Writer, editor, magazine maker, podcaster, procrastinator.
Former editor of Discover and American Scientist magazines. Co-host of #ScienceRules podcast. Invisible Universe on Substack: https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/
Co-founder of OpenMind magazine.
#science #nature #space #scicomm
| Bluesky | https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social |
| OpenMind | https://www.openmindmag.org |
| Substack | https://substack.com/@coreyspowell |
Just look at this gorgeous portrait of celestial creation!
JWST trained its infrared vision on one tiny patch in the Orion Nebula. There, it saw a wild collage of collapsing clouds, protostars, jets, shockwaves, and dark disks where new planets are forming.
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2605a/ #space #science #art #nature
Another great time-lapse image of a planet-forming nebula. This one is called Gomez's Hamburger; it's 900 light years away.
Look at all the motion (including moving stars) over 21 years!
Images: Hubble. Processing: @geckzilla
#space #science #art
Arrows indicate the places where planets could be forming *right now* around the baby star AB Aurigae. Welcome to the universe, little worlds.
Image from the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2622b/ #astronomy #science #tech
Planets form in swirling disks of gas and dust around newborn stars. It's not just a theory--we can watch it happening!
These images show the rotating disk around young star AB Aurigae, 520 light years from Earth. They were taking over 4 years at Paranal Observatory.
https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2622a/ #space #science #nature
There are a lot of people trying to drag us backward in our commitment to scientific understanding. It's an awful agenda for human well-being. But it's also an awful agenda intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
I'd love to see more people making that case.
Galaxies, like people, are strongly influence by the environment in which they grew up.
For 1000s of years people have wondered where the universe came from. Now, in this generation, we're getting answers. We live at a remarkable time in science history.
https://subarutelescope.org/en/results/2026/05/25/3716.html #space #science #history
The failure of the New Glenn rocket is going to have big implications. It thoroughly scrambles NASA's Moon plans, and greatly increases US dependence on SpaceX.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/heres-why-the-failure-of-blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-is-so-catastrophic/ #space #science #tech
The scale of the New Glenn explosion is a reminder of the staggering amount of energy locked up within a rocket, and the extreme engineering it takes to release that energy in a precisely controlled way.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/05/29/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-explodes-during-prelaunch-testing-at-cape-canaveral/ #space #technology
If you could see our planet's inner magnetism, it would look like this geodynamo simulation. Turbulence in the outer core (red/blue) influences the resulting field (orange).
Abrupt changes down there lead to noticeable "jerks" in the magnetic field that we experience up top.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Swarm/Swarm_helps_explain_Earth_s_magnetic_jerks #space #science #technology #esa
I'm flat-out amazed that we can monitor the currents of molten metal in Earth's outer core, 2200 kilometers underground--but we can. Lately, part of that flow has reversed direction, for reasons unknown.
There's a whole other dynamic world inside the world we see.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Swarm/Insights_into_Earth_s_molten_outer_core_from_space #space #science #tech