Fascinated once again to see @walkingthedot.bsky.social
work his magic, explaining this story with the perfect touch. Happy to have contributed a small grain to it. Congratulations on this piece! It beautifully captures the emotion of the moment and the roller-coaster nature of research π’
Americans, you could have this.
π The carved pumpkins that we call βJack-oβ-lanternsβ get their name from πͺπ¨π―πͺπ΄ π§π’π΅πΆπΆπ΄, a natural phenomenon that many cultures have associated with the paranormal.
Last month, a group of chemists published a study that offers one explanation for how these faint orbs illuminate.
LEGAL RELEASE FORM: You agree to let us film you
ME: Seems OK
FORM: We own your face forever
ME: Ummm
FORM: We own your face via technologies that havenβt been invented yet
ME:
FORM: in other galaxies
ME: OK hold on
FORM: If we kill you during filming youβre not allowed to scream
Solar & wind met 109% of new electricity demand, globally, in the first half of 2025.
Renewables are handling all new demand & are inexorably moving beyond, to chip away at the FF foundation.
"Energy dominance," you say?
As of this year, *China is exporting more clean-energy technology than the US is exporting the dirty stuff*.
The future is green energy & China, not the US, is set to dominate it.
John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis have won the Nobel Prize in physics for showing that quantum mechanics describes the behavior of objects much larger than atoms.
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...
The world: π₯π₯π₯
Scientists, in the background:
Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. βHow We Came To Know Earth,β our new series, is a guide to the modern understanding of fundamental climate science. www.quantamagazine.org/series/clima...
surely someone will do it faster now!
huh. along with abundant clean energy, fusion reactors might also be able to make *tons* of gold.
arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
This is absurd.
The red supergiant Betelgeuse is the bright feature in this image.
But that darker blue splotch is a *companion star* that's just been discoveredβand it orbits so close to Betelgeuse that it's inside the larger star's outer atmosphere.
150 years ago you could get published in Nature by just describing how cute your pets are.
www.nature.com/articles/012...
A speaking giving a talk on a stage with slides projected behind them.
This year it is 10 years since the discovery of #GravitationalWaves in 2015!
www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20...
@ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social
#GW150914
#GR24Amaldi16
"The Chipotle where Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense" encapsulates so much American history
Oh no
NSF budget would close down one of LIGO's sites. This would be, to put it lightly, a catastrophe for gravitational wave astronomy.
"In FY 2026 NSF will operate only one of the two sites
and will support a reduced level for technology development."
bsky.app/profile/hast...
First sigma-eight. Now g-2. Anomalies are dropping like flies this year.
Absolutely delighted by this Andalite balloon animalβthe work of Josh Steinhouse, The Geek Balloonist: thegeekballoonist.com/home
He does a mean E.T., too.
Thanks for the smile, Josh. β€οΈ
#Animorphs #BalloonArtist
Do singularities exist? I'd always thought they were purely mathematical artifacts, but recent work in mathematical physics work from @bousso.bsky.social and others hint otherwise (for sufficiently broad definitions of "singularities" and "exist").
www.quantamagazine.org/singularitie...
π On our radar: Beautiful physics of the ordinary
π¬ βMy deep and abiding feeling is that if you look at anything closely enough, there will be new riches to be foundβ βSidney Nagel
βοΈ Charlie Wood, @quantamagazine.bsky.social
π www.quantamagazine.org/finding-beau...
It is that one glorious week of the year where New York feels like The Room in Community
youtu.be/VxxYqE4Gil8?...
Love it when my worlds collide
He was so fun to talk to!
Why do drops leave ring-shaped stains? Why do splashes splash? Had great fun chatting with Sid Nagel about beautiful, unappreciated physics right under our noses.
www.quantamagazine.org/finding-beau...
What a day to have studied Latin in Chicago.
Curved grid representing space descending onto a black hole at the bottom of the screen. There is a cartoony rocket ship in the middle of the screen, and many little white dots scattered around the grid. There are numbers above each dot and rocket, each currently set to different values.
For #BlackHoleWeek, why not go explore spacetime around a black hole?
Oh... because it'd be incredibly dangerous?
Good point.
Well, how about you use this (nearly*) perfectly safe simulation. testtubegames.com/blackhole.html
*There is always a small risk of collapsing into a simgularity.
I tore through all 60ish Animorphs books a few years ago and was shocked at how good they were. Can confirm they're a great read and long overdue for their prestige HBO show.
#GravitationalWaves provide a unique way to study black holes
This Orrery (by Zoheyr Doctor) illustrates the diverse black hole binaries and neutron star blackβhole binaries from our O3b run. More massive binaries are shown as orbiting more slowly
#BlackHoleWeek π
