Commuting, aerosol chemistry lab tour, and UBC just trying to outdo itself with in-your-face beauty. You can't even see the 3 eagles happily flying above the whole scene.
Aerosol chemistry is scary stuff. They're doing work on testing out geoengineering ideas (seeing if there are weird chemical effects like ozone depletion or temperature changes). We chatted a lot about possible effects from reentries. Then I took a long walk outside.
Time for media interview 2 for today.
#ProfSamLectureTour
First media interview of the day done, plus I got a little bit of writing done on the train/bus this morning. Yesterday ended up being political science day, today is chemistry: I get to talk to an atmospheric chemist about how much satellite reentries are changing the upper atmosphere. I hope I will have time for a walk outside sometime today, because I will absolutely need it after chatting with the chemist... #ProfSamLectureTour
After a whole day of hanging around and listening to political science academics talk about a wide variety of distressing current events, talking about anti-satellite weapons tests, having meetings about sunlight-as-a-service and other stupid satellite ideas, and many hours on transit, I desperately need to go rage-scream in a hay field, but I'm in a big city ☹
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Somehow I just ended up giving a (completely unplanned) short lecture in an undergrad international law class at UBC about space debris in Saskatchewan! #ProfSamLectureTour
a bit dark, US pol
Today I have a meeting about whether it's worthwhile for [big science org] to make a public statement against space weapons, and then a listen to a talk and participate in a discussion about anti-satellite weapons tests, then listen to a lecture on international space law.
While reading headlines about the US wanting to take over everyone. This is going to be... a lot.
Day 3 of a 2 hour car/bus/train commute and I have apparently lost the ability to remember if I tapped my transit card on the way in to the bus or not (perhaps never gained that ability). Sorry, Translink. Hopefully I messed that up in the direction that gives you more money, because it is awesome how far I can go very easily on transit here in the lower mainland! But I am so grateful I don't have to do this every day normally (hoooowwww did I do this during my PhD??) #ProfSamLectureTour
Did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation with a collaborator for AST SpaceMobile's fucking huge satellite launched last month and will unfurl soon.
We got mag -12. The full moon is -13, magnitudes are logarithmic. It's a little fainter than the moon, at least?
We made lots of assumptions, so this number is quite uncertain, but it's pretty clear that no matter what, it'll be eye-blazingly-bright. And they want 400 of them.
I hate AST SpaceMobile almost as much as I hate Reflect Orbital.
EVERYONE!! Fomalhaut is at it again!! Crashing its planetesimals together and making dust clouds!!!!
I am very excited because I and others wrote papers saying that this would happen: if Fomalhaut b (the first directly imaged "exoplanet" oops) was actually a dust cloud, it should fade away and another one should appear on ~decade timescales.
I love being right about science predictions that don't involve destroying the night sky or atmosphere or Kessler Syndrome!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.15861
I learned about this from a planetary journal club at UBC that I had time to run to (while still mic'd) between filming. The journal club was led by my PhD supervisor, who I wrote a paper with on Fomalhaut planetesimal collisions back in 2015!
Damn it's fun to do some real science in between all the depressing stuff.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1129
EVERYONE!! Fomalhaut is at it again!! Crashing its planetesimals together and making dust clouds!!!!
I am very excited because I and others wrote papers saying that this would happen: if Fomalhaut b (the first directly imaged "exoplanet" oops) was actually a dust cloud, it should fade away and another one should appear on ~decade timescales.
I love being right about science predictions that don't involve destroying the night sky or atmosphere or Kessler Syndrome!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.15861
The physics department head at UBC (who is a lovely person and was on my PhD committee) brings his dog to work!! This has made my day 100x better! (Sorry I forgot to take a picture, I was too busy smooshing her floofy face)
Now film shoot for another documentary about space debris. (This is great, but I think I've been asked about 3 different documentaries about space debris in the last few months... hopefully this film shoot is fun and not just stressful and annoying)
#ProfSamLectureTour
Prof. Sam Lawler