The Quanta Podcast
Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math
Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous...
8th Oct 2020
Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math.
The post Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Long Now
Brian Christian: Algorithms to Live By
### Solving hard decisions
Deciding when to stop your quest for the ideal apartment, or ideal...
21st Jun 2016
### Solving hard decisions
Deciding when to stop your quest for the ideal apartment, or ideal spouse, depends entirely on how long you expect to be looking, says Brian Christian. The first one you check will be the best you’ve seen, but it’s unlikely to be the best you’ll ever...
Stephen Wolfram...
What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine...
22nd Aug 2024
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost...
Chris Grossack's...
Monoidal Monoidoidoids
So I was on the nlab the other day, and I saw a fantastic joke:
A 2-category is “just” a monoidal...
21st Aug 2022
So I was on the nlab the other day, and I saw a fantastic joke:
A 2-category is “just” a monoidal monoidoidoid! Here’s a screenshot
in case the nlab page for 2-categories changes someday:
There’s a thing called the Category Theorist’s “Just”, which describes
the joy that many...
Long Now
Sara Seager: Other Earths. Other Life.
## To find living exoplanets
Thanks to recent exoplanet research, Seager began, we now know that...
11th Aug 2015
## To find living exoplanets
Thanks to recent exoplanet research, Seager began, we now know that nearly all of our galaxy’s 300 billion stars are accompanied by planets, and a unexpectedly high number of them are rocky like Earth, and many of those orbit in a “habitable”...
Beautiful Public...
San Diego Photologs from the 1970s
A collection of beautiful, high-resolution photolog scans reveals a colorful world of pastel-colored...
23rd Jun 2026
A collection of beautiful, high-resolution photolog scans reveals a colorful world of pastel-colored cars and whimsical signage.
The Quanta Podcast
Visions of Future Physics
Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as...
1st Oct 2015
Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as he pursues a new vision of the laws of nature.
The post Visions of Future Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Statins and Strength
Does lowering your LDL and saving your heart mean sacrificing muscular strength? No.
6th May 2026
Does lowering your LDL and saving your heart mean sacrificing muscular strength? No.
Wanderingspace
Kind of Cool Image of Io from Juno
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the...
18th Aug 2021
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the rest are thought to be active volcanos on the Io surface. The moons are not a primary target of the Juno mission, but they do occasionally take a peek to try and monitor such...
The Works in...
Just bury your trash
What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?
2 weeks ago
What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?
Stephen Wolfram...
On the Nature of Time
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is...
8th Oct 2024
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically...
Conservation...
Landmark debt swap to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs
15th Jan 2025
The Quanta Podcast
A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets
An unexpected superconductor was beginning to look like a fluke, but a new theory and a second...
8th Jul 2021
An unexpected superconductor was beginning to look like a fluke, but a new theory and a second discovery have revealed that emergent quasiparticles may be behind the effect.
The post A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Conservation...
3 things our experts loved in May
26th Jun 2024
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Plant Sounds
My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past...
5th Aug 2024
My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past ideas, such as astrology. One New Age idea that seemed strange at the time was that talking to plants helped them to grow. What could be more New Age than a hippie chick talking to a...
SubAnima
Evolution Isn't Always For The Best
Evolution is not, I repeat, NOT natural selection
17th Mar 2022
Evolution is not, I repeat, NOT natural selection
Melting Asphalt
Social Status II: Cults and Loyalty
So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/critique by Scott Alexander...
2nd Nov 2015
So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/critique by Scott Alexander over at Slate Star Codex. I expect most of my readers are already big fans of Scott's blog (as am I). But for those…
Read more ›
Cremieux Recueil
The Making of an Elite: Japanese Christians
Why are Japanese elites so likely to be Christian when Japan is a 99% non-Christian country?
7th Nov 2025
Why are Japanese elites so likely to be Christian when Japan is a 99% non-Christian country?
The Quanta Podcast
Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real
Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming...
14th Oct 2021
Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer.
Long Now
Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously....
22nd Jan 2019
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in his succinct summing-up book: _ON THE FUTURE: Prospects for Humanity_.
As the recent President of the Royal Society (and longtime...
Works in Progress...
Just bury your trash
What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?
2 weeks ago
What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?
Conservation...
Our work in the news, January 2026
3rd Feb 2026
Long Now
Philip Tetlock: Superforecasting
### All it takes to improve forecasting is KEEP SCORE
Will Syria’s President Assad still be in...
24th Nov 2015
### All it takes to improve forecasting is KEEP SCORE
Will Syria’s President Assad still be in power at the end of next year? Will Russia and China hold joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean in the next six months? Will the Oil Volatility Index fall below 25 in 2016? Will...
Long Now
Jenny Odell: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Jenny Odell describes _Saving Time_, her second book and the inspiration for her first Long Now...
14th Apr 2023
Jenny Odell describes _Saving Time_, her second book and the inspiration for her first Long Now Talk, as a “panoramic assault on nihilism.”
The particular nihilism that Odell confronts is rooted in what she calls “Clock Time.” While the rigid, regular progression of clock time...
Long Now
Eric Debrah Otchere: Sonic Spaces
Eric Debrah Otchere's research revolves around the power of music in the context of work; covering...
10th Feb 2023
Eric Debrah Otchere's research revolves around the power of music in the context of work; covering an ambitious range from ethnographic research on Ghanaian indigenous fishing culture to personalized musical preferences via modern technology.
Throughout history, the power of...
The Quanta Podcast
The Thoughts of a Spiderweb
Spiders appear to offload cognitive tasks to their webs, making them one of a number of species with...
13th Jul 2017
Spiders appear to offload cognitive tasks to their webs, making them one of a number of species with a mind that isn’t fully confined within the head.
The post The Thoughts of a Spiderweb first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Peder M. Isager
Meta-research at the Psychological Science Accelerator
Summary of unconference session at Tilburg Meta-research day 2019.
17th Dec 2019
Summary of unconference session at Tilburg Meta-research day 2019.
Works in Progress...
Why we duel
Duels can be brutal and even lethal. But duels emerged in societies around the world for an...
21st Apr 2022
Duels can be brutal and even lethal. But duels emerged in societies around the world for an important reason: to control and manage violence, not just to celebrate it.
Long Now
Caroline Winterer: The Art and Science of Deep Time: Conceiving the Inconceivable in the 19th...
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th...
6th Feb 2020
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th century. Historian and author [Caroline Winterer](https://history.stanford.edu/people/caroline-winterer) chronicles how the concept of “deep time” has inspired and puzzled...
Conservation...
News spotlight: Study buoys hope for rare axolotls
1st May 2025
Long Now
Orville Schell: China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term?
