Will “Thank you for your attention to this matter” fit on a brick

When I turned 36, I didn't think I'd make it to 40. I'm turning 40 this year and already excited about planning a party. Transition saved my life. Happy Pride. :trans_heart:

People don’t often realize that most labs are held together by a single HP laptop from 2002 that cannot be unplugged

The feedback I got today was that I’m “doing a good job, but [I] could probably put in a little more effort” From my 7-year-old about dinner.

So @Joscelyn Transpiring asked me what the coolest isotope is yesterday, and the answer is Calcium-48. Calcium, famous from it's role in milk, is the element with 20 protons. Most of it that we find on earth has an equal number of neutrons, rounding out the total weight to 40. Calcium-48 is a really interesting outlier though, and has enabled some super cool science! Let's learn about what makes Calcium-48 DOUBLY-MAGIC. 🎩 💫

I just think it’s the prettiest blue

someone just asked me why the hard drive is the letter 'C:/' and now I'm going to rapidly turn into a dusty skeleton like I drank from the wrong grail

Like I thought, we are seeing a lot of articles about Iran’s “missing” 400 kg of HEU. A reminder that according to the IAEA they verified it just prior to the bombs starting to drop, so they knew where it was and that it wasn’t being weaponized. We don’t know where Iran has it now or what they are doing with it ONLY because Israel and the US started bombing the site where they stored it (Isfahan).

In the next weeks I anticipate we will hear a lot about Iran's ~400 kg of 60% enriched uranium, which they will probably refer to using the more scary phrase "Highly Enriched Uranium" or HEU. They will talk about how it is "out of control," which means the IAEA doesn't have tracking of it. This COULD be enriched to weapons-grade, and used for a bomb, IF they have an enrichment facility to do it in. That's a very very VERY big if. There's a very high chance their only three facilities were just destroyed. I think the odds of having a secret facility outside the knowledge of the international community is low. Not only are they hard to hide, but they're almost impossible to build without raising flags. As it turns out, a lot of centrifuges require very specialized equipment and parts. You can't build a nuclear facility in secret very easily. This is RIPE for fear mongering. I'm not a non-proliferation expert but I'll do my best to keep folks informed, as well as boost any voices or sources I find on the matter. As always happy to field questions.

We won't know the extent of the damage or aftermath for some time I imagine. But as far as the Fordow site is concerned, it is a uranium enrichment facility. The IAEA found evidence of highly enrichment uranium at the site, but a majority of the uranium stored is probably in the uranium hexafloride (UF6) form. UF6 is a heavy uranium gas that is used in centrifuges. The heaviness of the gas means that if there was a release, it likely would only have localized impacts.