A new review of Alchemy: An Illustrated History, though I'm not a subscriber so have no idea how pleased (or not) I should be. www.watoday.com.au/culture/book...

2020s: AI "System Prompts" are lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "prompt engineers". 1980s: AI "Expert Systems" were lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "knowledge engineers".

Oh dear, this look ahead for the year in science sounds rather bleaker than I hoped it might. Sorry about that. And it's not all gloom. www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...

ICYMI: Here are two very nice programmes that appeared on BBC Radio 4 over the holidays in which I've contributed. First, a report from the summer on the big quantum mechanics meeting on Helgoland. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Here's an example of why the BBC is worth having and defending: a super-smart Radio 4 series presented by the super-smart Matthew Sweet, on the idea of progress. I feel honoured to here be in the company of folks like David Edgerton. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

2025 has been the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology go.nature.com/4s0Cd44

These are great, but I'm worried that I'd have suspected AI for some of them, especially the rhino one. Are our mental AI detectors being calibrated too high? www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Instead of telling writers not to use em rules lest we be mistaken for AI, how about paying writers for all the em rules AI stole from us?

Well, I enjoyed this a lot. Certainly gave a good impression of the windswept rock that is Helgoland. What strikes me about the answers offered to Marnie's question is that they all reveal the answerer's particular focus. So... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Last year I wrote about a paper on the idea of black holes made purely from light, and why it doesn't seem possible. Now one of the proponents of the idea, Don Page, has argued that there are still circumstances in which they could happen. journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

Here's what was on TV this evening in 1979. "Outrageous comedy".

Sharing this from the brave and fearsome @chrischirp.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/christin... It’s a harrowing summation of the scale and extent of the descent of the USA into authoritarianism. Read it and weep.

Tomorrow, 9.30am, you know what you need? Half an hour of me trying to understand why Quantum is so hard to understand. Includes Carlo Rovelli, Elise Crull and @philipcball.bsky.social being brilliant. Solutions? less clear

Great guest edit of BBC Radio 4 #Today today, by @mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social, all about AI. I'm just about to go on air with Amol Rajan & David Chalmers to talk about the key question of AI and consciousness - listen live here (in UK): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Finally, after much delay from the BBC, Marnie Chesterton's "What Is Quantum?" is being broadcast at 9.30 am on Radio 4 on Tues 30th Dec. Recorded on Helgoland in the summer, with input from the leading figures in quantum mechanics (and me). www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Funny thing though: Musk and the other tech lords are still saying such things, and the media credulity has not lessened one whit. And they are richer than ever.

Here is a piece I wrote for The Observer on things that haven’t gone wrong in 2025: observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

This is an excellent essay review from Tom on the past and future of capitalism. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7184...

This year's Christmas cake has an Attenboroughesque nativity that looks strangely familiar...

(Side note: As a journalist I am still shocked by how quickly the attack on the CDC was set aside. How rarely I have read the name David Rose in the past few months is for me a pretty good indicator of how much a large swathe of US media has failed to meet this moment.)

A little review of some of the things I wrote this year. 🧵 It was of course the Year of Quantum, a highlight of which was the meeting on Helgoland in the summer. Here's what that was all about, and what happened there. www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/the-hol...

This is well worth a read. It is essentially qualitative, which some might baulk at, but sometimes that's the way to start fleshing out an idea.

Here's a gorgeously put-together excerpt from my book Alchemy: An Illustrated History, in @chemistryworld.com. www.chemistryworld.com/culture/cruc...

This is so exciting. (And I'm in it.)

A long and detailed review of my illustrated history of alchemy in the LRB. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I feel seen.

There won't be a magic bullet to explain what makes us human, it won't be FOXP2, it won't be TKTL1. Geneticists and evolutionary biologists of the post-genetics revolution know better, nothing else in the genome works that way, why would this be any different? www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is hilarious.

If you hurry, there is still a chance that the gnomes can get these books to you in time for Christmas. They are on good terms with Santa's elves, after all. (And yes, I *do* give them Christmas Day off. But that's their lot.) thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/12/19/a...

This is a very hopeful way to close out the year—give it a read.

Looks like a really interesting collection of essays. David Edgerton's in particular looks great (and I never knew he was taught by the great Margaret Gowing, but that makes a lot of sense). turia.uv.es/index.php/Me...

Excellent Eleanor Olcott story in Financial Times on He Jiankui. www.ft.com/content/1399... Fascinating to see her take on him, and his future. (Conflict of Interest warning: I make a cameo appearance, inspiring an expletive deleted).

Good piece.

Physicist Leo Szilard, in a short science fiction story from 1948, describing how to retard science by making the funding application longer and harder than the proposed research - now called the ‘Szilard point’

Some in the community think the FCC has stifled opportunities to build different machines elsewhere while others question the logic of colliding things at ever-higher energies, when no one knows if there is anything to find But many are pro FCC. For them, this private funding promise is a huge win

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... 🧪⚛️

While stories of singular DNA changes that drove evolution of human brain/behaviour remain seductive, advances across multiple fields of biology cast doubt on such simplistic narratives of our origins. A new paper from my lab shows how biobanks may speak to this fundamental question.🧪 Explainer🧵👇1/n

It's not a bad idea, folks.

"Our study has provided evidence against the notion of fixed genomic changes on the human lineage." In other words, it's not clear what, at the genetic level, truly distinguished humans from their closely related ancestors. Previous indentified variants don't seem to have much phenotypic effect.

Who remembers using Letraset for their diagrams? Andrea Sella does. www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/letr...

Here's our reporting on the proposed dismantling of the jewel of US atmospheric science, @ncar-ucar.bsky.social. The plan is to break NCAR apart and disburse some parts to other locations (like the research aircraft fleet) and eliminate others. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #AGU25 #climate

Repost rather than like if you want followers to see this message and help.

Looks fascinating, but sadly not open access. Also: "Paracelsus-era dosing". I've never heard that one before. www.cell.com/cell-systems...

I'm sensing that quantum entanglement isn't being invoked here...

The Royal Society's 10 most popular papers of 2025 are all about animals. Maybe not surprising, but I confess to being a little disappointed. royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...

This graph.

"AI appears to be a foundational general-purpose technology — akin to electricity or the steam engine — we should anticipate that its use will continue to broaden across all aspects of human endeavor... helping to tackle some of humanity’s greatest challenges." /1 arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468

"The only kind of thinking that matters in science is structured thinking. The only way to give structure and substance to your thoughts is to write them down. Writing. Is. Thinking." Thinking about this in the context of AI tools....

I'm not a subscriber, but I imagine this story for the FT by Anj on the idea of AI data centres in space is a must-read. www.ft.com/content/cc07...

The beautiful idea of NCAR, to improve understanding of our planet through a cooperative, shared and open intellectual team effort, is literally what has got me out of bed every morning for nearly two decades. This cannot, CANNOT be allowed to happen. eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...