### Giant contradictions
“China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville...
23rd Sep 2006
### Giant contradictions
“China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions. And by its massiveness— China’s population is estimated to be 1.25 to 1.3 billion; the margin of error in the estimate...
SubAnima
Could There Be Laws Of Biology?
Physics has such nice equations and universal laws. Could we ever expect to find similar principles...
10th Mar 2023
Physics has such nice equations and universal laws. Could we ever expect to find similar principles or axioms for biology?
Long Now
Steven Johnson: The Long Zoom
### Consilience defeats miasma
Steven Johnson began his long zoom survey with the "prior art" of...
12th May 2007
### Consilience defeats miasma
Steven Johnson began his long zoom survey with the "prior art" of Joyce's Stephen Daedalus locating himself in himself, his neighborhood, Dublin, on out to the universe. The value of a long zoom is in identifying and employing every scale between...
Interaction Magic -...
Life beyond the screen
Since early 2020, I've been teaching courses in Interaction Technologies and Prototyping. Switches,...
15th Jul 2021
Since early 2020, I've been teaching courses in Interaction Technologies and Prototyping. Switches, light, gesture, motion, sound, haptics: this is all about exploring life beyond the screen.
Works in Progress...
How TV learned to sell itself
Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television.
11th Mar 2026
Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television.
Melting Asphalt
Outbreak
Harry Stevens at The Washington Post recently published a very elegant simulation of how a disease...
17th Mar 2020
Harry Stevens at The Washington Post recently published a very elegant simulation of how a disease like COVID-19 spreads. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking it out. Today I want to follow up with something I've been working…
Read more ›
IEEE Spectrum
What Is an Electronic Sackbut?
If you, like me, think of musical synthesizers as an artifact of 1970s rock and disco, then you,...
1st Feb 2024
If you, like me, think of musical synthesizers as an artifact of 1970s rock and disco, then you, like me, will be surprised to learn that the first electronic synthesizer predates those genres by several decades
In 1945, Hugh Le Caine, a physicist at Canada’s National Research...
Uncharted...
Should You Be Able to Experiment on Your Own Cancer?
A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the...
26th Sep 2024
A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the treatments weren’t working. She decided to treat it herself.
Long Now
Susan Freinkel: Eternal Plastic
### Making plastic even better
Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects...
23rd May 2012
### Making plastic even better
Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects preserved in the sunken _Titanic_ , none are synthetic plastic, because there was hardly any available in 1912. Natural plastic, however, was a familiar material. Amber was popular....
IEEE Spectrum
Smalltalk Blew Steve Jobs’s Mind
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center...
1st Mar 2023
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There they were introduced to the experimental Alto computer and the Smalltalk language and computing environment, developed by Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group....
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Winter Solstice Arrives on Sunday Dec 21
Dec. 21 is the winter solstice. We explain what this means and how the seasons come about.
The post...
19th Dec 2025
Dec. 21 is the winter solstice. We explain what this means and how the seasons come about.
The post Winter Solstice Arrives on Sunday Dec 21 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Probably...
Think DSP second edition
I have started work on a second edition of Think DSP! You can see the current draft here. I started...
4th Nov 2025
I have started work on a second edition of Think DSP! You can see the current draft here. I started this project in part because of this announcement: Once in a while, a few of the Scicloj friends will meet to learn about signal processing, following the Think DSP book by Allen...
Long Now
Dmitry Orlov: Social Collapse Best Practices
### Managing social collapse
With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse...
14th Feb 2009
### Managing social collapse
With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself...
ToughSF
The Laser Revolution Part I: Megawatt beams to the skies
There’s a laser revolution coming: a time when megawatt-scale beams will radically transform how we ...
19th May 2025
There’s a laser revolution coming: a time when megawatt-scale beams will radically transform how we produce electricity, conduct war and even upset the nuclear world order. All they have to do it reach a certain convergence of price and power.
And by current projections, it...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Real Risk of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been...
7th Jul 2025
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been steadily infiltrating the technology we use every day, whether you realize it or not. I remain somewhat in the middle in terms of the hype-to-technological-miracle spectrum. I don’t...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 10: The Owlet Lodge (February 11 and 12, 2024)
February 11, 2024
Laura and I were looking forward to our one-night visit to the Owlet Lodge. Up to...
20th Jul 2024
February 11, 2024
Laura and I were looking forward to our one-night visit to the Owlet Lodge. Up to this point we had only stayed at cheap hotels, while we had also eaten simply, with at least two meals each day consisting of sandwiches/snacks that we prepared. For once, someone...
Long Now
Craig Childs: Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth
### How the world keeps ending
“This Earth is a story teller,” Childs began. “And it is not a...
30th Jul 2013
### How the world keeps ending
“This Earth is a story teller,” Childs began. “And it is not a stable place to live. It is always ending. We think of endings as sudden, but it is always a process.”
For his book _Apocalyptic Planet_ he sought out some of the world’s most...
The Roots of...
The Spirit We Lost, part 1
Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1 and part 2.
On a fine day late in May, 1883, hundreds of...
30th Sep 2025
Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1 and part 2.
On a fine day late in May, 1883, hundreds of thousands of people gathered along the East River in New York City for a grand celebration.1 Perhaps a hundred thousand came from outside the city: by train, by boat, by wagon from...
Quanta Magazine
The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have...
2nd Jun 2025
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.
The post The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Last call for software engineers + announcing…KNOWLEDGEFEST! | Out-Of-Pocket
we got some good events cookin' up
1st Jul 2026
we got some good events cookin' up
NeuroLogica Blog
Some Climate Change Trends and Thoughts
Climate change is a challenging issue on multiple levels – it’s challenging for scientists to...
2nd Dec 2024
Climate change is a challenging issue on multiple levels – it’s challenging for scientists to understand all of the complexities of a changing climate, it’s difficult to know how to optimally communicate to the public about climate change, and of course we face an enormous...
Long Now
Mike Kuniavsky: Our Future in Algorithm Farming
Everything will be connected to the network, even things that shouldn’t be. From automobiles to egg...
1st Mar 2018
Everything will be connected to the network, even things that shouldn’t be. From automobiles to egg timers, Kuniavsky explains all these devices will try to get our attention and prove their value. They’ll also attempt to predict the future—at least the immediate future of our...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Google x Out-Of-Pocket!! | Out-Of-Pocket
Plus other fun updates
3rd Oct 2025
Works in Progress...
The housing theory of everything
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also...
14th Sep 2021
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.
Long Now
Maya Tudor: Can Nationalism be a Resource for Democracy?
A political scientist examines how foundational nationalisms affect democracy globally, using...
