Awful news that RPN is closing🧪 @smclondon.bsky.social has blog on its huge value to research www.sciencemediacentre.org/in-praise-of... I'd add I'm hugely grateful to (then) Research Fortnight for my first journalism job. So many of us got a great education there: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Researc...

I spoke to Darío Gil, US under secretary for science at the DoE, about the country's big push of AI in science 🧪🤖⚛️ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

With US science in unprecedented turmoil, can Europe step up to become the free world's science superpower? We crunched the data on Europe's strengths and weaknesses, plans & what headwinds the bloc faces 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The first working nuclear clocks are here! 🧪⚛️🚨 As well as someday rivalling the best optical clocks, these should make for super-robust devices to take into the field & already allow physicists to monitor the fundamental forces of nature, in search of dark matter www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A look at where we are in science, 10 years from the Brexit vote. The UK is edging back into Horizon Europe (and from next year will be part of Erasmus+) but the country's role as a cornerstone of European research remains much diminished. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

CFS published 5 papers last week outlining their "early 2030s" fusion power plant & physics Researchers say it's great they're publishing & plans are promising. But the papers far from "confirm" the plant will deliver net electricity Lots of engineering Qs remain ⚛️🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Measuring the gravitational constant, BIG G, is one of the hardest experiments ever. And it's still driving physicists bananas, hundreds of years after the first attempts 🧪⚛ www.youtube.com/shorts/vksqp...

"Someone, somewhere, has taken the decision to defund astrophysics research in the UK, but no-one seems quite sure who that was, or why." The latest on the impact of the catastrophic funding cuts to UK astrophysics, by me, in @natastron.nature.com 👩‍🔬🧪🔭 ✒️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

First science publisher sues an AI firm as a named plaintiff. There seems to be little doubt now that scientific papers, like books and webpages, were used to train LLMs. But whether this counts as copyright infringement is for the courts to decide www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

The @erc.europa.eu has rolled back a controversial policy that would have extended how long researchers have to wait to re-apply after a failed application. Good to see the ERC listening 💪 But it's far from clear how the council will now deal with the grant deluge 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Anomalies in physics are an endangered species. But an exciting one is growing in data from @lhcb.bsky.social🧪⚛️ It's a discrepancy in the angles that particles fly out of B meson 'penguin' decays & at 4 sigma🤞 What's a penguin decay & how could new physics affect it? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Have grants become more competitive lately? 🧪 At least some of the uptick in submissions (that we've reported on @nature.com) seems driven by AI-assisted proposal writing -- funders, like journals, are flooded Great comment piece by @jameswilsdon.bsky.social & co: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Should you worry about AI killing us all? I looked at the evidence so you don't have to 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com Ft. @garymarcus.bsky.social @sashamtl.bsky.social @gleave.me @andreamiotti.bsky.social @anthonyaguirre.bsky.social @ghadfield.bsky.social among others!

How strong is the gravitational constant big G? It reigns across the Universe yet we still don't know it beyond 3 sig figs! Like climbing Everest, metrologists measure the maddening number because the challenge is there My @nature.com story on the latest results: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Can quantum computers be used to improve human health? ⚛️🧪 Seems like a huge leap, but researchers are making inroads: algorithms that simulate light-sensitive drugs and map differences in genomes are being trialled on small quantum systems. My latest in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

China's gov wants its AI scientists to avoid relying on Western tech & collaborations, which could be behind CAST's decision to still boycott NeurIPS despite its u-turn over sanctions. Might we see China start up its own NeurIPS-level conference? 🤖🧪 More here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We made a short vid about the world's first antimatter delivery. Just 92 antiprotons but an epic achievement! ⚛️🧪 How do you transport something that annihilates whenever it touches matter? Find out here: www.youtube.com/shorts/O4_XU... @cern.bsky.social @nature.com

@davidbflower.bsky.social Hi David, I'd be keen to get some thoughts from you for a quick news story. Please DM me back if you are interested! Thanks

Antimatter delivery anyone? I first wrote about plans to transport this wildly volatile stuff (looking at another @cern.bsky.social expt) in 2018 They've finally done it! Amazing ⚛️🧪 This tiny sample of 92 antiprotons is a huge world first My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This squinty eye is telling you to go watch my first tiktok 🧪⚛️ It's on making the fattest ever Schrödinger's 🐈‍⬛ (& made with the fab Maren Hunsberger). More bitesized physics to come! www.tiktok.com/@nature/vide...

