Robert “The Baste God” McNees
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mcnees.bsky.social
Robert “The Baste God” McNees
@mcnees.bsky.social
15K followers 720 following 8.4K posts
Professor and physicist. Black holes, quantum gravity, cosmology. Rocky Top. Tar Heel. Reposts are spooky action at a distance. These are my views, not my employer's. Just terrible at this.
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mcnees.bsky.social
Albert Einstein used my signature move #OTD in 1915, when he pretended to be sick so he could skip a lecture by his colleague David Hilbert and stay home to work on his own theory. 🧪 ⚛️ 🎢

Source: "David Hilbert and the Axiomatization of Physics," L. Corry
The passage reads: November 15: Einstein wrote back two days later, declining the invitation to attend Hilbert's lecture on account of fatigue and bad health. It is very likely, however, that the true reason was the desire to continue working intensively on his theory. Still, Einstein expressed great interest in the attempt to establish a bridge between gravitation and electromagnetism, a question about which he had himself-so he told Hilbert—also "often racked his brains." Einstein also asked for a copy of the proofs of the talk.
November 15, 2025 at 5:53 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
This is where I post from if you even care
A still from a Charlie Brown cartoon of Lucy at her advice stand. It says “The Doctor is Real In”
November 15, 2025 at 12:48 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
So it works like this: you hang a Chicago flag above your haunted scarecrow.
A scarecrow with flannel shirt, burlap bag head, jagged sewn mouth, glowing red eyes, and a flickering orange lantern stands below a Chicago flag mounted on the front of a house. The whole scene glows orange from Halloween lights.
November 14, 2025 at 9:22 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
From: Internet
To: Me
Subject: Dog resting chin on sofa, hoping for treat

Thanks for your inquiry, happy to explain how it works. It looks like this.
A scruffy blonde golden doodle, recently groomed, resting his chin on a bright blue sofa and making puppy eyes in the hopes of getting a treat
November 14, 2025 at 9:11 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Thank goodness they put these up.
A bluesky content warning that reads "Content Warning: Content is blue like the flame"
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Content Warning.
A screenshot of a Bluesky content warning that reads "Content Warning: Weird RFK Jr and Olivia Nuzzi stuff, do not click"
November 14, 2025 at 6:57 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
They are battling over who gets blamed when you need breakfast cereal and they deliver 4,000 bales of hay.
An iOS notification reads WIRED now Chatbot developers and retail giants are battling over a future where Al agents do your shopping for you
November 14, 2025 at 1:34 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Look, maybe you give a little dog a small pancake
November 14, 2025 at 3:05 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
The result has since been refined by measuring the effect with distant space probes. In 2003, Bertotti, Iess, and Tortora used a signal sent to and from the Cassini probe to confirm the predictions of general relativity with an accuracy of 20 parts per million. (5/5)

www.nature.com/articles/nat...
letters to nature .............................................................. A test of general relativity using radio links with the Cassini spacecraft B. Bertotti1, L. Iess2 & P. Tortora3 1Dipartimento di Fisica Nucleare e Teorica, Universita ` di Pavia, Via U. Bassi 6, I-27100, Pavia, Italy 2Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale ed Astronautica, Universita ` di Roma “La Sapienza”, Via Eudossiana 16, I-00184, Roma, Italy 3II Facolta ` di Ingegneria, Universita ` di Bologna, Via Fontanelle 40, I-47100, Forlı ` , Italy ............................................................................................................................................................................. According to general relativity, photons are deflected and delayed by the curvature of space-time produced by any mass1–3. The bending and delay are proportional to g 1 1, where the par- ameter g is unity in general relativity but zero in the newtonian model of gravity. The quantity g2 1 measures the degree to which gravity is not a purely geometric effect and is affected by other fields; such fields may have strongly influenced the early Universe, but would have now weakened so as to produce tiny— but still detectable—effects. Several experiments have confirmed to an accuracy of,0.1% the predictions for the deflection4,5 and delay6 of photons produced by the Sun. Here we report a measurement of the frequency shift of radio photons to and from the Cassini spacecraft as they passed near the Sun. Our result, g 5 1 1 (2.1 6 2.3) 3 1025, agrees with the predictions of standard general relativity with a sensitivity that approaches the level at which, theoretically, deviations are expected in some cosmological models.
November 13, 2025 at 8:38 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Shapiro et al tested the idea in 1966-67, first with Venus and then with Mercury, at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory Haystack radar site ( #TeamRadar ).

