Somewhere between outsourcing and crowdsourcing, gravitational wave researchers got 1,000 participants on Kaggle to create the best algorithm to identify continuous GWs (shed by a swiftly tilting neutron star). Top 10 submissions reduced compute by 1–3 orders of magnitude. arxiv.org/abs/2509.06445

Geoff Bennett: You say that poetry is not useful, and that's exactly why we need it. Why? David Duchovny: "We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind, which is great and it's necessary. But we've lost sight of educating a mind on how to think or a soul how to feel."

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a convoluted, 36-page emergency order about NIH grant terminations. Two main takeaways: -$2 billion (not the government # of $780 million) in NIH grants will likely be re-terminated -future legal challenges will be much harder w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social:

Sridhara Dasu giving a great talk on accelerator/detector synergies at the 2nd US muon collider workshop, I also learned that SLD was not just the SLAC large detector but also referred to as slow lingering death 😅 🧪⚛️

Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

When in Florence—I heartily recommend a visit to www.museogalileo.it

Intense and worthwhile workshop www.ggi.infn.it/showevent.pl...

@chrisquigg.com giving a great talk about synergies between neutrino physics and muon colliders at our GGI workshop, while wearing a potentially ominous original SSC t-shirt😅 🧪⚛️

If you see this, post a video game that transports you to your childhood.

NASA finally posted their annual ROSES call for proposals, five months late. I was hoping to apply for the Astrophysics Theory program, which is offered every other year. This should be an on year, but it’s not there. Of course, Harvard isn’t currently eligible for federal grants anyway.

Would have preferred Alcaraz, but Sinner played great. Looks like we’re in the era of the big two for the foreseeable future.

Short summary of Senate Appropriations hearing: Bipartisan agreement to keep funding at FY '24 levels for NASA/NSF passes 21-6 Van Hollen adds an amendment on FBI HQ which passes thanks to Murkowski Republican members change votes to no, threatening the bill. Now in... indefinite recess 🤷‍♂️

Illuminating talk by @bravelittlemuon.bsky.social today on exploring the weak boson partonic content of the muon at our GGI muon collider workshop. As a community we’re developing a better sense of when it works for gapped IR free gauge theories as well as the work still needed to be done! 🧪⚛️

Only a 60M cut to NSF from Senate CJS, a LOT better than PBR!

Great talk from Kirill Melnikov about the ultimate theoretical limits/challenges for precision physics at the LHC and future colliders during our GGI muon collider workshop. ⚛️🧪

Great to be back at the GGI for our program on high energy muon collider facilities, hopefully we can continue to expand the already unparalleled physics case! ⚛️🧪 www.ggi.infn.it/showevent.pl...

Just saw July 2 was Hans Bethe’s birthday. He passed away at 97 while I was in grad school at Cornell. He wasn’t really around at that point, but maintained a well-deserved almost mythical stature on campus (at least in physics).

Amid the Trump administration's attacks on science, the National Academies are undergoing upheaval—a 30% reduction in its 1200-person staff by year's end, and possibly a vote of no confidence for its leader, Marcia McNutt. Jeff Tollefson & I report: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward. I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

HISTORY OF PHYSICS On theorists and experimentalists. Lev Landau. Speech delivered on Arpil 8, 1960. Physicists are additionally divided according to a specific principle, which is not encountered in any other science, namely: a physicist is either an experimenter or a theorist... 1/

Great opportunity to work with an awesome physicist and person on muon colliders!

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

Not the biggest fan of 6 am flights, but the views of NYC coming out of LaGuardia are always nice

Pretty far away from “everything” in physics terms but a nice article on the 21cm line

That was a clutch putt

The NAS report on the future of particle physics is out. Strong endorsement (#1 priority) is a muon collider. nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2883...

The National Academy of Sciences particle physics report begins w/ Rec 1: The US should host the world’s highest-energy particle collider around the middle of the century. This requires the immediate creation of a national muon collider R&D program to enable the construction of a demonstrator... 🧪⚛️

MAJOR PARTICLE PHYSICS REPORT RELEASE ⚛️🧪 The National Academies particle physics decadal report is out! Read read! (I was a member of the committee that wrote this report but resigned during drafting bc of a conflict of service w/my HEPAP appointment.) nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2883...

Huge news, and a confirmation of what NSF staff have suspected/feared for a while.

Vamos Carlos!!!

I have no idea how this ends up, but the derivative is definitely non-zero!

It feels like every movie about a dystopian future is turning into a quasi documentary too quickly

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

The amount of damage this does to US science is beyond comprehension.

Beautiful blue sky at Fermilab! I’m always happy to visit and give the w&c seminar. Today’s talk will be on understanding the interplay of precision and energy at the LHC and beyond. 🧪⚛️

Knicks in 7 LFG!!!!

The U.S. used to be about bringing in the best talent from all over the world, but rather than coming up with an efficient immigration process for students, this seems to be the exact opposite with potential devastating consequences for the country www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

Very cool Van Gogh exhibition at the NY botanical gardens just started, I highly recommend it for all ages

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but we have gotten word from CERN that both Mary K Gaillard and Jonathan Rosner have died. Their paper with Ben Lee was the entry to charm physics for so many of us, but each had separately a large impact on particle physics.

It was a great privilege to “hood” two of my doctoral students today, Artemis and Matthew. They survived their PhDs as well as a new first for me, a fire and evacuation during the doctoral ceremony!

Very difficult—but important—to get this kind of specific detail, even when the influence seems obvious: "In the resulting depositions, top NIH officials said that a representative of DOGE, Rachel Riley, provided the officials with at least five lists of specific grants to cancel."

Nerd fashion of Summer 2045

Some of the CDC's main channels for communicating urgent health information to the public have gone silent.

I love this photo of the Fermilab Theory group in 1974 including Mary Gaillard and Shirley Ann Jackson. 👩‍🔬 ⚛️ Source: pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

Did not expect Jon Rahm to fold so badly down the stretch, congrats to the undisputed #1 Scottie Scheffler for winning the PGA championship apple.news/A7saqtENQTHe...

I’ve never seen anything like this: a murmuration of black flies. The rain led to them all leaving the grass and trees. “Come to Wisconsin they said. The flies aren’t that bad they said” 😜

New: We have the list of ~190 Harvard NSF grant terminations from internal agency sources. About $148 million intended funds killed. Over 1/3 are from the MPS directorate—roughly 75 math and physics grants.

Many DOE grants and grants from military funding agencies at Harvard have also been terminated in the last few days (I don’t have details on which).