Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Charlie Wood

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 12h

Solar & wind met 109% of new electricity demand, globally, in the first half of 2025.

Renewables are handling all new demand & are inexorably moving beyond, to chip away at the FF foundation.

Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2025 | Ember

Solar and wind outpaced demand growth in the first half of 2025, as renewables overtook coal’s share in the global electricity mix.

ember-energy.org

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 12h

"Energy dominance," you say?

As of this year, *China is exporting more clean-energy technology than the US is exporting the dirty stuff*.

The future is green energy & China, not the US, is set to dominate it.

China Is Beating the US in the Battle for Energy Export Dominance

China’s exports of clean energy technology hit a record in August, with $20 billion shipped globally.

www.bloomberg.com

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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 1d

John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis have won the Nobel Prize in physics for showing that quantum mechanics describes the behavior of objects much larger than atoms.
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...

Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an...

www.nobelprize.org

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 14d

The world: 🔥🔥🔥

Scientists, in the background:

James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 14d

Wonderful news. A salutary reminder of the absolute benefits of scientific progress, and the absolute evil of conspiracist bollocks.

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time www.bbc.com/news/article...

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time

One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that could transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC

www.bbc.com

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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 23d

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. “How We Came To Know Earth,” our new series, is a guide to the modern understanding of fundamental climate science. www.quantamagazine.org/series/clima...

How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from...

www.quantamagazine.org

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · Jul 29

surely someone will do it faster now!

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · Jul 29

huh. along with abundant clean energy, fusion reactors might also be able to make *tons* of gold.

arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461

Scalable Chrysopoeia via $(n, 2n)$ Reactions Driven by Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Neutrons

A scalable approach for chrysopoeia - the transmutation of base metals into gold - has been pursued for millennia. While there have been small-scale demonstrations in particle accelerators and proposa...

arxiv.org

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Opal @opalescentopal.bsky.social · Jul 27

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.

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.bsky.social · Jul 21

This is absurd.

The red supergiant Betelgeuse is the bright feature in this image.

But that darker blue splotch is a *companion star* that's just been discovered—and it orbits so close to Betelgeuse that it's inside the larger star's outer atmosphere.

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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · Jul 18

150 years ago you could get published in Nature by just describing how cute your pets are.
www.nature.com/articles/012...

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LISA Community @lisacommunity.bsky.social · Jul 16

This year it is 10 years since the discovery of #GravitationalWaves in 2015!

www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20...

@ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social
#GW150914
#GR24Amaldi16

A speaking giving a talk on a stage with slides projected behind them.

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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · Jul 15

"The Chipotle where Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense" encapsulates so much American history

City of Boston Streets Cabinet @streets.boston.gov · Jul 14

What'd you do over the weekend? Public Works began resurfacing the street in front of the Chipotle where Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense

Boston Public Works Department crews raising castings on School Street

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · Jul 11

Oh no

Cara Giovanetti @idontevencara.bsky.social · Jul 11

Awful news: CMB-S4 is cancelled.

This experiment was massively exciting for the cosmology community. It would have told us about the state of the universe some 400,000 years after the big bang, at a level of precision we can now only dream about

⚛️🧪

www.science.org/content/arti...

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation

Now-canceled CMB-S4 project would have searched the afterglow of the Big Bang for signs of cosmic exponential growth spurt

www.science.org

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · May 30

NSF budget would close down one of LIGO's sites. This would be, to put it lightly, a catastrophe for gravitational wave astronomy.

"In FY 2026 NSF will operate only one of the two sites
and will support a reduced level for technology development."
bsky.app/profile/hast...

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 28

First sigma-eight. Now g-2. Anomalies are dropping like flies this year.

Patrick Koppenburg 🐧 @koppenburg.ch · May 28

💣 The Muon g-2 theory initiative dropped their update. Bottom line: the g-2 anomaly is gone. arxiv.org/abs/2505.21476

🧪⚛️

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Katherine Applegate @kaaauthor.bsky.social · May 27

Absolutely delighted by this Andalite balloon animal—the work of Josh Steinhouse, The Geek Balloonist: thegeekballoonist.com/home

He does a mean E.T., too.

Thanks for the smile, Josh. ❤️

#Animorphs #BalloonArtist

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 27

Do singularities exist? I'd always thought they were purely mathematical artifacts, but recent work in mathematical physics work from @bousso.bsky.social and others hint otherwise (for sufficiently broad definitions of "singularities" and "exist").

www.quantamagazine.org/singularitie...

Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill | Quanta Magazine

Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists will need to go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Knowable Magazine @knowablemag.bsky.social · May 24

👀 On our radar: Beautiful physics of the ordinary

💬 “My deep and abiding feeling is that if you look at anything closely enough, there will be new riches to be found” —Sidney Nagel

✍️ Charlie Wood, @quantamagazine.bsky.social

🔗 www.quantamagazine.org/finding-beau...

Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences | Quanta Magazine

The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 12

It is that one glorious week of the year where New York feels like The Room in Community

youtu.be/VxxYqE4Gil8?...

the room temperature room

YouTube video by Toran Seru

youtu.be

Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 10

Love it when my worlds collide

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 9

He was so fun to talk to!

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 9

Why do drops leave ring-shaped stains? Why do splashes splash? Had great fun chatting with Sid Nagel about beautiful, unappreciated physics right under our noses.

www.quantamagazine.org/finding-beau...

Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences | Quanta Magazine

The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Eduardo García-Molina @egarcmol.bsky.social · May 8

What a day to have studied Latin in Chicago.

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Candy Halloween @testtubegames.com · May 6

For #BlackHoleWeek, why not go explore spacetime around a black hole?

Oh... because it'd be incredibly dangerous?
Good point.

Well, how about you use this (nearly*) perfectly safe simulation. testtubegames.com/blackhole.html

*There is always a small risk of collapsing into a simgularity.

Curved grid representing space descending onto a black hole at the bottom of the screen. There is a cartoony rocket ship in the middle of the screen, and many little white dots scattered around the grid. There are numbers above each dot and rocket, each currently set to different values.

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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · May 6

I tore through all 60ish Animorphs books a few years ago and was shocked at how good they were. Can confirm they're a great read and long overdue for their prestige HBO show.

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · Apr 17

Animorphs is 1. Way better written than Harry Potter and 2. K.A. Applegate is a great person with a trans kid.

Kelly⁷ @skellyton27.bsky.social · Apr 17

The animorph books are RIGHT THERE if people need nostalgia.

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