FEAR and PANIC. (This joke makes more sense in Greek)
February 10, 2025 at 3:28 PM
clairelamman.bsky.social
Week 20:
Two badly-drawn stick figures having a conversation. Person A: do you believe in dark matter or "z matter"? Person B: what's Z matter? Person A: nothing, what's z-matter with you?
February 3, 2025 at 2:41 PM