Lana Tilke
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ltilke.bsky.social
Lana Tilke
@ltilke.bsky.social
ASU SESE PhD student 🪐 || Exoplanets, Triton, SETI, Art 👽 || Trekkie 🖖🏻 || all opinions are my own 🤠
Avi
Loeb
Is
Entertaining,
Not
Sciencing.

Perfect, no notes.
My complaints have not yet been resolved.

medium.com/@steve.desch...
August 15, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Lana Tilke
An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪
Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b
Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
www.bbc.co.uk
April 17, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Enjoyed giving SESE’s first post-RenFest “cloakuium” today 😹
February 6, 2025 at 12:26 AM
To be clear, VP Vance has said "the professors are the enemies" and "we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country."

Direct line from that to shutting down NIH and NSF panels - the GOP is happy to end cancer research if it means "owning the libs"
🧪
January 28, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by Lana Tilke
I would guess that 75% of the graduate students in my department are funded entirely by federal grants. Virtually all of the postdoctoral researchers, too. If a funding pause were to come, it would be catastrophic for them (and there is no clear path to finding alternate employment quickly)
Yeah, this brings up an important thing as we talk about grants (I... suspect this will continue to be a topic)

As a tenure or tenure track faculty member, we have 9 months of salary from our universities.
"cancel scientific meetings" sounds like we're missing out coffee, donuts, and boring lectures. The story here is that review of funding that supports thousands of people, the majority of which are staff, not faculty, has been suspended.
January 24, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Lana Tilke
Every professor/academic on here needs to call their elected officials tomorrow re OBM federal funding pause. Be polite and professional and express your concern. I will be doing this.
January 28, 2025 at 3:29 AM
Trump is attempting to unilaterally freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending that’s been duly appropriated by Congress. This is completely insane and illegal. He’s seizing unlawful control over the constitutional spending power? Five alarm fire www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion
The Trump administration has put a hold on all federal financial grants and loans, affecting tens of billions of dollars in payments.
www.washingtonpost.com
January 28, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Reposted by Lana Tilke
I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the best tik tok video of all time youtu.be/7ZWaWrvJ7nA?...
Star Trek: Tik Tok
YouTube video by MissSheenie
youtu.be
January 19, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Played hooky and visited the Air & Space Museum!
December 13, 2024 at 10:31 PM
I have a poster on Neptune’s moon Triton at #AGU24 on Thursday morning! Come say hi, or let me know if you’re around this week!
December 9, 2024 at 4:26 PM
IDIC sun-catcher! 🖖
November 21, 2024 at 8:07 AM
At Connecticut College, I was an “Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology” scholar. Here’s what I did for my senior thesis project!

I learned to create stained glass windows and decided to depict some of the technology, people, and science of SETI. 👽 Each panel is ~2ft tall.
November 21, 2024 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Lana Tilke
Last weekend, Earth’s most famous technosignature — known as the Arecibo message — celebrated its 50th birthday.

In a story for SciAm, I had the chance to explore the transmission's significance, both then and now.

I couldn't have done it on my own, so here's a bit of how it came to be...🧵
“Searching for life beyond Earth is, in some sense, an exercise in optimism.”

Read this beautiful article by @nadiadrake.bsky.social about an interstellar 50th anniversary, which also concerns her family. (Lots of @thebeatles, too … can you find it?)

www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...
The Arecibo Message, Earth’s First Interstellar Transmission, Turns 50
In 1974 we beamed a radio transmission into space that changed the way we think about our place in the cosmos
www.scientificamerican.com
November 20, 2024 at 3:12 PM
And here's mine for exoplanets! (Slightly updated)
November 19, 2024 at 7:51 AM