6th May 2019
A political scientist examines how foundational nationalisms affect democracy globally, using countries like India and Myanmar to illustrate that some kinds of nationalism can be an essential resource for protecting democracy.
Maya Tudor is a comparative political scientist...
Inverted Passion
The two views of rationality
This essay is part of the series in which I talk about my learnings and insights building a habit...
1st Mar 2026
This essay is part of the series in which I talk about my learnings and insights building a habit coaching app (Nintee) in 2024. It didn’t ultimately work out because an app has marginal influence in a human’s life (v/s that of friends, family, culture and immediate environment)....
Beautiful Public...
Trademark Design Codes
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes"...
9th Apr 2024
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes" allowing you to search for trademarks with “Rickshaws”, “Centaurs” or “Mechanical women”.
Probably...
The Frog Puzzle
Here’s a probability puzzle from a TED-Ed video called Can you solve the frog riddle? by Derek...
4th Jun 2026
Here’s a probability puzzle from a TED-Ed video called Can you solve the frog riddle? by Derek Abbott. It came up recently in this Reddit thread: You’re stranded in a rainforest after accidentally eating a poisonous mushroom. To survive the poison, you need to lick a certain...
The Quanta Podcast
How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of...
7th Dec 2022
The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Open Source in Healthcare Is An Opportunity | Out-Of-Pocket
Can AI bring the benefits of open source to a slow, sclerotic industry?
6th Mar 2026
Can AI bring the benefits of open source to a slow, sclerotic industry?
wadertales
How are migration sites connected?
Which are the most important migration sites and how are breeding, moulting, staging and wintering...
9th Jan 2025
Which are the most important migration sites and how are breeding, moulting, staging and wintering locations linked? Forty-four authors have collaborated to bring together ringing, colour-ringing and GPS tracking data in a paper entitled Site-level connectivity identified from...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some Common Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching Angels | Out-Of-Pocket
With some real decks and emails!
21st Feb 2024
With some real decks and emails!
brr
Pressure Altitude
Day-to-day variability at the South Pole.
6th Aug 2023
Day-to-day variability at the South Pole.
Long Now
Kevin Kelly: The Next 30 Digital Years
## Digital is just getting started
In Kevin Kelly’s view, a dozen “inevitable” trends will drive...
15th Jul 2016
## Digital is just getting started
In Kevin Kelly’s view, a dozen “inevitable” trends will drive the next 30 years of digital progress. Artificial smartnesses, for example, will be added to everything, all quite different from human intelligence and from each other. We will tap...
IEEE Spectrum
Taking the Measure of the Earthquake That Destroyed Tokyo
At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The...
1st Sep 2023
At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The earthquake began with a violent horizontal back-and-forth motion, followed by two vertical jolts, and then another horizontal shock even stronger than the first. The intensity of the tremor...
SubAnima
How NOT To Think About Cells
Are we all just running on molecular clockwork?
14th Oct 2022
Are we all just running on molecular clockwork?
wadertales
When mates behave differently
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an...
7th Aug 2022
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an ideal system in which to study the costs and benefits of the two options, and to try to work out what influences whether an individual becomes a ‘resident’ or a ‘migrant’. I’ve...
wadertales
WaderTales blogs in 2022
Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped...
22nd Dec 2022
Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped the blogs into sections; problems with trees, more research from Iceland, Curlews, news from the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, tracking and updates. As ever, I am grateful to...
The Quanta Podcast
The Fundamental Tension at the Heart of Math
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been...
7th Apr 2026
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been shaken up quite a few times over the past few centuries. The newest attempt to formalize math comes in the form of the computer program Lean. Mathematicians have mixed feelings. On...
Quantum Frontiers
Can Thermodynamics Resolve the Measurement Problem?
At the recent Quantum Thermodynamics conference in Vienna (coming next year to the University of...
10th Sep 2023
At the recent Quantum Thermodynamics conference in Vienna (coming next year to the University of Maryland!), during an expert panel Q&A session, one member of the audience asked “can quantum thermodynamics address foundational problems in quantum theory?” That stuck with …...
The Roots of...
Can we “cure” cancer?
In an excellent recent essay on “big visions for biology,” Sam Rodriques writes:
Ask most biologists...
1st Feb 2023
In an excellent recent essay on “big visions for biology,” Sam Rodriques writes:
Ask most biologists about the cure for cancer, and they will tell you it doesn’t exist: cancer is many diseases that are mostly unrelated to each other, and that all have to be cured one at a...
Asterisk
You’re Invited to a Colonoscopy!
Colonoscopies are the first-line method for preventing colorectal cancer in America —and almost...
1st Oct 2023
Colonoscopies are the first-line method for preventing colorectal cancer in America —and almost nowhere else. But do they work? We finally have a comprehensive trial, but it’s left gastroenterologists with more questions than answers.
Quantum Frontiers
What distinguishes quantum from classical thermodynamics?
Should you require a model for an Oxford don in a play or novel, look no farther than Andrew Briggs....
27th Nov 2025
Should you require a model for an Oxford don in a play or novel, look no farther than Andrew Briggs. The emeritus professor of nanomaterials speaks with a southern-English accent as crisp as shortbread, exhibits manners to which etiquette influencer … Continue reading →
Peder M. Isager
Bakeoff
Formspree makes it easy to receive submissions from HTML forms on your static website. Functional...
1st Jul 2019
Formspree makes it easy to receive submissions from HTML forms on your static website. Functional Form This theme has a form-to-email feature built in, thanks to the simple Formspree integration. All you need to activate the form is a valid recipient email address saved in the...
Wanderingspace
Saturn Family Portrait
From planetary.org: On July 29, 2011, Cassini captured five of Saturn’s moons in a single frame with...
1st Jul 2022
From planetary.org: On July 29, 2011, Cassini captured five of Saturn’s moons in a single frame with its narrow-angle camera: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Rhea, and Mimas. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. This is a full-color look at a view that was originally published in...
Quantum Frontiers
Let gravity do its work
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort...
13th May 2024
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort consisted of two theoretical physicists, one computer scientist, and what appeared to be a normal person. I pressed the elevator’s 4 button, … Continue reading →
Eukaryote Writes...
Internet Harvest (2024, 1)
Free covid treatment for everyone in the US, a novel orthopox virus, a really big machine, cameras...
13th Mar 2024
Free covid treatment for everyone in the US, a novel orthopox virus, a really big machine, cameras used for good and evil, ant heaven now, and more.
Quanta Magazine
At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at...
1st Aug 2025
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.
The post At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Confessions of a...
Let’s argue against the Shark Cull with science
There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the...
