🌌 🧪 For two decades now, #astronomers have been recording short-lived extremely energetic radio signals dubbed fast radio bursts. ✍🏼 New for Photonics Focus: Even as their origins remain sketchy, these bursts offer a window into a range of astronomical phenomena. spie.org/news/photoni...
Flashes of radio light illuminate cosmological mysteries
Short-lived extremely energetic radio waves called fast radio bursts offer a window into astronomical phenomena
spie.org
✍🏽 New for @physicsmagazine.bsky.social: Subjecting cellulose nanocrystals to humidity oscillations produces a hard and environmentally friendly plastic material. 🧪 physics.aps.org/articles/v19...
Durable Green Plastic from Cellulose
A hard and environmentally friendly plastic material is produced by subjecting cellulose crystals to humidity oscillations.
physics.aps.org
Tiny hair cells in the inner ear help us hear. On top of each hair cell is a hair bundle, a sensory organelle that senses and amplifies sound. 👂🏽🧪 ✍🏽 For @physicsmagazine.bsky.social, I wrote about a new #thermodynamics model of energy flow within hair bundles. physics.aps.org/articles/v19...
How Hair Cells in the Ear Actively Respond to Sound
Our ability to hear relies on tiny “hair bundles” in the inner ear. A new thermodynamical model offers an explanation for the different ways that bundles oscillate.
physics.aps.org
My favorite crab is the Samurai crab, which evolved from crabbers throwing back crabs that looked like a Samurai.
4. As Jevin West and I have been saying for several years now, because a seemingly credible message no longer implies a human sender, LLMs will push us toward more emphasis on reputation and status — and as such serve as an anti-egalitarian force in all aspects of society, science included.
This. This is the type of science I would like my tax dollars to pay for right here. www.science.org/content/arti...
A shocking explanation for tape’s distinctive screech
Fast-moving cracks in tape’s adhesive layer produce shock waves that make the stuff sing as it unrolls
science.org
If you're a vegan it is okay to eat a comet but not so much an asteroid because they're a little meteor
Seeing doesn’t come naturally the moment a person is cured of blindness. ✍🏼🧪 For my latest in @bigthink.com, I wrote about how the newly sighted must learn to see. bigthink.com/mind-behavio...
The brain after blindness: How newly-sighted people build a visual world
When people born blind gain sight, the hardest part isn’t opening their eyes — it’s teaching the brain how to see.
bigthink.com
The oceans sink large amounts of carbon. Will they be able to do so in the future? Carbon flux is closely linked to ocean nutrient cycles, but data on marine nutrients are sparse. 🌊🧪 ✍🏽 For Photonics Focus, I write about autonomous floats mapping these nutrients. spie.org/news/photoni...
Ocean sentinels
Autonomous floats in the world’s oceans combine optical and other sensor data with satellite imaging to provide new insight on marine nutrient cycles and, ultimately, our changing climate.
spie.org
Do you find the sound of peeling tape annoying? Or oddly satisfying? 📦🧪 ✍🏽 For @science.org, I wrote about a new study where scientists have figured out why it makes that distinctive screechy sound. www.science.org/content/arti...
A shocking explanation for tape’s distinctive screech
High-speed video reveals how fast-moving cracks in tape’s adhesive layer produce shock waves that make the stuff sing as it unrolls
science.org
New paper shows social scientists are sidelining null results. Analysing 100,000 articles across 150 political science journals, it finds 2% of abstracts report null-only findings; >90% highlight significant results. Researchers 10–100x less likely to spotlight nulls: driver of publication bias.
Uncertainty is not your friend: In a new paper published in One Earth, scientists argue that uncertainties in climate projections mean Earth system components could be at a higher risk than we think of reaching crucial tipping points. 🌊 eos.org/articles/ear...
Earth’s Climate May Go from Greenhouse to Hothouse - Eos
Uncertainty in climate models could mean Earth systems are perilously close to their tipping points, scientists warn.
eos.org
Buried in this piece is a throwaway line about how actually her real hustle is selling online courses to aspiring AI hacks, marking an extraordinary symbiosis of my two most hated internet poisons
Sarah Weinman@sarahweinman.com · 7mo ago“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” God this is bleak
Katherine was an intellectually intrepid writer and editor. She had great ambitions for what physics journalism could be and she pushed those around her to meet that mark, as this eulogy attests. It is just devastating to lose her.
