Space mission formulator, track cycling race announcer, facial hair competitor, dark sky advocate, & dad joke aficionado
Southern California
Joined November 2008
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Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Space jellyfish alert!
The USSF-432 rocket launch from California on November 4, 2026 at 5:14 PM PST could produce a space jellyfish. This occurs when a rocket and its expanding exhaust plumes are illuminated by the sun and observers are in local darkness.
NOTE: This launch has a 240-minute window; this forecast is for a 5:14 PM PST launch. A later liftoff will materially change this forecast.
The rocket will enter sunlight 00m53s after launch.
Viewing locations, peak elevation while rocket is lit by the sun, and approximate viewing direction:
🟢 Hermosillo • 19° • WSW
🟢 Culiacán • 15° • WSW
🟢 Phoenix • 13° • SW
🟢 Henderson • 11° • SSW
🟡 Ciudad Delicias • 8° • WSW
🟡 Ciudad Juárez • 7° • WSW
🟡 Zapopan • 7° • WNW
🟡 Los Angeles • 31° • SW
🔴 San Jose • 10° • SSE
See a detailed prediction for your location: jellyfish.johnkrausphotos.co…
Information as of 2026-11-02 19:57 UTC. Forecast does not model real-time weather, cloud cover, or atmospheric conditions.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Map of all active & planned Solar System missions and their destinations as of November 1st 2026. @BepiColombo arrives at Mercury, @ESA_Hera at Didymos, @NASAJuno perijove #89, Voyager 1 at 1 lightday distance. #makeItSo
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Have a research idea that could advance NASA science? 🔬
NASA plans to release ROSES-27 by January 2027, with over 50 research opportunities spanning astrophysics, Earth science, planetary science, heliophysics, space biology and more.
Start planning: go.nasa.gov/489ZKqw
ALT A graphic with NASA's "meatball" logo, which consists of a blue circle dotted with stars and crossed by a red, V-shaped swoosh. "NASA" is written in large white text on the circle, which is set against a solid black background. Credit: NASA
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Today, the calendar makes a right triangle, for the last time this century.
This Saturday is October 24, 2026.
Write it as 10/24/26 or 24/10/26, and the same beautiful relationship appears:
10² + 24² = 26²
100 + 576 = 676
But here’s what makes today special.
There are infinitely many Pythagorean triples. Only a handful fit our calendar.
Using the rule
month² + day² = (last two digits of the year)²,
the month cannot exceed 12, and the day cannot exceed 31. Those small limits leave exactly 12 qualifying dates in this century.
Today is the last.
The next will be March 4, 2105:
3² + 4² = 5²
That is a wait of more than 78 years.
An infinite family of triangles. Just twelve appearances on a century’s calendar.
Happy Pythagorean Triple Day.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
NASA to change how it selects science missions spacenews.com/nasa-to-change…
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
NASA SMD AA Nicky Fox announces "new Competition Model 2.0" -- a "better way to compete" science missions and "accelerate delivery of science." science.nasa.gov/directorate…
Virtual NASA Science Town Hall on Oct 26 to discuss it.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Supersized heat waves used to be rare. No longer. A Reuters data-driven examination of global temperatures reveals the emergence of what we call heat storms. They now swarm the planet, upending life around the world. reut.rs/4zBUXtM
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
After more than 15 years in orbit, @NOAA will be deorbiting the Suomi NPP satellite starting on Dec. 1, 2026. This will be done by gradually lowering its orbit before it reenters Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean.
Suomi NPP was a pathfinding mission to demonstrate the capabilities of NOAA's JPSS constellation. The data provided by Suomi NPP are now operationally delivered by NOAA-20 and NOAA-21.
Learn more: bit.ly/3VQ4YoM
ALT Visualization of the Suomi NPP in orbit with Earth in the background. (Credit: NOAA)
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Vindicated in my thinking at the time that "The budget should increase by a factor of 10" is the funniest Decadal recommendation ever.
OIG Report On The NASA Decadal Survey Process
oig.nasa.gov/audits/nasas-ro…
Congress, NASEM, and NASA deeply value the decadal surveys. However, the OIG determined that the process, combined with the Agency’s hands-off approach, limits pathways for communication, engagement, and feedback. This, in turn, restricts opportunities for more tailored, realistic, and actionable surveys.
In addition, outside of NASEM’s 5-year midterm assessments, the OIG found that NASA does not track how the SMD divisions are implementing decadal survey recommendations. The Agency is also not fully accounting for costs associated with the survey process, including mission concept study expenditures and the time spent working on decadal survey tasks.
Lastly, NASA does not have consistent internal processes for supporting decadal survey development. Specifically, SMD lacks formal guidance, routine lessons learned, and sufficient resources to standardize common procedures and share best practices across the directorate. @NASA
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
The world’s leading seasonal forecast models have never shown California this wet, not even in 1997–98.
Europe’s Copernicus climate service (C3S) just released its October outlook, combining 10 seasonal forecast models from 9 weather agencies. The C3S average calls for 156% of normal precipitation statewide this Dec–Feb, the wettest California winter forecast these models have produced, wetter even than their reruns of the 1997–98 super El Niño.
Out of 454 total model members, only 8% show a drier-than-average Dec–Feb statewide, while about 13% are explicitly forecasting California’s wettest winter on record. A record-wet winter is now more likely than a dry one.
This far out, forecasts are about odds, not certainties. But 9 in 10 runs come in at or above normal, and even the driest 10% of runs average 88% of normal. The odds have never leaned this heavily toward an exceptionally wet winter, though a below-normal winter is still possible, but extremely unlikely.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.”
#NobelPrize
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
The NOAA National Hurricane Center has just issued a Tropical Storm Watch part coastal Southern California, including city/county of San Diego. This is only second time such a product has ever been issued for any part of California (TS Hilary in 2023 was other instance). #CAwx
ALT Official graphic from NOAA NHC showing projected path of TS Rachel, including Tropical Storm Watches that have been issued for northern Baja, CA, MX and southern California, CA, USA.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Margaret Hamilton, the groundbreaking researcher who helped create the field of software engineering and whose code helped land NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon, has died. She was 90. cnn.it/4dutYrD
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, has died. nyti.ms/3U9IrTj
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
We’ve lost an icon. Margaret Hamilton, a computer science pioneer best known for her work at MIT leading development of the flight software for the Apollo missions to the moon, has died at 90. Read about her legacy via MIT News: news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-h…
ALT Margaret Hamilton is reclined inside a NASA spacecraft module, surrounded by control panels and switches.
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
Former NASA science leader joins Blue Origin spacenews.com/former-nasa-sc…
Alfred E Nash III retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