1st Feb 2014
There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the Government put it, the “shark protection measures”) here in Western Australia. Just as I am not a climate scientist, I am not a shark biologist, and cannot claim to be a shark expert....
Quantum Frontiers
Ten lessons I learned from John Preskill
Last August, Toronto’s Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) gave me 35 minutes...
20th Jan 2025
Last August, Toronto’s Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) gave me 35 minutes to make fun of John Preskill in public. CQIQC was hosting its biannual conference, also called CQIQC, in Toronto. The conference features the awarding of … Continue reading →
Long Now
Nils Gilman: Deviant Globalization
### The anti-state economy
Gilman described deviant globalization as "the unpleasant underside of...
4th May 2010
### The anti-state economy
Gilman described deviant globalization as "the unpleasant underside of transnational integration."
There's nice tourism, and then sex tourism, such as in Thailand and Switzerland. The vast pharmacology industry is matched by a vast traffic in illegal...
brr
Brr Wants A Job
8 months post-ice, it's time for something new!
22nd Jul 2024
8 months post-ice, it's time for something new!
Works in Progress...
The evolution of bacteria
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists...
5th Nov 2025
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.
The Roots of...
Do we get better or worse at adapting to change?
Verner Vinge, in a classic 1993 essay, described “the Singularity” as an era where progress becomes...
6th Apr 2023
Verner Vinge, in a classic 1993 essay, described “the Singularity” as an era where progress becomes “an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.”
The idea that technological change might accelerate to a pace faster than we can keep up with is a common concern. Almost three...
Long Now
Larry Harvey: Why The Man Keeps Burning
## The Hundred Year Burn
"Burning Man is like one of those birthday candles you can’t blow out,”...
21st Oct 2014
## The Hundred Year Burn
"Burning Man is like one of those birthday candles you can’t blow out,” observed Burning Man’s primary founder and Chief Philosophical Officer. Indeed, Burning Man has thrived in the face of Burners and skeptics alike declaring it dead after each of its...
Long Now
Jonathan Rose: The Well Tempered City
### Coherent cities
What holds a city together? Rose noted that the earliest cities were built...
21st Sep 2016
### Coherent cities
What holds a city together? Rose noted that the earliest cities were built around a temple and the spirituality it embodied. As the early communities became larger and more diverse and complex, their economic activity intensified. To be effective in trade...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Two of My Science-Fiction Stories Published in May
View this email in your browser A Change of Pace from Astronomy News As you may know, I have been...
2nd Jun 2025
View this email in your browser A Change of Pace from Astronomy News As you may know, I have been writing science-fiction stories based on good astronomy as my retirement project. After a good number of rejections from the finest sci-fi magazines the world over, I am now...
Stephen Wolfram...
Towards a Computational Formalization for Foundations of Medicine
A Theory of Medicine? As it’s practiced today, medicine is almost always about particulars: “this...
3rd Feb 2025
A Theory of Medicine? As it’s practiced today, medicine is almost always about particulars: “this has gone wrong; this is how to fix it”. But might it also be possible to talk about medicine in a more general, more abstract way—and perhaps to create a framework in which one can...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: How Much Info Should A Patient Get? | Out-Of-Pocket
do we need our physicians to be interpreters?
9th Aug 2023
do we need our physicians to be interpreters?
Long Now
Renée DiResta: Disinformation Technology: How Online Propaganda Campaigns Are Influencing Us
Clandestine influence campaigns are rampant on social media. Whether pushing Russian agitprop or...
6th Apr 2020
Clandestine influence campaigns are rampant on social media. Whether pushing Russian agitprop or lies about vaccines, they can impact policy and make us question what is true. A technologist, Wall Street veteran, and citizen advisor to Congress, DiResta told us how bad it is and...
Willem Pennings
Home Assistant-compatible air quality sensor
I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh...
13th Dec 2021
I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh (outside) air through the house and recoups heat from the air that is exhausted. There is a problem with this system, though. Sometimes, for example when a neighbour lights their wood...
Melting Asphalt
2015 Meta
Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I...
11th Jan 2016
Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I published a paltry six full essays this year. Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of them. But still, six. It would be…
Read more ›
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Bicycle
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling...
28th Mar 2023
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you can guide the rider with the slider, and you can also...
The Quanta Podcast
The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve
The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound...
2nd Sep 2021
The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.
The post The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Works in Progress...
Samurai city
For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its...
2nd Jun 2026
For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its warlike samurai elite in the world’s least efficient city.
brr
Redeployment Part One
Emerging from winter and preparing for our first flight!
10th Jan 2024
Emerging from winter and preparing for our first flight!
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 8: Pale-billed Antpittas In The Elfin Forest (February 10, 2024)
February 10, 2024
The Pale-billed Antpitta is a large, fancy-looking Grallaria antpitta only found...
8th Jun 2024
February 10, 2024
The Pale-billed Antpitta is a large, fancy-looking Grallaria antpitta only found in the high Andes of northern Peru. Because of its proclivity towards dense forest with an abundance of bamboo, there are few places where this species can be easily found. These...
Inverted Passion
How mind bootstraps itself
Daniel Dennett, who recently passed away, is an inspiration for people like me who love grand ideas...
1st Jun 2026
Daniel Dennett, who recently passed away, is an inspiration for people like me who love grand ideas that connect many different fields at a deep level (and be rigorous about that; well as rigorous as grand theories can be). His thinking is difficult to categorize: part...
Eukaryote Writes...
Good posts from the Inkhaven blogging residency
Cannot stress this enough: literally everyone at the writing residency was good at this. Maybe...
28th Feb 2026
Cannot stress this enough: literally everyone at the writing residency was good at this. Maybe you'll find a new favorite blog among these.
Works in Progress...
The developing world needs more roads
The cities of the developing world could be its growth engine if their streets were not so...
11th Nov 2025
The cities of the developing world could be its growth engine if their streets were not so gridlocked. The solution is laying out wider roads.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Common ROI mistakes in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket
Plus some benchmark ROI numbers for you to think about
7th Jul 2025
Plus some benchmark ROI numbers for you to think about
Long Now
Rip Anderson & Gwyneth Cravens: Power to Save the World
### Nuclear Footprint
In the early 1980s Gwyneth Cravens was one of the protesters against the...
15th Sep 2007
### Nuclear Footprint
In the early 1980s Gwyneth Cravens was one of the protesters against the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island, and also participated in ban-the-bomb rallies. After 15 years of deepening familiarity with nuclear power, she says she still would ban the...
brr
The Beer Can
Connecting old and new.