The results agreed with the predictions of general relativity to well within the expected uncertainties. (4/n)

journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
FOURTH TEST OF GENERAL RELATIVITY: PRELIMINARY RESULTS Irwin I. Shapiro, Gordon H. Pettengill, Michael E. Ash, Melvin L. Stone, William B. Smith, Richard P. Ingalls, and Richard A. Brockelman Lincoln Laboratory, t Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts (Received ll March 1968) Several years ago it became evident that a new test of general relativity was technically feasi- ' ble. The proposed experiment was designed to verify the prediction that the speed of propaga- tion of a light ray decreases as it passes through a region of increasing gravitational potential. Far a radar pulse transmitted from the earth and reflected by another planet, the increase in the round-trip time delay, attributable to the predicted gravitational influence of the sun on the propagation, would be =200 p, sec if the path of the pulse were to graze the solar limb.
November 13, 2025 at 8:35 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
It's a simple idea: The round-trip time of a radio signal bounced off a distant object increases a little if it passes through the gravitational field of a massive object along the way. (2/n)

Image: Simon Tyran, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sh...
November 13, 2025 at 8:33 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
When Einstein proposed general relativity he laid out three tests: the precession of Mercury's perihelion, deflection of light by the sun, and gravitational redshift.

Irwin Shapiro proposed a fourth test #OTD in 1964: the gravitational time delay of light. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
FOURTH TEST OF GENERAL RELATIVITY Irwin I. Shapiro Lincoln Laboratory,* Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts (Received 13 November 1964) Recent advances in radar astronomy have made possible a fourth test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. The test involves measuring the time delays between transmission of radar pulses towards either of the inner planets (Venus or Mercury) and detection of the echoes. Because, according to the general theory, the speed of a light wave depends on the strength of the gravitational potential along its path, these time delays should thereby be increased by almost 2x10-4 sec when the radar pulses pass near the sun.' Such a change, equivalent to 60 km in distance, could now be measured over the required path length to within about 5 to 10% with presently obtainable equipment...
November 13, 2025 at 8:26 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
An Edward Gorey illustration of a seance, with the added text “An empty patch of sky was found to emit a strange chirp.”
November 13, 2025 at 2:42 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
An Edward Gorey illustration of a seance, with the added text “An empty patch of sky was found to emit a strange chirp.”
November 13, 2025 at 2:41 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
I’ve seen this shared several times with the header and footer not visible, so you can’t see the artists’s name.

Credit: Leo the Alien — alienyrox on redbubble and other platforms.
An infographic showing how different aurora colors are produced by different gasses at various altitudes in the atmosphere.
November 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
The aurora over Chicago is bright enough to see both color and structure with the naked eye. Pretty remarkable given the amount of light pollution! 🧪 🔭
Bright red curtain aurora over Chicago, looking to the north. Green and violet are also visible.
November 12, 2025 at 3:39 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
Here’s tonight’s shot side-by-side with the aurora following the big solar storm in October 2024.
Red and green curtain aurora hang in the sky to the north of Chicago. Another view of green and pink northern lights above the rooftops and power lines of a neighborhood in Chicago. This is a little more diffuse than the previous photo, but some structure is still visible.
November 12, 2025 at 3:24 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
We were looking north-northwest but they appeared to stretch over a good part of the sky. 🔭 🧪
Another photo of red and green curtain aurora in the sky to the north of Chicago.
November 12, 2025 at 3:20 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
Pretty good aurora visible from our back porch in Chicago!
Red and green sheet aurora hang in the sky over our neighborhood in Chicago.
November 12, 2025 at 3:14 AM
mcnees.bsky.social
When a student in ur intro class changes their major to physics.
November 11, 2025 at 9:39 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
What movie villain is a horrible "person", but an absolute joy to watch on screen?
November 11, 2025 at 7:09 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
A doofus golden doodle puppy with shaggy blonde fur, on a bright blue sofa.
November 11, 2025 at 6:25 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Oh thank you for the offer, but my golden doodle didn’t serve.
A screenshot of an email from a vet clinic offering deals for Veterans Day.
November 11, 2025 at 6:22 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
This ginkgo I shared last year was, until yesterday, still completely covered in leaves. Then we got the wind and snow last night.
November 10, 2025 at 3:15 PM
mcnees.bsky.social
Welp.
A bright pink flower, crusted in snow, is bent over from the weight of a heavy snowfall.
November 10, 2025 at 1:18 PM