Beautiful and a wonderful complement to what we did with HIPASS @ Parkes covering a large swath of the southern sky centred on the Magellanic Stream + System...

I know it's heresy to say, considering how much I respect Rubin & Ford, but it was really Ken Freeman's 1970 paper which first clearly stated the presence of an unidentified source of (dark) matter. Or indeed, the 1967 paper by Rob Shobbrook & Brian Robinson which showed the same for NGC 300.

Gotta feel for the Canadian trio of Campbell, Walker & Yang, who discovered many of these exoplanets 3-7 years earlier, but being Canadian, questioned their discoveries rather than sold them hard ... confirmed by the various planet hunters later, alas.

Unfortunately, the majority those running UK physics programmes are utterly naive in relation to growing and maintaining a successful offering. This is particularly the case outside the Russell Group. It's not difficult, as I showed for years, but alas, the commitment needed is simply not there.

Your point regarding the timing is insightful imo, given this story was already covered in their July 2024 press release announcing the same thing, alongside the actual paper which was published in March 2025... the timing of a second round of press releases in Sept 2025 align with your point.

Believe me, I ain't supporting it, rest assured ... just noting the reality that we have the luxury of a lot more unis per capita ...

I do hate saying this, but the UK does have 25%+ more universities per capita and per square mile relative to nearly all of our various peers around the world. It is tough to hear this, but the reality is we are likely looking at losing a few in the near future and we'll still be ok (relatively).

Regardless of the geography fail, said fence only spans ~5% of the Greece-Turkey land border...

Disagree with the "little to none to back it up" as the science and statistics most definitively come down on the side of "we are alone in the Galaxy" ... I wish that were not the case, but the rare Earth hypothesis stands up to every bit of empirical data, alas.

Definitely alone in our Galaxy... leaning towards the same throughout the Universe... short version (TEDx): www.youtube.com/watch?v=m64W...; long version (if you want the details and have an hour to kill): www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5JK...

Yep .. concluded the same in my TEDx talk a few years ago (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqG2...); the longer 45 minute public version covers the same areas as the book does, perhaps less eloquently, admittedly.