18th Mar 2023
Yale E360
India Says Its Grasslands Are 'Wastelands.' Medieval Folklore Suggests Otherwise
The sprawling grasslands of western India are, in the popular imagination, the remains of woodlands...
2nd Feb 2026
The sprawling grasslands of western India are, in the popular imagination, the remains of woodlands that were leveled under British rule — areas to be reforested, rather than conserved. But a recent analysis of stories, songs, and poems from centuries past reveals that western...
Drew Ex Machina
The Dream: The First Probe to the Moon
The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as...
2nd Jan 2024
The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as well as the potential exploitation of its […]
lcamtuf’s thing
See it with your lying ears
This blog has a history of answering questions that no one should be asking. Today, we continue that...
10th Jan 2026
This blog has a history of answering questions that no one should be asking. Today, we continue that proud legacy.
Quanta Magazine
New Proofs Probe the Limits of Mathematical Truth
By proving a broader version of Hilbert’s famous 10th problem, two groups of mathematicians have...
3rd Feb 2025
By proving a broader version of Hilbert’s famous 10th problem, two groups of mathematicians have expanded the realm of mathematical unknowability.
The post New Proofs Probe the Limits of Mathematical Truth first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
The Race between Waymo, Cybercab, and Uber
One of the big tech transformations of 2026 will be robotaxis.
1st Jan 2026
One of the big tech transformations of 2026 will be robotaxis.
The Quanta Podcast
Graduate Student's Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture
Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad...
14th Sep 2022
Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.” Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix.
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Caves on Mars
Recently, in social media posts, Dr. Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute discussed the intriguing caves...
24th Nov 2024
Recently, in social media posts, Dr. Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute discussed the intriguing caves on the side of the giant martian volcano called Arsia Mons as interesting places for future exploration and even human residences. As it happens, my very first published...
The Quanta Podcast
The Infinite Heist - Part 1
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some...
3rd Mar 2026
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some ideas in it were stolen. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, the first of a two-parter, host Samir Patel speaks with math editor Jordana Cepelewicz about the hard-fought journey...
Asterisk
The Highway to NIMBYism
San Francisco’s history of collective decision-making helped prevent the city from being carved up...
1st May 2024
San Francisco’s history of collective decision-making helped prevent the city from being carved up by highways. Today, that same legacy prevents the city from building what it desperately needs: more housing.
Damn Interesting
To Hell With Facebook
The earliest known version of the idiom “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was written by the...
12th Jul 2021
The earliest known version of the idiom “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was written by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury in 1677, though it was concerned with horses and feathers:
“The last Dictate of the Judgement, concerning the Good or Bad, that may...
Works in Progress...
A look at Britain’s new DARPA
ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big...
10th Feb 2023
ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big bold bets on the scientific trajectories it thinks will benefit Britain – and change the future. We interviewed chief executive Ilan Gur and chairman Matt Clifford, to better...
wadertales
Learning from their elders
A 2026 paper in Animal Behaviour examines how quickly juvenile Black-tailed Godwits(right, with...
5th Feb 2026
A 2026 paper in Animal Behaviour examines how quickly juvenile Black-tailed Godwits(right, with juvenile Redshanks) acquire the feeding skills they will need to get them through their first winter. Josh Nightingale followed the same migration route taken by young birds, as they...
Interaction Magic -...
Octopus, solar & e-paper energy dashboards
I built a custom energy dashboard for my house using this beautiful, 2-bit colour, e-paper display....
19th May 2025
I built a custom energy dashboard for my house using this beautiful, 2-bit colour, e-paper display. Hardware, software, data and design.
The Quanta Podcast
The Art of Teaching Math and Science
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational...
26th Jan 2017
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational theory. What can we learn from the best teachers on the front lines?
The post The Art of Teaching Math and Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
wadertales
Is inbreeding a problem for England’s Black-tailed Godwits?
The current English breeding population of limosa Black-tailed Godwits is relatively new, arising...
29th Apr 2025
The current English breeding population of limosa Black-tailed Godwits is relatively new, arising from a recolonisation in the 1950s that is presumed to have involved Dutch-hatched individuals. Given that the number of breeding birds is small and that there has been a...
Long Now
Cory Doctorow: The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer
### Who governs digital trust?
Doctorow framed the question this way: "Computers are everywhere....
1st Aug 2012
### Who governs digital trust?
Doctorow framed the question this way: "Computers are everywhere. They are now something we put our whole bodies into---airplanes, cars---and something we put into our bodies---pacemakers, cochlear implants. They HAVE to be trustworthy."
Sometimes...
Eukaryote Writes...
Eukaryote in Asterisk Magazine + New Patreon Per-post setup
Eukaryote elsewhere I have an article in the latest issue of Asterisk Magazine. After you get really...
14th Apr 2023
Eukaryote elsewhere I have an article in the latest issue of Asterisk Magazine. After you get really deep into the weeds of invertebrate sentience and fish welfare and the scale of factory farming, what do you do with that information vis-a-vis what you feel comfortable eating?...
Long Now
Sylvia Earle & Tierney Thys: Oceanic
### Oceans alive
Neither of them eats fish.
Both marine biologists applaud the improved regulation...
21st May 2014
### Oceans alive
Neither of them eats fish.
Both marine biologists applaud the improved regulation of American fishing and the resulting recovery of important fisheries, but they note that 90% of our seafood is imported, and one-third of that is caught illegally. Two-thirds of...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
What Do Hospitals Care About? | Out-Of-Pocket
Let’s look at three big priorities and a real hospital
11th Feb 2025
Let’s look at three big priorities and a real hospital
Long Now
Frank Gavin: Five Ways to Use History Well
### History-savvy Policy
Why do policy makers and historians shun each other? Gavin observed that...
13th Jul 2010
### History-savvy Policy
Why do policy makers and historians shun each other? Gavin observed that policy people want actionable information, certainty, and simple explanations. Meanwhile historians revel in nuance, distrust simple explanations and also distrust power and those...
lcamtuf’s thing
Cursed circuits #5: capacitance multiplier
Capacitor vendors don't want you to know this! Save money on capacitors by spending more on other...
5th Jul 2026
Capacitor vendors don't want you to know this! Save money on capacitors by spending more on other components
Chris Grossack's...
$\mathsf{B}\text{Diff}(\Sigma)$ Classifies $\Sigma$-bundles
I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the
cobordism hypothesis,...
21st Dec 2024
I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the
cobordism hypothesis, and how to use $(\infty,n)$-categories. This is all
in service of some stuff I’m doing with skein algebras (which are part of a
“$3+1$ TQFT” often named after Crane–Yetter, but...
