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AAS Day 0: Non-Model Behavior in Dark Matter

I know I’ve been silent for a long time, but this week I hope to make up for my wayward ways and blog my brain out. This week is the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California. I’m here along with many of my friends and...

Black Holes Only Grow So Big

A few weeks ago there was a fairly cool paper on arXiv that suggested that supermassive black holes may only be able to grow so big. This triggered several Astronomy Cast listeners to write and basically say “Huh?” We addressed this a little bit in...

Ghosts are NOT Dark Matter

Just a quick one tonight. At Dragon*Con (which I won’t mention again until next summer) some fascinatingly misguided person suggested that ghosts are made of Dark Matter. Dark matter is the missing 22% of the stuff the universe is made of. This is stuff –...

AAS – The Many Ring Circus

This is a crazy wonderful place. Over and over, I’ve heard people say this is the super bowl of astronomy. I’m not so sure that is the truth. I feel more like this is the 3 (or 5 or 10) ring circus of astronomy. In every ring there is a new group doing...