Here we are, alone in space on a spaceship we call Earth. I am disheartened; I thought by now we would have found our cosmic brothers and sisters to share our challenges, joys, and defeats with. But no, we are floating in this galaxy, arguing about our tiny lives and wasting the time that could be used to make us a better civilization. #todaythought

Sentencing a singer to 74 lashes for singing without a hijab—in the 21st century—is an abomination. This is not a detail. It shows the lengths the Iranian regime will go to control its own people, hiding repression behind religious values that do not represent Islam as a whole. Artists and famous singers around the world should speak up. Parastoo Ahmadi should be free to sing.

Captured today in broad daylight from San Francisco using the SkyViewer on app.skymapper.io. Dark nights are finally back in Finland after the long summer hiatus! From sunny San Francisco, I used one of our Finnish telescopes to take a 10-minute observation of the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946), a beautiful spiral galaxy located about 25 million light-years away. Astronomy while the Sun is shining here. I love it.

What will we know about alien worlds in 25 years? 🔭 Dr. Collin Cherubim thinks we could be examining the atmospheres of Earth-like planets — and debating whether what we see is evidence of life. In this week’s #SETILive, he joined @AllPlanets to discuss the first atmosphere detected on a habitable-zone rocky world and what discoveries like this could lead to. 🎥 Watch the full conversation: piped.video/live/ZnSd-ia7OQw #Exoplanets #Astrobiology #Astronomy #SETIInstitute

Want to hear about the recent discovery of an atmosphere around a potentially habitable exoplanet—and why it matters? Curious about the recent JWST observations that are adding a twist to the story? Or simply missing my French accent? Join us for SETI Live today at 2:30 pm PT. We’ll talk about LHS 1140 b, escaping helium, habitability, and how science deals with surprising, and sometimes conflicting, observations. #Science @SETIInstitute

Great news for astronomy: NASA has selected PRIMA, a new far-infrared space telescope, as the first mission in its new Probe Explorer class. Why far-infrared? A huge part of the Universe is hidden by dust. PRIMA will look through that dust to study how planets form, how galaxies and their black holes evolve, and how water and the elements essential to planets emerged across cosmic history. It will fill an important gap between JWST and radio observatories, opening a window on the Universe that we currently cannot explore from space with this sensitivity. And PRIMA inaugurates something new for NASA: Probe Explorers, missions between the smaller Explorer missions and billion-dollar flagship observatories. Target launch: 2033. Very exciting to see far-infrared astronomy coming back to space. gagadget.com/en/727314-nasas…

I was in NYC last week and kept seeing groups of cops stationed by the subway gates—usually looking at their phones or chatting among themselves, rarely interacting with passengers, and nowhere to be seen elsewhere in the stations. Mayor @NYCMayor, what exactly is their role supposed to be? Is this really the best use of police resources?

SkyMapper CEO and @SETIInstitute Director of Citizen Science @AllPlanets took the stage at Avalanche Summit NYC 🔺 to talk about a growing challenge in the age of AI: how do we verify what we observe? See how SkyMapper is using @avax to build trusted, verifiable records of what’s happening from sky to space. 🌌 piped.video/watch?v=rwr0liki…

100,000+ blocks and counting. The SkyMapper blockchain just crossed 100,000 blocks, with the chain live and continuing to grow on @avax 🔺 Every block adds to the infrastructure behind a network where observations can have a verifiable history, connecting what was observed with when and where it was captured. Web3 is part of the infrastructure. The observations are what matter. The sky is just beginning and we're growing strong.

Astronomers in Kyiv, Ukraine, detected the beginning of a new outburst of the cataclysmic variable Gaia20cnt (ASASSN-14fc) using a Unistellar eVscope provided through the Astronomy for Equity program. The detection triggered follow-up observations with the 70-cm AZT-8 telescope at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The observations suggest that Gaia20cnt may be an SS Cyg-type dwarf nova (UGSS), a binary system in which material transferred onto a white dwarf periodically produces strong optical outbursts. Continued observations are now encouraged to better characterize the system. What makes this particularly significant is where the observations were made. Ukrainian astronomers continue to conduct research from Kyiv despite the war and increasingly serious electricity constraints. The team told Mike Simmons that conventional observatory operations may become difficult this winter because of power availability, making small, autonomous telescopes such as the eVscope potentially important tools for keeping astronomical observations going. This is a small but powerful example of how distributed, relatively inexpensive astronomical instruments can maintain scientific capability even under extremely difficult conditions. astronomerstelegram.org/?rea…

Peace is not only a core EU value, but also a universal goal. Today is the International Day of Peace. The EU continues to stand for fair and lasting peace, democracy, security and cooperation around the world.

Peace is not simply the absence of war. It depends on the ability of societies to confront disagreement without violence, protect human rights and dignity, and keep dialogue open when tensions rise. Today, conflict, displacement, discrimination, hate speech, backsliding on rights and polarization are fracturing communities and eroding trust. On this #InternationalDayOfPeace, @UNESCO calls for greater investment in the institutions, skills and relationships that allow societies to address tensions before they turn into violence. unesco.org/en/days/peace?hub… #ForThePeople

Across Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and beyond, a new school year should be beginning. Instead, young people face destroyed schools, displaced teachers and another year stolen by war. Where are the billionaires who made fortunes in space, crypto and AI? What are they doing to help? #education

This is why I live in California, a state who believes in progress and invested in it. We are succeeded in reducing our CO2 emissions

À Paris, sur la place de la République, les visages des exécutés d’Iran interpellent le passant. Ils ne parlent plus, mais leurs regards demeurent : silencieux témoins d’un courage que la mort n’a pas pu effacer. 📍 Samedi 19 septembre Place de la République, #Exposition en hommage aux personnes exécutées en #Iran

Thank you and congrats’ @astro_sgro for being such a great co-panelist to explain why @Skymapperspace is bringing to the blockchain technology the study of UAPs with the @SETIInstitute and why it matters to the world. #MapAllTheSkyAllTheTime

I wish I had taken more pictures of the @avax summit to show it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of people attending the event, all ages, genders, continents and countries were there. This is the sign that blockchain technology is here to stay and the world has noticed.

I talked about @Skymapperspace and @avax yesterday. Hopefully you will be able to hear why we chose this blockchain for our infrastructure. Thank you to the team for having me.

If you can’t trust the data, you can’t trust the science. As AI makes it easier to generate convincing images and signals, astronomy faces a growing question: can we prove where an observation came from and whether it was altered? That’s the problem SkyMapper solves. At @avax Summit NYC, SkyMapper Founder & CEO Dr. @AllPlanets explained how blockchain can create a tamper-evident record connecting an observation to its time, location, and instrument. Our goal is simple: make scientific data easier to verify from the moment it is captured. Sep 16–17 | NYC

If you can't trust the data, you can't trust the science. Fake observations, fueled by AI, are becoming a problem in astronomy. This is why @AllPlanets co-founded @Skymapperspace, using blockchain to verify the data. Built on Avalanche.

The CLARITY Act failed to advance, but this isn’t over, and the path forward is clear. No president or senior official, Republican or Democrat, should regulate crypto while personally profiting from it. Require divestment or a genuine blind trust, prohibit new token ventures while in office, and establish enforcement independent of the official’s own administration. The crypto community also needs to decide what it wants to represent: progress, independence and freedom or one political faction and its culture wars? A global financial system cannot be represented by the same narrow circle of voices. Its advocates should reflect the diversity of its builders, entrepreneurs, investors and users. Crypto needs a broader coalition, not another political master.