Asterisk
The Perplexing Appeal of <i>The Telepathy Tapes</i>
The Telepathy Tapes claims that autistic children have the ability to read minds. Where do their...
6th Nov 2025
The Telepathy Tapes claims that autistic children have the ability to read minds. Where do their claims come from — and why do so many people believe them?
The Roots of...
Get your fine, handcrafted artisanal essays right here
I don’t use AI to draft my writing. These are fine handcrafted artisanal essays, every word placed...
10th Jun 2026
I don’t use AI to draft my writing. These are fine handcrafted artisanal essays, every word placed individually with loving care.
I use AI a lot for researching, occasionally for brainstorming, and increasingly for fact-checking. But not for outlining, drafting, or directly...
Beautiful Public...
All of the 8,291 License Plates in America
States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations,...
21st Aug 2023
States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations, professions, sports teams, causes and other groups.
Drew Ex Machina
The Soviet Zond 3 Lunar Flyby: Revealing the Rest of the Far Side
Naturally, the early history of space exploration is filled with firsts. Just six decades ago at...
18th Jul 2025
Naturally, the early history of space exploration is filled with firsts. Just six decades ago at this time, the world watched as NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft […]
Probably...
Multiple Regression with StatsModels
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from...
4th Dec 2024
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 10, which is about multiple regression. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In the previous...
Uncharted...
How AI Will Change Media
Work with me to make it happen
3rd Apr 2026
Work with me to make it happen
The Quanta Podcast
To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all...
9th May 2019
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all depend on comparisons between ongoing actual experiences and the brain’s modeled expectations.
The post To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future...
Long Now
Alexander Rose, Brian Eno, & Stewart Brand: Long Finance: The Enduring Value Conference
### Enduring Value
In February 02010, [Brian Eno](../../../../people/board/prospect4/), [Stewart...
1st Feb 2010
### Enduring Value
In February 02010, [Brian Eno](../../../../people/board/prospect4/), [Stewart Brand](../../../../people/board/sb1/), and [Alexander Rose](../../../../people/staff/zander/) spoke at the [Long Finance...
Long Now
Drew Endy & Jim Thomas: Synthetic Biology Debate
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy...
18th Nov 2008
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through "learning by building." The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction...
Uncharted...
The Top 50 US Cities: Why Are They Where They Are?
The geographic and historical reasons that have made some spots in the country the most populated...
8th Jan 2025
The geographic and historical reasons that have made some spots in the country the most populated ones
The Works in...
The end of lead
How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
3rd Jul 2025
How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
Long Now
Ramez Naam: Enhancing Humans, Advancing Humanity
### Enhancing humans and humanity
Beginning with the accelerating pace of biotech tools for human...
23rd Jul 2015
### Enhancing humans and humanity
Beginning with the accelerating pace of biotech tools for human health and enhancement, Naam noted that health issues such as disease prevention will be drastically easier to implement than enhancement. Preventing some hereditary diseases can be...
Uncharted...
Iran: The Day After
What's going to happen in the coming days and weeks?
3rd Mar 2026
What's going to happen in the coming days and weeks?
Works in Progress...
Who’s afraid of artificial flavors?
‘Artificial’ didn’t scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare them now?
8th May 2026
‘Artificial’ didn’t scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare them now?
Andrew Fraknoi –...
A Nice (Almost Total) Eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
How to get information about viewing the eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
The post A Nice (Almost Total)...
3 weeks ago
How to get information about viewing the eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
The post A Nice (Almost Total) Eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Patient Messaging Conundrum pt. 2 | Out-Of-Pocket
Some thoughts from an academic, a behavioral scientist, a patient, and more
3rd Oct 2023
Some thoughts from an academic, a behavioral scientist, a patient, and more
nanoscale views
Energy storage in the internal states of molecules - old and new
A science story first, then a US research ecosystem story later.
When we think about using molecules...
2nd May 2026
A science story first, then a US research ecosystem story later.
When we think about using molecules to store energy, it's usually in the context of food or fuel, so that chemical reactions take place - bonds are broken and remade, and in an exothermic reaction, the products end...
NeuroLogica Blog
Hydrogen Tech
I often get questions like the one below:
“I live part time in Japan. Everyone sees hydrogen powered...
3rd Jul 2026
I often get questions like the one below:
“I live part time in Japan. Everyone sees hydrogen powered generators, trains, trucks, etc regularly. High density population means it’s easy to get enough synergy to justify the infrastructure. So sad we aren’t doing more to utilize this...
Marine Madness
Culture Club: Time to let the cetaceans in?
Up until recently, culture has been thought of as a primarily human characteristic. However, recent...
29th Jul 2021
Up until recently, culture has been thought of as a primarily human characteristic. However, recent studies shine a light on the fact that non-human animals including Cetaceans (dolphins and whales), may also possess it. They live in tightly-knit social communities, exhibit...
Long Now
Philip Rosedale: 'Second Life:' What Do We Learn If We Digitize EVERYTHING?
### 2nd Life takes off
What is real life coming to owe digital life?
After a couple years in the...
1st Dec 2006
### 2nd Life takes off
What is real life coming to owe digital life?
After a couple years in the flat part of exponential growth, the steep part is now arriving for the massive multi-player online world construction kit called "Second Life." With 1.7 million accounts,...
The Roots of...
The Unlimited Horizon, part 2
Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1.
Is there really that much more progress to be made in the...
27th Aug 2025
Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1.
Is there really that much more progress to be made in the future? How many problems are left to solve? How much better could life really get?
After all, we are pretty comfortable today. We have electricity, clean running water, heating...
Interaction Magic -...
Think outside the screen
Nobody likes stroking a pane of glass, so why do we love touchscreens so much? Let's build...
10th Nov 2018
Nobody likes stroking a pane of glass, so why do we love touchscreens so much? Let's build distributed interfaces that work.
The Quanta Podcast
Ants Live 10 Times Longer by Altering Their Insulin Responses
Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their...
7th Jun 2023
Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Good Times” by Patrick Patrikios.
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Copper and Green Energy
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The...
1st Jul 2024
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The current list of 54 materials includes elements that are presently critical to a transition to green energy, such as the rare earth elements important to turbine generators, and...
nanoscale views
Brief items - Static electricity, quantum geometry, Hubbard model, + news
It's been a busy time that has cut into my blogging, but I wanted to point out some links from the...
8th Aug 2025
It's been a busy time that has cut into my blogging, but I wanted to point out some links from the past couple of weeks.
Physics Today has a cover article this past issue about what is colloquially known as static electricity, but what is more technically described as...
brr
Sunset
Hunkering down for the winter!
9th Apr 2023
Hunkering down for the winter!