In Memory of Katherine Wright | Physics Magazine
We pay tribute to our friend and colleague, whose journalistic talent and commitment to inclusivity left an indelible mark on Physics Magazine.
physics.aps.org
Why do we find some scenes more aesthetic than others? For my first in @sciencenews.bsky.social, I wrote about a new study that suggests that our aesthetic preferences could have evolved as cognitive shortcuts. 🧠🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/brai...
Easy on the eyes is also easy on the brain
A new study finds that the brain spends less energy processing scenes that people find aesthetically pleasing.
sciencenews.org
🧪 Last year, I learned about how squid get their spots and why icebergs flip while writing two of the five stories on this list. Rhttps://www.sachinxr.com/2025-roundup-bats-squid-and-icebergs/
2025 Roundup: Bats, squid, and icebergs
Five stories that I had the most fun researching and writing in 2025.
sachinxr.com
Have a look through this gallery to see one of the coolest examples of role specialisation in the insect world 🐜 They live inside twigs with small circular entrances & these workers have evolved heads the perfect shape to block those entrances - effectively, they are living doors!
Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 9mo agoA gallery of Cephalotes turtle ants, denizens of the treetops in tropical American forests.
Spotted on LinkedIn... a bad AI summary of our new paper on risks of AI in research. Please make it stop.
M.J. Crockett@mjcrockett.bsky.social · 10mo agoCan AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/
🧊 Icebergs can sometimes suddenly flip over. But why does that happen? ✍🏽 New for @physicsmagazine.bsky.social: A new experiment recreating iceberg flips in the lab suggests that changes in shape due to melting determine if and how an iceberg tips over. 🧪 physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
Recreating Iceberg Flips in a Lab
Experiments with small, floating slabs of ice have revealed melting-induced shape changes that may explain why icebergs sometimes flip over.
physics.aps.org
Wind turbines kill a massive number of bats. These animals seem to be unusually attracted to turbines, and researchers have long puzzled over why. 🦇🧪 For @science.org, I wrote about a new study that suggests they might be responding to a visual cue. www.science.org/content/arti...
Bats may mistake wind turbines for open sky, causing deadly collisions
Study may help explain why giant blades kill millions of the animals every year
science.org
Are you a materials scientist or engineer working on optical material sensors? Have some ideas on how they could power the sports wearable of the future? If so, I'm looking to speak with you for an article in Photonics Focus. #JournoRequest
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
Researchers studied recordings of cicadas to discover that the insects’ singing is synchronized with the Sun's position in the sky. The rapid rise in volume suggests that each cicada starts singing in response to both the light level and its neighbors' behavior.
Cicadas Decide to Sing with a Little Help from Their Friends
The daily start of a cicada’s mating call is triggered by the amount of light in the sky and also by the behavior of nearby insects.
physics.aps.org
🧪 Often, in a counterintuitive phenomenon called Parrondo’s paradox, two losing strategies can be combined into a winning one. ✍🏽 For @physicsmagazine.bsky.social, I wrote about a new study on harnessing this paradox for cancer treatment. physics.aps.org/articles/v18... #MathOnco
Game-Theory Paradox Inspires Cancer Therapy
Simulations suggest that the combination of two cancer-therapy strategies, which individually deliver poor outcomes, might produce optimal results.
physics.aps.org
Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...
A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise
Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”
reeserichardson.blog
Companies that broker and facilitate scientific fraud are large, resilient, and growing rapidly, according to a new study. cen.acs.org/policy/publi... #chemsky 🧪
Brokers of scientific fraud growing rapidly, study finds
Publishers are not keeping up with paper mills and other purveyors of shoddy academic papers
cen.acs.org
We have reams of evidence - including this new paper - that obesity is much more about food than exercise. Calories in matters way more than calories out. www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Many densely packed systems have a hidden structure. They seem random, but become uniform as you zoom out. Conversely, variation increases with scale in hyperdisorder. 🌌 🧪 ✍🏽 New for Physics Magazine: A new study reports the first example of hyperdisorder in biology. physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
The Secret Disorder of Squids
A structural phenomenon traditionally confined to inanimate systems has now been observed in biology.
physics.aps.org
