I am very pleased to say that the Stand Up For Science rally, protesting the funding cuts and other anti-science moves by the Trump regime, was a massive success. I attended and spoke at the Washington ,DC event, and there were several thousand people lining the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial to listen and cheer (and sometimes boo when Bad Guys were mentioned (cough cough, literally)).

Other speakers included my friends Bill Nye and Michael Mann (himself someone who has been attacked mercilessly by climate science deniers), researchers like Dr. Allison Agwu who works on HIV/AIDS, science communicators, health advocates, and even politicians like Illinois Congressperson Bill Foster (the only physicist in Congress) and the former Senator and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

It was fantastic to see such a huge turnout, many of whom were carrying wonderful signs to support science and to protest Trump, DOGE, and the other attacks on science. The speeches were terrific, too. I was inspired by them and motivated to do more. There were also rallies in other countries, too!

There was a lot of press for it, too, including Time magazine and Science. I was driving home and happened to stumble on CSPAN’s radio station, which played the event live and also did recaps. That was cool.

The entire event is on YouTube:

My speech starts at 14:06 if you’re curious. 

I’ll add that there were rallies held in other countries, too. This isn’t surprising, since the US has a global impact, especially in the areas of science.

In fact, in a great irony, it wasn’t until I got home that I learned that while that rally was going on, reports were coming out that Trump is mulling over a 50% cut to NASA’s budget. FIFTY PERCENT. This would utterly destroy NASA’s ability to do, well, anything. It would devastate our country’s research into space, astronomy, aerospace, climate, and more. The Planetary Society rightfully calls it an “extinction event”, and the American Astronomical Society (the largest group of professional astronomers in the country) says this “would represent an abject surrender of US scientific leadership to our international competitors”.

They’re right. Imagine you have spent your whole life working on a project, only to have all your funding summarily removed overnight. What would you do, especially knowing the capricious nature of Trump’s whims? China and other countries have plenty of money for science, so a brain drain is exactly what will happen (note that I said this in somewhat more forceful terms in my speech, comparing what’s happening now to the policies of Hitler and Stalin that led to scientists fleeing their regimes).

Trump and his ilk are systematically dismantling our country, both in the sense of destroying the foundational roots of our democracy as well as directly vaporizing the very things that make this country great, like our dedication to scientific research.

And that’s why we have to stand up for science. I will continue to speak out, to attend rallies, and to protest what’s going on. I hope you do too.

 It’s been a while since I posted a really cool image of a volcano taken from space — one of my favorites genres of “FROM SPACE” kinds of things — so here’s one that’s really cool: The Kumani Bank mud volcano about 15 km off the Azerbaijan Coast in the Caspian Sea:

Cooool. All three images were taken by the Landsat 8 and 9 Earth-observing satellites. The left one is from November 18, 2022, and the volcano isn’t visible. But on February 14, 2023, you can see a long plume of sediment curving away from the volcano at the top, which itself is about 400 meters across. By December 25, 2024 the eruption had subsided and most of the island itself had eroded away. 

So you’re actually seeing a volcano grow large enough to breach the sea surface but then be worn away again until it’s barely visible. It’ll likely disappear soon once again.

Kumani Bank is one of many mud volcanoes in the Caspian Sea, and has erupted many times before, including building up enough material to poke above the water. The strongest eruption known was in 1950 when it grew to 700 meters across. However, it’s mud, so it doesn’t have a lot of structural strength, and the top was only about 6 meters high. That’s a pretty gentle slope.

Wild. Our planet is an amazing place, and there are so many wonderful things to see and know about it! I’m glad we have eyes in the sky that can look down and show us.

This image is from the NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day, which I’ve written about many, many times. They have an RSS feed which is a great way to keep up with their terrific posts.

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