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Urgency is the mindkiller
A senior colleague of mine once said (paraphrasing): “We can all manage to fill our week with things to do. It is not difficult to be busy. The challenge is to actively and consciously steer what you decide to spend our time on, and prioritize things that will have an impact.” When you look back…
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A lesson for mastering sports
I have learned one lesson in one sport, which I have found to be universally applicable to most other sports. The lesson is as follows: Imagine your shoulder points and your hips forming a rectangle. This rectangle needs to be mobile. Start any action by moving that rectangle. Not flailing the arms and legs. Move…
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Astronomy bucket list
🗹 get a paper published🗹 get a paper rejected☐ publish a letter🗹 publish a research note🗹 publish in A&A🗹 publish in ApJ🗹 publish in MNRAS🗹 publish in PASP🗹 publish a software package🗹 publish a catalogue to vizier🗹 play ArXiV astro-ph localtime roulette🗹 referee a paper🗹 discover a new observational relation🗹 publish analysis of cosmological simulations🗹…
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How to get emotionally attached to software but leave no impact to science
How do people get emotionally attached to software? I mean positively emotionally attached to the point of plastering stickers on their laptop, or negatively attached to the level of raising their voices in discussions. Here I explore a few causes that I have seen. 1. Attachment to strict teachers This cause of attachment is common…
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AGN physics open questions
How are black holes created? What is their spin distribution? What is the shape and location of the hot X-ray corona? We know it is compact (<10Rg, from microlensing) and parallel to the disc (from polarimetry). But how is it powered? In practical terms: what sets the LUV-LX relation? The relation can be reproduced with…
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Understanding AGN and their host galaxies
Everyone and their dog makes a Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) fitting code. It’s not hard. The data are a few numbers, you just need Gaussian statistics, and connect to a model library. The design choices vary wildly though: Computation and uncertainty quantification cigale is a community platform mostly focused on galaxies, with quite limited uncertainty…
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The state of nested sampling research in 2026: II) Fundamental algorithm research
see also part I. Nested sampling as an algorithm has a few papers presenting convergence proofs. It’s interesting from how many angles people have looked at this problem. See the relevant section in the literature review. Diagnostics (ongoing) Andrew Fowlie proposed an elegant test for diagnosing live whether nested sampling is sampling in an unbiased…
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The state of nested sampling research in 2026: I) Scaling nested sampling to high-dimensions
Since I wrote a systematic literature review (arxiv, scholar) in 2023, and written or contributed to several nested sampling packages, I’m someone who people turn to and ask, “what is next in nested sampling research”? In this first part, I will write about scaling nested sampling to high-dimensions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, nested sampling does…
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How many people does it take for society to be against you?
Let’s say society is divided into two factions. One faction is univocally for equality between men and women in all areas. Another faction thinks that due to various factors, women and men should in some areas have different societal roles. People treat others according to their values. Let’s say the ratio is 80:20 in favor…
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Simulation-based inference for X-ray astronomy
In simulation-based inference, you train a neural network with pairs of model parameters θ and correspondingly data D, (θ, D). In the case of NRE, the network is a classifier, which predicts the probability that the data came from the (θ, D) stream corresponding to the joint p(θ,D) vs. a scrambled-up (θ, D) stream, corresponding…