Astronomer here! Believe it or not, there is actually significant concern that this will make astronomy much less accessible as a field. Two important reasons:

• The big journal run by the Royal Astronomical Society is the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)- it has traditionally been a very important journal because unlike pretty much any other, it was free to publish in it. Obviously cool for obvious reasons, and meant researchers at less prestigious universities with less funding for these sorts of things would still be able to publish in a great journal (and MNRAS picked up the tab by having subscription charges to universities). Now, however, this means it'll be 2310 GBP (~$2700 US) to publish in MNRAS- a huge barrier for some institutes. They say there are going to be fee waivers, and authors from certain countries don't have to pay... but trust me, there are astronomers on more bare bones budgets in other countries where having "pay to play" to get your science out is going to be a hardship. :(

• Meanwhile, it is worth noting that astronomy has been open access since the 1990s! Pretty much everything goes on ArXiv.org when it's submitted/published, and older papers are available via the Astrophysical Data System (ADS), which is kinda what Google Scholar is for other science fields but leagues better. So it's not like anyone in astronomy has been hurting for a lack of access to MNRAS.

So, why is this happening? Well right now there is a push by science governmental organizations to have open access journals. I'm not knocking this at all, mind- it does seem ridiculous that the taxpayer has to pay for access- but my point is astronomy is the field that actually solved this decades ago. And, in practice, guess who's paying all those paper charges? The taxpayer, of course- it's just now in a way where it's bundled into grants, and makes the field less equitable in terms of who can afford to publish. Think of it this way- if you have a PhD student and X amount to spend on them, this is now going to mean that student will be attending one or two fewer conferences during their career for doing the same bare minimum of getting published (because I guarantee you that research grant sure ain't going up).

Mind, I don't know if MNRAS had much choice in this decision. But my point is, this is far more complicated than meets the eye from this initial press release.

Astronomer here! You are referring to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS). It has been around since the 1990s, and yeah, astronomy basically has been completely open access since back then. We are a very unusual field in that regard, and it is darn useful for things like finding good citations for your papers- it must be so hard in other fields that don't have a tool this nice.

Radio astronomer here! The paper is arguing that there is an incredibly supermassive black hole over a trillion times the mass of the sun that already existed ~1 billion years after the Big Bang. However it is not a direct measurement of the black hole because there is a lot of dust obscuring it, so it’s instead an inferred mass. Cheers

I can't say I have much beyond "keeping so busy that I don't have time to think about it". That's probably not healthy long-term and I should discuss further with someone for better skills.

Good luck, fellow wanderer.

For what it’s worth, we are small, but we are still a part of it all! I just always find it so exciting and wonderful to be part of a universe filled with such a grand scale of incredible things, and to be able to see and try to comprehend it. After all, despite all that vastness and looking we are still the only part of the universe we know of capable of looking back, and IMO that makes us pretty special. :)

Astronomer here! The funny thing I’ve discussed with my colleagues is you don’t really find many astronomers scared about the universe and things in it. Which makes sense- it’s probably somewhat self-selecting that you don’t go into a profession where you have to think regularly about things that scare you.

That said, I do have one colleague who once confessed to us that he freaked out for awhile after a lecture on the multiverse- what scared him was he spent all this time learning physics for our universe and thinking we know some things to be constant… but that would all be wrong and worthless in an infinite number of universes if there’s a multiverse! Personally, I thought that was endearing- this universe doesn’t phase him, but the concept of other ones was too much. :)

Mind, doesn’t mean I am not afraid of things- I have a serious fear of dying, because I love living and exploring the universe and hate to think that will end. It’s also the only problem I can think of where I can’t work towards a solution, so that is likely part of it.

Astronomer here! The GRB one is a bit misleading- dozens and dozens of them are pointed at us each year, they’re just so far away that it doesn’t matter. If they weren’t pointed at us we would never see them.

As for how close one has to be for it to matter, it has to be a few thousand light years or so (I think 6-8,000). We know this area very well when it comes to the census of big enough stars about to go supernova, and there just aren’t really any that pose a threat of exploding soon. The one potential exception, Eta Carinae, has its poles not pointed at Earth, and a GRB is a very beamed object just a few degrees wide, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

For further context, a galaxy our size has a GRB maybe once every million years or so, and even THEN it has to be close enough/ perfectly aligned. They’re just not that common!

Astronomer here! The universe isn’t expanding into anything. I think the reason a lot of people have trouble with this is a lot of analogies rely on a smaller 3D object expanding (like raisin bread in an oven that is baking, and the galaxies are like raisins in the loaf going away from each other- true but gives the wrong impression as a whole).

Instead, I think it’s easier to grasp if you imagine a number line: 1, 2, 3, …, infinity. Now let’s double the numbers in it: 2, 4, 6, …, infinity. You have made the values in your number line twice as big, but it still has the same number of numbers! That is what the expansion of the universe is like- not expanding into anything, just the thing itself is growing.

Hope that helps!

I don’t know I always really like this part. Always something new to uncover! :)

Astronomer here! “The false vacuum thing” is a scientific hypothesis that our universe is actually in a false phase state as part of a larger universe, like if it were in a temporary thing (think the real universe is a pot of boiling water, and we are just within a bubble forming at the bottom of the pot). Eventually however that false vacuum has to pop- yes, even after billions of years in this false state!- and we and everything we know in our visible universe will disappear in an instant with no warning whatsoever and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sweet dreams!

Damn. Some people choose to spend their precious hours on this planet in the strangest ways.

I was five days old on the day of the Challenger disaster. My mom always said between that and Chernobyl that spring she worried so much about her decision to bring children into such an uncertain world.

There was also an elementary school friend who was born on the day of the disaster, lost touch but I still remember him. Happy birthday Aaron if you’re reading this!

It's estimated that by the end of the century it will no longer be viable to run ski resorts in New England. Something I think about a lot in conditions like right now...

(Not so) Fun fact, with current climate change estimates it's predicted NH weather will be akin to what Maryland is like today by the end of the century, which is further south than NJ! So I can imagine change in that short a period will cause a lot of stresses to many plants.

Yea I was kinda hoping OP was young enough for the $500 bracket, which is still pricey but maybe worth it depending on how much OP wants to wear his tux.

The Boston Ballet Ball!

Super fancy gala with nice food, you get a (short) ballet as part of the program, and surprisingly fun dance party at night after the dinner because the dancers join it. Looks like it's in February!

I don’t have space, but if there is a GoFundMe or similar please share it!

I saw a documentary about it and the answer is definitely no. Africa has so many secondhand clothes sent there the buyers are quite discerning and won’t wear rags any more than you would.