Hard to believe that static electricity is still a big mystery — Is it the electrons, ions or bits of material that transfer the charge? Why do some materials charge positively & others negatively? What happens when 2 samples of the same material come into contact? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Big news: @nature.com has finally launched its TikTok page! Check out my colleagues Maren Hunsberger with a deep dive on artificial lungs and @shamini.bsky.social talking about an acoustic robot so small it could swim around inside your body. Follow us for much more content to come 🫶

Supernovae are bright. This one is EXTRA bright. Why?! It's hard to study what's behind these super-bright cosmic explosions, but a wobble in the signal from this one gave it away🧪🔭 Here's the story from me with funky 90s graphics from the fab @danjfox.bsky.social With🙏to @drjrfarah.bsky.social

This was a very quick test (and also using AI!) but it demonstrates just how easy it still is to get models to help you to do bad things -- in this case, to clog up the scientific literature. While many LLMs refused requests at first, they were often worn down 🤖🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hard drives fail after a few years -- ever thought about writing your data into glass instead? Microsoft has developed a ready-to-deploy system which, while pricey to read and write, could save data for millennia, with minimal storage costs 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My latest @nature.com story on what computer science can do about the deluge of AI-generated/assisted papers. Charge to submit? Use AI to review? Have AI-only outlets? Switch to a journal, rather than conference model? Reprimand repeat offenders? 🧪 More ideas? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I've written two @nature.com stories this week looking at whether EU efforts to lure US scientists are working 🧪 They are: the number of US applicants wanting to take up ERC grants has doubled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Silicon Valley has gone wild for Moltbook, the social network for AI agents. What can scientists learn from studying it? Great @nature.com story from Mohana Basu 🧪🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

1/4 RIP Micius 🛰️ The world's first quantum satellite crashed into the Pacific last week (to the west of Ecuador) after an almost 10-year mission Also known as Mozi (& QUESS) it was famously the first to teleport a photon to space (or at least its quantum state) 🧪⚛️ www.nature.com/articles/nat...

OpenAI is among those investing a whopping $252 million into a start up called Merge Labs. They want to use ultrasound -- rather than electrode implants -- to read out and interact with the brain. What are its chances of success? My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

We're back with a new vid! First protein, now exercise. How much do you need to reap the health benefits? The good news is, probably not as much as you think... 🧪

"Another remarkable case is a 106-year-old woman who took up swimming at age 70 & won her first competition three decades later. Longevity runs in the family: she has two younger sisters over 100 & a 110-year-old aunt." Great story from @marilenharo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

I quizzed @cern.bsky.social's new director general on what that $1bn donation will mean for their long-campaigned for future machine, and whether physicists should pursue cheaper, more varied experimental strategies instead ⚛️🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How big can something be and still be quantum? We're far off Schrödinger's dead-and-alive cat but physicists have put a cluster of 7,000 atoms into a superposition of distant paths - the chunkiest cat state yet, with philosophical and practical ramifications 🧪⚛️ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Great @nature.com story from @nicolakimjones.bsky.social 🧪 "How central 'being a man' was to someone’s sense of self wasn’t particularly predictive of which group they landed in. "'Manly' men are not necessarily toxic," says Hill Cone. "There is positive masculinity." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I stopped putting protein powder in my breakfast after making this video (with producer & extra extraordinaire @nickpetrichowe.bsky.social) It's based on this great story by @marilenharo.bsky.social from the end of last year🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41... Do you need more protein? Watch & learn!

Happy Friday folks! Recently you may have seen demos of glitzy humanoid robots doing impressive stuff. But demos don't say a lot. I wanted to know if these bots are finally becoming useful 🤖🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

In a recent study, LLMs undergoing "therapy" came out with tales of bewildering "childhoods" of pre-training and "fears" of failing their creators, with traits that in people could point to mental health concerns. Should their mimicking of human traumas worry us? 🧪🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Great new feature out on the ways that researchers are trying to stop dormant cancer cells from reemerging years later 🧪https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04149-3

This is interesting ... I don't receive @cern.bsky.social 's press releases anymore, perhaps because I reported on many physicists' opposition to this project

Wow. CERN has secured a promise of $1 billion (!) towards its planned Future Circular Collider from private donors (such as the Breakthrough Prize Foundation & Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund) - the first such donation for CERN, which has until now been taxpayer funded home.cern/news/press-r... 🧪⚛️

This was such awful news to report on yesterday. My thoughts are with Nuno Loureiro's family, friends, colleagues and the whole fusion community, of which he seemed to have been a beating heart. What a tragedy www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪⚛️

What's the best science gift you ever got? 🔭🔬 We asked @nature.com readers for their faves. They include the geneticist inspired by slicing up cow eyeballs she was given as a child, and the former head of the Canadian Space Agency who got a telescope for Christmas in time for the Apollo 8 mission

I somehow missed when my own story came out... 🤦 but here's one that I've been trying to write a version of for a while. Amidst the flood of claims from quantum labs right now, a few initiatives are trying to find transparent ways to chart progress. More here 👇 www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪⚛️

Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek's founder, is one of Nature's 10 - those who took a prominent role in shaping science this year 🧪🤖 DeepSeek makes frontier models for very cheap. I profiled him & the firm here (as well as you can profile a man who doesn't speak to the media) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

36 years ago today, 14 women, most of whom were studying engineering, were killed by an anti-feminist gun man at École Polytechnique in Montreal. I was a young graduate student studying physics at the time and I will never forget. #MontrealMassacre #NeverForget 🧪 👩‍🔬 ⚛️ 🎢 #AcademicSky 🇨🇦

I write a lot about AI and in AI policy circles I kept hearing one thing -- China is the country talking loudest about wanting to regulate the technology at a global level. Here's my explainer on what that could look like 🧪🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Rather than just scaling, is it time to bring the neural networks behind LLMs together with old school rule-based 'symbolic' AI? Lots of opportunities and challenges in this great story by @nicolakimjones.bsky.social 🧪🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...