Long Now
Michael Tubbs: Upsetting the Setup: Creating a California for All
Governance moves slow.
The work of the politician and the public servant ought to inherently be...
16th Aug 2022
Governance moves slow.
The work of the politician and the public servant ought to inherently be one of long-term thinking — of taking in concerns both urgent and longstanding and crafting solutions to them that will live on beyond any official’s term of office.
As Mayor of...
The Works in...
The world of tomorrow
When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
2nd Jun 2025
When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
Conservation...
In climate fight, ‘nature vs tech’ a false debate
2nd Dec 2024
Peder M. Isager
Typography Styles & Element Examples
Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem
(96px) 5rem
(80px) 3rem
(48px) 2.25rem
(36px) 1.5rem
(24px)...
18th Feb 2019
Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem
(96px) 5rem
(80px) 3rem
(48px) 2.25rem
(36px) 1.5rem
(24px) 1.25rem
(20px) 1rem
(16px) .875rem
(14px) Type Samples Headline Subheadline Level 1 Heading One page to rule them all...well, not really. This page displays sample typography and page...
NeuroLogica Blog
How Much Do Couples Share Traits?
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms,...
5th Sep 2023
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms, which means that they are commonly offered as generally accepted truths, but also that they may by wrong. People like pithy phrases, so they spread prolifically, but that does not mean...
Damn Interesting
Pushing the Envelope
As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life...
15th Apr 2021
As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life insurance policies were prohibitively expensive. Rather than pay the exorbitant insurance fees, the astronauts devised a system to ensure their wives and children would be financially...
Cremieux Recueil
Americans Are Richer Than Everyone Else
The U.S. is the place to be if you're ambitious, but not necessarily if you're poor
7th Aug 2026
The U.S. is the place to be if you're ambitious, but not necessarily if you're poor
John Salvatier
If only we had taller been
Ray Bradbury once explained with a poem why he writes science fiction and why space travel is so...
4th Mar 2017
Ray Bradbury once explained with a poem why he writes science fiction and why space travel is so important to him. It is perhaps my favorite poem.
Text version:
The fence we walked between the years
We ached and almost touched that stuff;
O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand...
wadertales
How do wader chicks respond to being handled?
Every wader researcher knows that their actions can have negative consequences for the birds they...
5th Oct 2024
Every wader researcher knows that their actions can have negative consequences for the birds they are studying. Given that most shorebird species are in trouble or causing concern, conservation science is a tricky balancing act between ‘need to understand’ and ‘disturbance’. In...
Long Now
Juan Enriquez: Mapping the Frontier of Knowledge
### Mapping Life
"All life is imperfectly transmitted code," Enriquez began, "and it is...
13th Oct 2007
### Mapping Life
"All life is imperfectly transmitted code," Enriquez began, "and it is promiscuous." Thus discoveries like the one last month of an entire bacterial genome inside the DNA of a fruitfly is exploding the old tree-of-life models of evolution. The emerging map...
Confessions of a...
Predation of juvenile reef fish in coral patches at Ningaloo Reef
The second research article I have decided to discuss is one I had the pleasure to be involved with!...
11th Feb 2013
The second research article I have decided to discuss is one I had the pleasure to be involved with! In fact, it was the first paper I was a co-author on, after linking up with the Department of Environment and Conservation through an ANNiMS internship program. The paper was...
IEEE Spectrum
The Saga of AD-X2, the Battery Additive That Roiled the NBS
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of...
1st Aug 2024
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and his reinstatement after more than 400 scientists threatened to resign. Who knew a little box of salt could stir up such drama?
What was AD-X2?
It all started in 1947 when...
Asterisk
Scam Cities
Criminal networks throughout Southeast Asia are demonstrating the dangers of making “the ultimate...
6th Oct 2025
Criminal networks throughout Southeast Asia are demonstrating the dangers of making “the ultimate exit.”
Cremieux Recueil
Bad Drugs Get Pulled Fast
Safety issues usually get identified and acted on quickly
3rd Aug 2025
Safety issues usually get identified and acted on quickly
The Quanta Podcast
The New History of the Milky Way
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
The post...
4th Mar 2021
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
The post The New History of the Milky Way first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Quanta Podcast
Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars
Just months after their discovery, gravitational waves coming from the mergers of black holes...
13th Oct 2016
Just months after their discovery, gravitational waves coming from the mergers of black holes are shaking up astrophysics.
The post Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Emergent, Fringe Behaviors in Healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket
tweeting out your labs, induced mental states, and more
2nd May 2025
tweeting out your labs, induced mental states, and more
The Quanta Podcast
Where We See Shapes, AI Sees Textures
To researchers’ surprise, deep learning vision algorithms often fail at classifying images because...
4th Jun 2020
To researchers’ surprise, deep learning vision algorithms often fail at classifying images because they mostly take cues from textures, not shapes.
The post Where We See Shapes, AI Sees Textures first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Peder M. Isager
Why experiments are considered gold standard for answering causal questions
In this blog post, I will briefly explain why experimental designs are considered so valuable by...
7th Aug 2025
In this blog post, I will briefly explain why experimental designs are considered so valuable by scientists and why we often insist that randomized experiments are necessary for answering causal questions. I will use a practical example to illustrate this point. If you’re new to...
Damn Interesting
This is Dang Interesting
Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year.
We at this website know, reluctantly, that...
2nd Jan 2023
Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year.
We at this website know, reluctantly, that “d*mn” is not always a welcome word. Additionally, we are aware that we have a few articles sporting even saltier vocabularies (settle down, Colonel Sanders!). Countless school...
Quanta Magazine
Scientists Find a Fast Way to Describe Quantum Systems
After years of false starts, a team of computer scientists has found a way to efficiently deduce the...
1st May 2024
After years of false starts, a team of computer scientists has found a way to efficiently deduce the Hamiltonian of a physical system at any constant temperature.
The post Scientists Find a Fast Way to Describe Quantum Systems first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Confessions of a...
Marine Ecology or Marine Biology….what’s the difference!?!?!?
A few of you may be wondering why the blog is called ‘Confessions of a Marine Ecologist” and not...
22nd Jan 2013
A few of you may be wondering why the blog is called ‘Confessions of a Marine Ecologist” and not ‘Confessions of a Marine Biologist”. After all, if you ask a group of school kids what they want to be when they grow up, more than a handful would happily answer “marine biologist”,...
NeuroLogica Blog
Plan To Build First Commercial Fusion Reactor
How close are we to having fusion reactors actually sending electric power to the grid? This is a...
