It is with great sadness that the Simons Foundation announces the death of its co-founder and chair emeritus, James Harris Simons. Jim was an award-winning mathematician, a legendary investor and a generous philanthropist. simonsfoundation.org/2024/05/10/sim…

The hunt for dark matter has turned up zero WIMPs, and no axions to speak of. Now physicists have broadened the search to include whole families of “feebly interacting” particles. lyndie reports: quantamagazine.org/dogged-dark-ma…

AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless Possibilities

Using AI, string theorists are finally showing how Calabi-Yau manifolds translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.

🔥by Charlie Wood

quantamagazine.org/ai-starts-to-s…

Beautiful 2017 profile of Daniel Dennett by Joshua Rothman. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…

A group of 39 prominent biologists and philosophers has released the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, a document that states that there’s a “realistic possibility” of consciousness in many animals. Dan Falk reports: quantamagazine.org/insects-and-ot…

New clues about fundamental physics could come from LISA, a spacecraft designed to detect gravitational waves that was recently approved by the European Space Agency. Elise Cutts reports: quantamagazine.org/hopes-of-big-b…

The beauty of spring around the world - a thread 🧵

1. A desert bloom in Utah by Emily Dickey

I'm thrilled and humbled to announce that I will be succeeding the visionary Thomas Lin as Editor in Chief of Quanta Magazine. I can't wait to begin working with the remarkable staff there!

Dear Quanta Magazine Readers: Today is my last day as editor-in-chief of the magazine. Thank you for taking this unforgettable journey with me. I don't know that I have the words to express what these past 11 years have meant to me, but I wrote a few here. quantamagazine.org/my-fantastic-v…

Total eclipse at Natalie Wolchover’s White Springs Ranch in Blanco, Texas. The clouds parted at just the right moment. #Eclipse2024

Everyone knows there will be a solar eclipse on April 8, thanks to thousands of years of science. Josh Sokol reports: quantamagazine.org/how-the-ancien…

In a major analysis published today, physicists describe subtle hints that the mysterious “dark” energy driving the accelerating expansion of the universe may be weakening with time — a finding that has the potential to shake the foundations of physics. Charlie Wood reports.…

This morning, myself Max G. Levy Shi En Kim, PhD and Maddie Bender launched a brand new science magazine. It's called Sequencer. Find us Sequencer Magazine

sequencermag.com

I have a commentary in Nature about our disquieting inability to explain why 2023 was so warm. nature.com/articles/d4158…

Hello! I’m back on the job as physics editor Quanta Magazine and eager for pitches. X’s science journalism community has become something of a bleached coral reef, but any writers out there with story ideas or general interest in working together, please DM me. Thanks! 💡✍️

I cancelled my New York Times subscription this morning. I'll miss the recipes. p.s. You don't have to like Biden to dislike a newspaper fawning on a clown who wants to be a dictator.

News! (And there's time for this to become a wave.) Public radio in Vermont announced it will dial back the horse race and take a 'citizens agenda' approach to covering the 2024 election. vermontpublic.org/local-news/202… 1/

Last week CNN asked me how I explain the downturn in the news industry: big layoffs, scant investment, no recovery in sight.

A list of factors is not an explanation, I said. But that is what I have.

So here's my thread. None of it should be news to people in the business. 0/

Did a human write this

Today, my book is finally in the world. This project has been a labor of love over almost five years, but also, in a real way, my entire life.

Now OUR MOON belongs to everyone. I hope it changes how you see the Moon, the Earth, and ourselves 🌕
Buy it: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611468/o…