About the author

My name is Nir Shaviv. I am a full professor at the Racah Institute of Physics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My main research interests revolve around the following topics:

- The behaviour of very luminous astrophysical objects, so luminous that their radiation pressure should have blown themselves apart (but they don't!). This topic is related to various objects, including classical nova eruptions, very massive stars, supernova precurors, and high rate accretion discs. 

- High energy astrophysics (e.g., the diffusion of cosmic rays in the Milky Way, the PAMELA anomaly).

- Cosmic Ray effects on climate, on time scales ranging from 100's of millions of years, to the 11-year solar cycle. 

A full list of publications will show that my range of interests is actually larger, including topics like the non-convensional formation of the Binary pulsar J-737-3039, astereoseismology of Roche lobe filling stars, or the distorted images of the highly magnetized magnetars.

Most of my work is theoretical, meaning that I build models and then try to compare them to data collected by other people, through very recently I actually ventured into experimental work. More about it once we have results .

I started this website in 2006 after someone attempted to sue both me and the university, alleging that his copyright had been infringed when a paper of his attacking me was posted on the university website. He also tried—unsuccessfully—to drive a wedge between the university and me. The episode nevertheless provided a good opportunity to create an independent site and blog: a venue where I could express my non-standard (but correct) views on global warming and muse on various other things. I hope you enjoy the site. 

For many years, ScienceBits ran on Drupal under managed hosting by Site5. Rising costs, together with an aging Drupal installation that required upgrading for security reasons, eventually prompted me to move to an unmanaged VPS at Vultr. Site5 provided very good technical support, and I have nothing bad to say about them; I can, however, manage the server myself and save a few dollars. I also used the move as an opportunity to migrate ScienceBits to Astro, which serves the content faster and provides a much smaller attack surface. There is no content database to hack. 

Oh, if you want to read more about me, written by other people (and therefore paints a distorted picture of who I really am, take a look at the wikipedia page on me).