6th Jan 2025
How close are we to having fusion reactors actually sending electric power to the grid? This is a huge and complicated question, and one with massive implications for our civilization. I think we are still at the point where we cannot count on fusion reactors coming online...
wadertales
The call of the Whimbrel
The seven-note whistle of the Whimbrel is a classic sound, welcomed by Icelanders at the end of a...
6th Feb 2025
The seven-note whistle of the Whimbrel is a classic sound, welcomed by Icelanders at the end of a long, dark winter. These wonderful waders are responding badly to recent changes to Iceland’s landscape, such as the ever-expanding areas of non-native forestry and power...
Interaction Magic -...
Modelling my brain
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of...
29th Mar 2021
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of it.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How Value-Based Care Contracting Works with Accorded | Out-Of-Pocket
With calculators and contracts you can see yourself
19th Sep 2023
With calculators and contracts you can see yourself
nanoscale views
FY27 Presidential budget request
To the surprise of no one at all, the 2027 presidential budget request is extremely bad for...
3rd Apr 2026
To the surprise of no one at all, the 2027 presidential budget request is extremely bad for science. Remember, this is largely a political document, and Congress does not have to follow this. In the past year, Congress largely ignored the recommendations and appropriated a much...
The Quanta Podcast
A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life
Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance...
1st Apr 2021
Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance may regulate vital processes.
The post A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine
ToughSF
Fusion Highways in Space
A transport system that can get spacecraft to Jupiter in 10 days, but without a massive onboard...
11th Mar 2021
A transport system that can get spacecraft to Jupiter in 10 days, but without a massive onboard reactor, using antimatter fuel or riding a gigantic laser beam?
What we need instead is a Fusion Highway to connect the Solar System in unprecedented ways.
The art above is by...
The Quanta Podcast
Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins
Modern humans and more ancient hominins interbred many times throughout Eurasia and Africa, and the...
13th Aug 2020
Modern humans and more ancient hominins interbred many times throughout Eurasia and Africa, and the genetic flow went both ways.
The post Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Quanta Podcast
When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field
The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a...
29th Jul 2025
The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a voice, Siri a brain and social media companies another way to target us with ads. In less than five years, large language models broke NLP and made it anew.
The Quanta Podcast,...
Conservation...
Countries agreed to protect 30% of the planet. Now what?
6th Sep 2024
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Transforming Healthcare Data with Tuva Health | Out-Of-Pocket
The nitty, gritty, and shitty of working with health data
1st Nov 2023
The nitty, gritty, and shitty of working with health data
Eukaryote Writes...
Internet Harvest (2020, 1)
Internet Harvest is a selection of the most succulent links on the internet that I’ve recently...
1st Feb 2020
Internet Harvest is a selection of the most succulent links on the internet that I’ve recently plucked from its fruitful boughs.
Quantum Frontiers
It from Qubit: The Last Hurrah
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a...
9th Aug 2023
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a group of scientists drawing on ideas from quantum information theory to address deep issues in fundamental physics. The collaboration held its “Last Hurrah” event at … Continue...
Works in Progress...
The ultimate horse
Selective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?
5th Aug 2026
Selective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?
Willem Pennings
Fixing my heating system
The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm...
3rd May 2024
The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm water to the underfloor heating system of about a dozen apartments, including mine. During the warm summer months, the system supplies cool water instead. The heat pumps figure out...
Inverted Passion
How to coach someone
This essay is part of the series in which I talk about my learnings and insights building a habit...
5th Apr 2026
This essay is part of the series in which I talk about my learnings and insights building a habit coaching app (Nintee) in 2024. It didn’t ultimately work out because an app has marginal influence in a human’s life (v/s that of friends, family, culture and immediate environment)....
NeuroLogica Blog
2023 Hottest Year on Record
What everyone knew was coming is now official – 2023 was the warmest year on record. This means we...
2nd Jan 2024
What everyone knew was coming is now official – 2023 was the warmest year on record. This means we can also say that the last 10 years are the hottest decade on record. 2023 dethrones 2016 as the previous warmest year and bumps 2010 out of the top 10. Further, in the last half of...
Wanderingspace
ISS Looks Like a Toy
These animated gifs of The International Space Station look just like metal toys — but they are...
4th Jul 2021
These animated gifs of The International Space Station look just like metal toys — but they are real. Each frame is taken with ground based amateur telescopes and then pieced together with common image software like Adobe Photoshop.
It is incredible to me that there are people...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Pregnancy taught me a lot about healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket
A personal story and a patient journey
3rd Aug 2026
A personal story and a patient journey
Long Now
Ed Lu: Anthropocene Astronomy: Thwarting Dangerous Asteroids Begins with Finding Them
### The last killer asteroid
Kevin Kelly wrote the following about Ed Lu’s Seminar About Long-term...
19th Jun 2013
### The last killer asteroid
Kevin Kelly wrote the following about Ed Lu’s Seminar About Long-term Thinking (SALT) titled “Anthropocene Astronomy: Thwarting Dangerous Asteroids Begins with Finding Them”...
Last night's SALT talk was one of the most important ones we ever...
ToughSF
Hypervelocity Tether Rockets
Rotating tethers can reach incredible velocities when they are built out of high strength materials....
10th Oct 2022
Rotating tethers can reach incredible velocities when they are built out of high strength materials. With some design features, they can greatly surpass the exhaust velocities of chemical or even nuclear rockets. They can become propulsion systems with impressive performance......
The Quanta Podcast
The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves
Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms....
5th Nov 2020
Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms. But a new idea that borrows from the hinterlands of probability theory has the potential to predict them all.
The post The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves first...
Yale E360
African Forests Have Become a Source of Carbon Emissions
Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that...
1st Dec 2025
Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilizers.
Read more on E360 →
IEEE Spectrum
Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies...
16th Nov 2023
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies including the Alto—the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface—and the first laser printer.
The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a...
Chris Grossack's...
Where Do Those Undergraduate Divisibility Problems Come From?
Oftentimes in your “intro to proofs” class or your first “discrete math” class
or something...
16th Jan 2025
Oftentimes in your “intro to proofs” class or your first “discrete math” class
or something similar, you’ll be shown problems of the form “prove that for
$n^6 + n^3 + 2n^2 + 2n$ is a multiple of $6$ for every $n$”… But where do
these problems come from? And have you ever...
Works in Progress...
How Amsterdam invented the fire department
In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam was likely the wealthiest city in the world. Global trade and...
1st Jul 2026
In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam was likely the wealthiest city in the world. Global trade and local industry financed its artistic masterpieces and furnished the abundant foods and household goods that Dutch painters immortalized in still lifes and domestic scenes. But...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To (Properly) Text Patients | Out-Of-Pocket
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
10th Apr 2024
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
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