A lovely mossy boulder with a face. I walked past this venerable stone gentleman on Dartmoor when I was beginning to write my first novel, Villager, and it whispered all 104,000 words of the book to me. So now I have to pay it all of my royalties. Unfortunately my ex-publisher stopped paying me royalties last year. Understandable, the boulder was not happy. But now I have a new publisher and the book has been republished. So remember if you purchase a copy you will be helping a boulder to eat, pay the rent on his riverside moss garden, and feed his boulder family.

Yes it could be argued that keeping up with world events is important but alternatively can I interest you in hugging an ancient mossy boulder that looks like a face and quietly listening while it tells you stories from centuries cloaked in mist.

[alt text by NASA] The Moon, seen here backlit by the Sun during a solar eclipse on April 6, 2026, is photographed by one of the cameras on the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings. Orion is visible in the foreground on the left. Earth is reflecting sunlight at the left edge of the Moon, which is slightly brighter than the rest of the disk. The bright spot visible just below the Moon’s bottom right edge is Saturn. Beyond that, the bright spot at the right edge of the image is Mars. Credit: NASA

Whoa 🤯

The Moon, in full eclipse, with the #Artemis II Orion spacecraft. Part of the Moon and spacecraft are lit by Earthshine, and both Saturn and Mars are visible to the lower right. Incredible. Details: images.nasa.gov/details/art0...

A fun illustration I made for Quanta's story on deSitter space

www.quantamagazine.org/in-expanding...

Physicists of Bluesky! I'm writing a piece for @quantamagazine.bsky.social
: "What is Mass?" a collection of different perspectives on mass in physics, in the vein of Natalie Wolchover's "What is a Particle?" piece a few years back. If you've got a cool perspective to share, send me a message!

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 🎢

Americans, you could have this.

🎃 The carved pumpkins that we call “Jack-o’-lanterns” get their name from 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘶𝘴, 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 haven’t been invented yet
ME:
FORM: in other galaxies
ME: OK hold on
FORM: If we kill you during filming you’re not allowed to scream

Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2025 | Ember Solar and wind outpaced demand growth in the first half of 2025, as renewables overtook coal’s share in the global electricity mix.

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.

China Is Beating the US in the Battle for Energy Export Dominance China’s exports of clean energy technology hit a record in August, with $20 billion shipped globally.

"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.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an...

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: 🔥🔥🔥

Scientists, in the background:

How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from...

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. “How We Came To Know Earth,” 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!

Scalable Chrysopoeia via $(n, 2n)$ Reactions Driven by Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Neutrons A scalable approach for chrysopoeia - the transmutation of base metals into gold - has been pursued for millennia. While there have been small-scale demonstrations in particle accelerators and proposa...

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 discovered—and 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 animal—the work of Josh Steinhouse, The Geek Balloonist: thegeekballoonist.com/home

He does a mean E.T., too.

Thanks for the smile, Josh. ❤️

#Animorphs #BalloonArtist

Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill | Quanta Magazine Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists will need to go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.

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...

Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences | Quanta Magazine The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

👀 On our radar: Beautiful physics of the ordinary

💬 “My deep and abiding feeling is that if you look at anything closely enough, there will be new riches to be found” —Sidney Nagel

✍️ Charlie Wood, @quantamagazine.bsky.social

🔗 www.quantamagazine.org/finding-beau...

the room temperature room YouTube video by Toran Seru

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!

Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences | Quanta Magazine The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

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...