Bob Siederer
27 October 2025
Hello again Science fans!
Up until 10 years ago, ripples in space-time, predicted by Albert Einstein, remained theoretical. On September 14, 2015, at 4:00 AM, the two LIGO observatories, one in eastern Washington State, the other in Louisiana, detected the signatures of two black holes colliding and merging, and cosmology changed forever. What had been Einstein’s prediction had now been proven. LIGO, and similar installations around the globe, have since detected gravitational waves over 300 times. That discovery, which only lasted 1/5 of a second, was the first, and justified the investment in the observatory in the first place.
Fast forward to today, and the Trump administration has proposed slashing the LIGO operating budget for 2026 by 40% and closing one of the two antennas altogether. Since it takes two antennas to triangulate the origins of the gravitational waves, this would kill the program.
Read more about the discovery, Dr. Rainer Weiss who is responsible for the laboratory’s existence, and the impact on cosmology, in this NY Times article.
More Space news
Voyager 1 is making history again. On November 15, 2026, the probe will be roughly one light-day away from Earth. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and left the solar system in August, 2012.
We tend to forget that Earth hasn’t always looked like it does now. 4.5 billion years ago, Earth looked very different when a Mars-sized body struck the planet, changing its chemistry and physical nature completely, including the atmosphere. Scientists have just found traces of that proto-Earth, which should lead to a better understanding of the formation of the solar system.
Compared to time as we are used to it on Earth, the time scale of the Universe is enormous. Rarely are we able to see things happening in near-real time. Yet astronomers have discovered the small, icy world called Chiron, which orbits the Sun between Saturn and Uranus, and may be forming a ring system in near-real time, right before their eyes.
Have you heard about Betelbuddy? It is the newly discovered companion star to Betelgeuse. While astronomers have long suspected Betelgeuse had a companion star, it has only been discovered recently. It is a young stellar object, about the size of our Sun. It is about to disappear behind Betelgeuse for a couple of years (from our viewpoint), so astronomers want to gather as much information as possible now, before our view of it is lost. It turns out that Betelbuddy is weirder than we thought.
Now here’s an idea I would never have thought of, but seems pretty genius to me. Astronomers, both professional and amateur, need good weather conditions to conduct their observations. Many live in places with less than ideal conditions, whether that comes from cloud cover, temperature, light pollution, or other issues. Enter Starfront Observatories in Rockwood, Texas. For a monthly fee, you can send your telescope to Starfront and they will mount it in one of their buildings. They have over 550 such scopes at the moment, and more are coming. Since these scopes can be controlled and monitored remotely via the internet, there’s no need for you trek to a remote spot with your telescope, set it up, deal with weather, etc. You don’t need to physically be at your telescope to use it. Brilliant!!
Nature and Climate
When you think of lions, most likely you think of the African desert. In Nambia, a group of 12 lions has moved from the desert to the coast, where they hunt and eat seals, showing resilience in the face of changing climate.
In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act included $2B in funding for various Native American tribes, including the Hopi, who received a $25M grant to install solar panels and battery storage to supply reliable power to around 600 homes. In August, 2025, the Trump administration terminated the Solar for All program, calling it wasteful, and leaving this community to rely on generators and one unreliable link to the electrical grid.
NOAA has tracked costly weather events that caused at least $1B in damage. The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for such disasters, but we didn’t learn that from NOAA as the administration cut the program that tracked the data, apparently following the idea that, if we don’t track it, we don’t know how bad it is. Adam Smith, the researcher who led that data collection process, left NOAA and has now recreated that database for a non-profit. Well done Adam!
Even the UN is defending science and meteorology while the US says climate change is a “con job”. Secretary-General Guterres spoke at a World Meteorological Organization meeting about the benefit of warnings and guidance from weather agencies. The US has fired hundreds of forecasters, including a small number at the National Hurricane Center.
Artificial (not so) Intelligence
One of the many channels I follow on YouTube is that of Rick Beato, a musician and educator with over 3 million followers. If you’re interested in music, his analysis of music theory, his interviews with musicians, producers, and engineers, and his breakdown of song construction are very insightful. You may have seen him on CBS Saturday Morning recently for having created two AI artists where he used AI to create lyrics for a song, and to write and perform that song, all in a matter of a few minutes. The songs were pretty good, well “played” and “engineered”, and the artists believable looking.
He recently posted a video about AI and hallucinations, that tendency for AI to invent things when it doesn’t know the answer, and why some AI engines can come up with correct answers where others can’t. It is all based on the material they consumed from the information world, and shows the biases they can develop, based on the sources they use, and don’t use. Pretty insightful, and worth a watch.
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
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