This award is very hard to respond to. I have received many hundred congratulatory notes, from former students, post-docs, Princeton University juniors and seniors, funding agencies and foundations, authors, signature collectors, amateurs, elementary school neural network

Hello! Quanta Magazine is hiring a 6-month science writing fellow to be based in our NYC office from Jan through June 2025. Consider applying and sharing with your networks. $29/hour + medical benefits. simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simonsfo…

A striking moment of self-awareness from David Brooks

We need this 20-year-old kid Dean Withers to lead the way.

I knocked a lot of doors this past year on my campaign and asked people what issues were most important to them. Here are some of the key takeaways from my time spent talking to people here in Texas:

🚨 🚨 A Canary in Kentucky A 🧵 Tuesday, an election was held in Kentucky on an issue that occupies the core of every level of the right-wing movement that just dominated the national election. 1/

I hate to put a lot of highly paid pundits out of business, but look at this f**king graph

He's not wrong

Before they leave office Biden and Harris should do a public, long, extremely clear campaign to tell everyone where US is in terms of its economy. Give interviews to everyone, go on Rogan, publish tweets, everything. Set the baseline very clearly.

How did simple chemical reactions give rise to complex life? Recent studies of asteroid and comet material add to the evidence that the first steps of the chemical assembly process happen in space — and happen very readily. Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 reports: quantamagazine.org/the-cosmos-tee…

Coming up 12/3, join SloanPublic Leon Levy Center for Biography fellow @patchenbarss as he discusses his new biography on Nobel Prize-winning scientist Roger Penrose. A conversation with journalist Natalie Wolchover gc.cuny.edu/events/patchen…

🧪A free event in NYC tomorrow (Tuesday, 6:30pm): Natalie Wolchover Natalie Wolchover interviewing Patchen Barss Patchen Barss, who has written a biography of Nobel Prize-winning (and controversial) black-hole theorist Roger Penrose, Hawking's collaborator. eventbrite.com/e/patchen-bars…

The universe is becoming evermore disordered — or so says the dogma about the second law of thermodynamics. In a new interactive story, Zack Savitsky reports on how scientists’ understanding of entropy and its inexorable rise has deepened over 200 years. quantamagazine.org/what-is-entrop…

It really is!

Will 2024 be remembered as a banner year in the quest to understand the universe, or an average one? That depends on whether a result from the spring turns out to be real. Senior physics editor Natalie Wolchover summarizes 2024’s physical discoveries: quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-ph…

Here are some of the biggest breakthroughs in physics this year 🧵

We knew it, but seeing the data laid out – it's still shocking: higher taxes for most, deep cuts to Medicaid & SNAP—all to fund tax breaks for the top 1%. It's difficult to fully grasp the scale of the con being perpetrated on Americans right now by the Trump administration.

In general relativity, “singularities” are mathematical anomalies where Einstein’s equations break down. For decades, the hope has been that quantum physics would correct these aberrations. What happens if that’s not the case? Charlie Wood reports: quantamagazine.org/singularities-…

What if gravity isn’t a pull from mass, but a push from entropy? George Musser reports on the latest version of an old idea: quantamagazine.org/is-gravity-jus…

This summer, staff writer Charlie Wood (Charlie Wood) joined hundreds of physicists on a journey to Helgoland, the birthplace of quantum mechanics. The conversation was light, centering around questions like, where does our reality come from? quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a-b…