Ricard Solé
@ricardsole.bsky.social
Scientist & skeptic. Dad. Book addict. Pathologically curious. Origins and Evolution of Complexity, Synthetic Transitions, Liquid Brains, and Earth Terraformation. ICREA, SFI & CSH professor. Author. Secular humanist.
Just four years ago, intelligent humanoid robots, robot-driven wars or thinking and talking machines able to mirror us still belonged largely to science fiction. No AGI yet, but the cultural and psychological shock wave of AI is already spreading fast. How far are we from Asimov’s dreams?
Hong Wang, who proved the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture, has just won the Fields Medal, making her the third woman in the award’s 90-year history to receive math’s highest honor. Read our profile: www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...
Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman Ever | Quanta Magazine
Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal.
quantamagazine.org
There are probably tens of thousands of undiscovered ancient earthworks known as geoglyphs in the Amazon, new imaging research shows. Click through to see photos.
Hundreds of never-before-seen ancient ‘earthworks’ discovered in the Amazon
Many of these structures date to around C.E. 100–300, during the time of the Aquiry civilization, and may have been used for ceremonial purposes
scientificamerican.com
My column on how capital becomes a death cult. Faced with a choice between profit and human life, the radical right chooses profit. Then it tries to persuade us that mass death is what we want. It's the new phase of climate denial: accept your fate, earthlings. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Murderous heat, an endangered food supply, decimated landscapes: embrace the Mediterranean life | George Monbiot
As climate disaster stares us in the face, the radical right says ‘Embrace the Mediterranean life’. Embrace death, more like it, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
theguardian.com
What does it mean for a human being to die? How is death connected to different levels/types of consciousness -or its absence? Rather than treating these as separate scenarios, a space of consciousness can help reveal their relationships, as I discuss in my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book.
Can we engineer longer lives without also increasing cancer risk? There is no magic trick, but experiments in mice show that combining telomerase with extra tumour-suppressor genes can extend lifespan while keeping cancer at bay. One example from my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book.
Major highway of the human nervous system gets a complete road map | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
Major highway of the human nervous system gets a complete road map
First comprehensive map of the vagus nerve may point to more precise stimulation therapies
science.org
A scientific exploration of the varied forms, origins, and meanings of death. Endless Endings by @ricardsole.bsky.social is now available (29 September UK pub). Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
What separates life from death? What makes the cell on the left different from the one on the right? These are questions I explore in my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book. At the cell scale, death begins when the distinction between inside & outside collapses. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Took the kids to a beautiful sandswept beach nearby but miscalculated and got there 30 million years too early
Megafires, floods, extreme weather and rising heat deaths were predicted by climate models more than 30 years ago. Now the window for action is rapidly closing, and science warns of a far greater crisis ahead. What are we going to do? repositori.upf.edu/server/api/c...
How can a brain shaped by evolution comprehend the 3.5-billion-yr process that created it? L Dugatkin & @carlbergstrom.com explore how simple rules & historical constraints generated life’s diversity: not perfect, but good enough to endure. @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social ctbergstrom.com/publications...
Increasing desertification now means large parts of Earth are becoming inhospitable. Can gene-edited bacteria save our planet from drying out? @interspecies.agency explores. #climate #desertification #syntheticbiology
Inside The Lab Growing Mutant Bacteria To Terraform Earth | NOEMA
Increasing desertification now means large parts of Earth are becoming inhospitable. Can gene-edited bacteria save our planet from drying out?
noemamag.com
``The nervous system, which probably first evolved as a device to coordinate the behaviour of various cells in multicellular organisms (...) ultimately became able to invent the future''. Always so inspiring to read the great François Jacob. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3...
Can AI help us experiment with the past? “Historical LLMs” trained on texts from earlier periods could act as simulated way to explore how people thought, reasoned, and behaved across history. A fascinating @pnas.org article: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @manlius.bsky.social @brigan.bsky.social
Why is reading so fundamental to the human mind? In this fascinating paper, @standehaene.bsky.social & Co show how literacy reshapes and connects the brain’s visual and language systems. A timely reminder of what education could lose if LLMs replace reading & writing. www.unicog.org/publications...
Where is Wally? After a while, we found our mini orange cat hiding in the neuroscience part of our library. Good choice of topics.
Four years ago, I co-curated the exhibition BRAIN(S)-CERVELL(S) at the #CCCB in Barcelona: an exploration of matter, minds, and other forms of intelligence. Here is my first sketch of its three spaces. It was a wonderful adventure. www.cccb.org/en/w/exhibit...
We have a new preprint! By studying neuronal heterogeneity in CA3, we found a weird but powerful new feature in the hippocampal circuitry! 🧠 #neuroskyence 🧵.. Morse-Mora et al. | Hippocampal CA3 forms a two-layer network of molecularly distinct cell types in mice and humans doi.org/10.64898/202...
Is the human brain really an optimal template for AI? Probably not. The connectome is a compromise among competing objectives, shaped by evolution, development, and biological constraints. Check this @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social paper www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @brigan.bsky.social
Excellent overview by @philipcball.bsky.social on why the concept of "agency" is both central to biology and hotly contested www.quantamagazine.org/is-life-just...
Is Life Just Different? | Quanta Magazine
The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?
quantamagazine.org
I just learned Peter Schuster passed away. A great colleague from @sfiscience.bsky.social , one of the smartest people I ever met. He made fundamental contributions to the maths of evolution and origins of life. A great inspiration for all. @josepsardanyes.bsky.social www.santafe.edu/people/profi...
In Endless Endings, @ricardsole.bsky.social explores the differing meanings of death in varied forms, reflecting on questions that are pushing forward the frontiers of scientific understanding. Available Aug 4 (29 Sep UK/EU pub). Preorder your copy here: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
How does nature find Turing patterns? Check in @pnas.org this beautful paper led by @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social Robert Endres on how evolution can search in high-dimensional parameter spaces using oscillations: www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... And here's my comment: www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....
Americans were once members of a proudly literate society, but today, reading has declined across age groups, gender, and education levels. For The Atlantic’s August issue, @rosehorowitch.bsky.social explores the reading collapse—and its effects on civilization: theatln.tc/l2Xk9ATe 🎨: The Atlantic
The fate of the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe’s climate warm depends on our carbon emissions and the rate of ice melt from Greenland, but there is a chance that a shutdown is already inevitable
Collapse of AMOC ocean current may already be locked in
The fate of the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe’s climate warm depends on our carbon emissions and the rate of ice melt from Greenland, but there is a chance that a shutdown is already inevitable
newscientist.com
Why does the unconscious speak in images rather than words? In The Kekulé Problem, Cormac McCarthy turns Kekulé’s dream into a deeper question about language: perhaps speech is not the master of thought, but a recent invader sitting atop an older, image-making mind. nautil.us/the-kekul-pr...
The Kekulé Problem - Nautilus
Where did language come from?
nautil.us
I have an outstanding PhD candidate: very bright, already first author of her first paper, and co-author of two others from my lab. Yet she is not getting a grant because of academic scores. When a system cannot recognize this kind of talent, the system is failing. What can be done?
