Bonus Info on Dark Energy and Muons

I had two pieces up this month, one in New Scientist and one in Quanta. I figured I'd give a bit of "bonus info" for both here. The New Scientist piece covered a paper arguing that, according to the supernova evidence, there is no need for dark energy, because the universe isn't speeding up after all. That's a pretty dramatic claim, and it's one the majority of cosmologists don't agree with.

4gravitons.com

Quantum Apologetics and Quantum Theology

As an atheist, I started out frustrated by how little interest religious people had in debating their beliefs. Much of that was probably to do with how obnoxious it was to be "debated" by a socially awkward ten-year-old. But as I appreciate now, defending religious beliefs is just not a core activity for most religious people, even the experts. While there are many theologians who study the doctrines of their various religions, only a few engage in…

4gravitons.com

Dark energy doesn't exist, claims controversial paper | New Scientist

An analysis of supernovae argues that the universe’s expansion is not speeding up, so there is no need for dark energy to exist to explain it

newscientist.com

In Defense of Reductionist Chauvinism

I don't think people who argue about reductionism are really arguing about reductionism. Reductionism is the idea that the behavior of big, complicated things (people, economies, ecosystems) boils down to the behavior of their smallest constituents (molecules, atoms, subatomic particles). It's often contrasted with emergence, the idea that new rules emerge in those big, complicated systems that are more than just the rules that govern the smallest scales.

4gravitons.com

Amplitudes 2026, Part II

This is a continuation of my conference coverage from last week. The same warnings apply: this is much more technical than my usual posts, readers beware! Last week I covered the talks from Monday through Wednesday, so I'll jump right in here with Thursday morning, where the first speaker was Francesco Riva, who after a brief ad for his new board game…

4gravitons.com

Irelands Oldest Pub - The Brazen Head

The Brazen Head, Irelands oldest pub, Est. 1198. Enjoy traditional Irish music, Irish food and a traditional Irish bar in the heart of Dublin city.

brazenhead.com

Amplitudes 2026

This week was Amplitudes, my old subfield's big yearly conference. This year, it's at Queen Mary University of London. I'm too busy to attend these days, now that nobody is paying me a salary to do that sort of thing. But it's still a good chance to keep up with the field, which helps me find stories. And I know I have a few readers who are interested.

4gravitons.com

This physicist is hunting for the biggest black hole in the universe

Astronomers have recently started looking for black holes bigger than galaxies. Brian Lacki explains how these “stupendously large black holes” might be used by alien civilisations, and what makes the...

newscientist.com

At Lancefest

It's been a while since I've said this: I'm at a conference this week! Specifically, I'm at Lancefest, which is not just any old conference, but a birthday conference for Lance Dixon. When a renowned academic turns 60 or so, their students and collaborators hold a birthday party-flavored conference for them. The conferences are usually a mix of academic talks and reminiscences, with the occasional roast thrown in.

4gravitons.com

Radiation Radiates

I recently finished reading The Orphan Master's Son, a (Pulitzer-winning, apparently) novel set in 2000's-era North Korea. In one plot point, Kim Jong Il has agents steal a Japanese telescope designed to measure the cosmic microwave background radiation, under the mistaken impression that it will help him find uranium. The novel plays it for (horrified) laughs, but I've seen this kind of misunderstanding crop up in the real world too.

4gravitons.com

The history of eyeballs as particle detectors

Some physicists at the early cyclotrons used their vision to locate high-energy particles. Since then, medical researchers have gained a better understanding of how particles can interact with the hum...

physicstoday.aip.org

An AI Opinions Chart

You ever read something and suddenly a whole classification scheme lights up in your head? A thread on X from "stringking42069" showed me a combination of opinions I hadn't seen before. stringking42069 is a pro-string theory commentator with a macho gym bro memer gimmick. He's openly contemptuous of many physicists who describe themselves as string theorists, arguing that only a smaller number really deserve the name.

4gravitons.com

Should You Read What You Cite? That Depends

When arXiv announced it would ban people for hallucinated citations, that is citations of papers that don't exist, the discussion online got sidetracked by the question of whether academics actually read the papers they cite. Some people proudly insisted that any good scholar always reads every paper they reference, others argued that was ridiculous. As always, the answer is never that simple.

4gravitons.com

Doing Things Well Is an International Activity

In the US, funding agencies seem to be increasingly opposed to an often inevitable feature of good science: international collaboration. Scientists have been told by officials at the National Institutes of Health that they need to remove mention of foreign collaborators from progress reports, or that they need to avoid such collaborations to begin with. At NASA, officials have told scientists that rather than just avoiding funding work in China, they should actively avoid collaborating with Chinese researchers.

4gravitons.com

ArXiv Will Ban You for Hallucinated References

Thomas Dietterich, Chair of the Computer Science section of the preprint server arXiv.org, recently clarified the site's policies towards "hallucinated" citations and other signs of careless use of AI in a post on X. If your paper contains a citation to a paper that doesn't actually exist, or has other signs you didn't read it before posting like leftover commentary (the example he gave was "here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"), then you can get banned from the arXiv for one year.

4gravitons.com

Make No Mistakes

I'm taking a Danish exam next week, and it's a big one, a culmination of years learning the language. My classmates are stressed. Despite how much we've learned, it feels like we're always making little mistakes. We write the wrong prepositions, put verbs in the wrong form, or mess up the order of words in a sentence. And while we should have time to check our work, that doesn't help as much as it should.

4gravitons.com

Bonus Info for “100-year-old assumption about the universe may soon be overturned”

I had a piece up in New Scientist last week (paywalled, sorry!), about a new analysis that suggests the universe is less homogeneous (more "lumpy") that most cosmologists believe. The piece was a bit different than my usual. Normally I do what people in the biz call "features": longer articles about general trends. This was a much more classic "news piece".

4gravitons.com

Breakthrough Prize 2026

Because of last week's "bonus info" post, I'm only now getting around to commenting on this year's Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics. While I don't comment on them every year, I know enough about several of this year's winners that I figured a post would be helpful. For those who haven't heard of it, the Breakthrough Prizes are a bit like the Nobel, if it was created by a 21st century rich person instead of a 19th century one.

4gravitons.com

100-year-old assumption about the universe may soon be overturned

Physicists have long assumed that the universe is uniform at very large scales, but evidence is emerging this is wrong and suggests a way to resolve some of the biggest cosmological mysteries

newscientist.com