Performing my new musical version of 'The Onomatophore of the Anthropocene' at the @Anticipation_C onference at @LancasterUni on Thursday, with the Planetary Ages Choir (@Bethdelange, Huw Johnson, Kathryn MacDonald, @PeteMoser, Mark Mukerji, Anni Tracy), and images by @Adam_Y.

RT @TOClimates: New article accepted @RISjnl!.Trailer: Morgenthau said 'scientism' led to disasters. Solar geoengineering science assumes a….

RT @WitjesNina: We are thrilled to host Lauren Reid (FU Berlin) for the next #FutureSpaceTalk (online)! Lauren discusses the interrelated m….

A 27-second time-lapse video of part of 'Life in a planetary ring', Lancaster Central Library, 13 April 2024. @LancasterUni @CampusintheCity @LancashireCC 14/14

The event made ME speculate - could a regular ‘speculative astrophysics club and planetary makerspace’ produce a cohort of people with a deep understanding of planetary rings, of how to move around them - and how to design ring systems that can do even more amazing things. 13/14.

Finally, Exhibit 8 was a little pod where visitors could draw their own ideas about what life might be like in a planetary ring. If humans lived there, how might they adapt to or take advantage of how rings behave? What forms of alien life might evolve there? 12/14

Moving to the IMAGINE phase, Exhibit 7 was a wall on which people could write their own questions about planetary rings, prompted by a few ideas of our own and encouraged to be as wild and imaginative as they wanted! 11/14

Exhibit 6 used our free downloadable 3D virtual reality app for Android, developed in 2019 by graduate interns Thomas Cann & Sam Hinson and artists Ashley James Brown & Tony Doyle, that immerses the user in a ring system and lets them fly around it. 10/14

Exhibit 5 was coded by student intern Atiya Mahboob, building on work by students Chris Lawson & Ben Pilcher. Visitors could add a moon into a section of ring, alter parameters, and see how this affected the trajectory of particles around it in surprising ways. 9/14

Exhibit 4 was a flight simulator coded by student Ben Lowe, based on the SpaceX Dragon 2 vehicle controls and Heads-Up Display. Visitors learned how to pilot a spacecraft through a ring system - and could even try to land on a moon! 8/14

Exhibit 3 (by former students Luigi Lin and Alexandra Stanhope) modelled how ring particles can sometimes coalesce into moons, and moons break up into particles - in PLAY mode, young visitors proved proficient at adjusting parameters and creating extraordinary dynamics. 7/14

Exhibit 2 showcased the work of former student Aaron Patel - a moonlet orbiting in a ring gap producing wave-like wakes in the ring edges. 6/14

Exhibit 1 was a show-reel of simulations and visualisations of a full ring system first developed by digital artist Ashley James Brown @arctic_sunrise, with a rotating quadraphonic soundscape created by sound designer Tony Doyle. 5/14

Over the four hours of the event, approximately 120 people of all ages entered the space and interacted with the eight exhibits, that were organised into a progression from WATCH, to PLAY, to IMAGINE. 4/14

We promoted the event like this: "Building on what astrophysicists know about planetary rings, and using beautiful interactive computer simulations, we will use our senses & imagination to explore planetary rings known and unknown, real and imagined, possible and impossible" 3/14

Planetary rings generate complex, beautiful phenomena using the humblest matter and forces. The NASA Cassini-Huygens probe discovered many fascinating dynamic features in Saturn’s rings. (Photos NASA/JPL) 2/14

Last month we held ‘Life in a planetary ring’ - public engagement with speculative astrophysics, part of @LancasterUni’s @CampusintheCity 2024. I’ve written about the event on my blog ‘Another Planet’: & summarised it in the thread below. 1/14

I love this Netflix reboot of Mr Bean. The central character is the same - utterly amoral and psychopathic, capable of both hilarious incompetence and moments of genius. But the noir style and new casting bring out the mythic depth of the Bean character. Bravo! #mrbean #ripley

RT @CampusintheCity: Calling all curious minds! Campus in the city - a free, family-friendly festival bringing Lancaster University's amazi….

Fascinated by outer space? Want to combine science, art and the imagination? Come to #Lancaster City Library, Saturday 13 April from 1pm, interact with computer simulations of planetary rings - and imagine what life in a planetary ring might be like. @CampusintheCity #citc2024