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Shalma Wegsman

@shalmawegs.bsky.social
396 followers 125 following 41 posts

Staff writer at Quanta Magazine covering math Previously creator/co-host of the ‘Why This Universe?’ podcast shalmawegsman.com

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Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 28/09/2026
Several young mathematicians recently revived an old conjecture that may have been inspired by juggling. @shalmawegs.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicia...
quantamagazine.org
Mathematicians Harness Randomness To Crack a 55-Year-Old Conjecture | Quanta Magazine
After a long hiatus, the problem, which was likely inspired by juggling, has finally been resolved by a group of young mathematicians.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Really excited about my latest story for Quanta about a new result in math that connects chaos, fractals, and quantum physics. What more could you want?
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
My latest in Quanta! 🧪
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
New story out, in case quantum mechanics wasn't already bewildering enough for you!
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
I wrote a little reflection on my love of the abstract, from physics to David Lynch movies
open.substack.com
What David Lynch movies and theoretical physics have in common (abstraction) | #2
2/12/2026
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Isn’t it always true of Einstein-esque breakthroughs that you can’t see them coming? My first official newsletter is live on my Substack!
open.substack.com
The World Is Not Made of Objects | Newsletter #1
January 30, 2026
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Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 28/11/2025
In quantum information theory, “magic” is a property of entangled qubits that makes their state difficult to simulate on a classical computer. “It’s an appalling word,” said the physicist Martin White. But after 20 years, there’s probably no changing it now.
quantamagazine.org
Particle Physicists Detect ‘Magic’ at the Large Hadron Collider | Quanta Magazine
The supercollider is now being used to explore quantum phenomena, including a “magic” form of quantum entanglement.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
For my latest in Quanta, I explore recent measurements that treat the Large Hadron Collider as a giant quantum computer, and what some physicists hope these sorts of measurements can reveal about quantum mechanics, amid skepticism.
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Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Hannah Waters @hanner.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Hi! Today @quantamagazine.bsky.social published a special issue on climate science, featuring stories about how Earth's climate fundamentally works that I needed to read after covering climate impacts for so many years. I hope you'll check it out! <3 www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...
quantamagazine.org
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...
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
🧪
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
After a long break, my podcast 'Why This Universe?' is starting up again! In our first episode of the season, Nobel prize-winner Adam Riess shares his story of the discovery that dark energy is powering the expansion of space. Listen to the whole episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
And here's another one I wrote with @quantamagazine.bsky.social 🧪:
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Thanks for the shout-out @seanmcarroll.bsky.social! And a funny coincidence—the Fourier transform really is everywhere you look.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
My latest story is out in Quanta Magazine. Had a lot of fun digging into both history and math for this one!
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Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 10/07/2025
Fingers crossed. Keep telling your members of Congress this is important.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
My last story with Quanta dove deeeeep into quantum crystals. You can’t read about research this fresh anywhere else! 🧪
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
BREAKING: The United States of America
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Nazi Germany did literally ban Nature: "Articles are often published in the London weekly scientific journal Nature containing outrageous and vile attacks on German science and the national socialist state. The journal must therefore be excluded from general use in the scientific libraries."
nature.com
Nature under Hitler
Under the editorship of Richard Gregory, Nature was banned in Nazi Germany.
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Ben Brubaker @benbenbrubaker.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
I am no fan of Springer, but to preempt objections that this is hyperbolic language, the Nazis literally banned the same journals and justified the decision using very similar rhetoric.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
The National Science Foundation is getting kicked out of their building
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Cara Giovanetti @idontevencara.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
First images from the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory are out! Rubin sees an area on the sky of about 9.6 square degrees with a 3.2 Gigapixel resolution. This is like taking a picture of a football field from a mile away and still being able to resolve the thickness of a dime on the field. ⚛️🧪
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
New paper: "Large Language Models and Emergence: A Complex Systems Perspective" (D. Krakauer, J. Krakauer, M. Mitchell). We look at claims of "emergent capabilities" & "emergent intelligence" in LLMs from the perspective of what emergence means in complexity science. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.11135
arxiv.org
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
The civilian wing of the MAGA movement is attempting to murder Democrats and their spouses in their homes. The state wing of the MAGA movement is arresting Democrats for performing their official duties. The MAGA movement is trying to make it illegal to oppose Trump.
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Sam Thielmonster @samthielman.com · 17/06/2025
what is it called when people who aren't cops and don't have a warrant drag you away, because I don't think "arrest" is the word
apnews.com
Brad Lander, NYC comptroller and mayoral candidate, is arrested outside immigration court
New York City comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander has been arrested at a federal building in Manhattan as he was trying to accompany a person out of an immigration courtroom.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Wired continuing to do great + important work for the political moment!
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
So much waste and harm could be avoided if we just treated these as fragile, dangerous tools suited for very specialized use cases, like we do with lasers and circular saws, and not as magic thinking beans
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
This is very thorough and very good. Among other things, it reiterates that the fact LLMs only "tell the truth" sometimes (but bullshit with utter confidence) is a feature, not a bug. It can't be simply fixed post hoc. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Do large language models have a legal duty to tell the truth? | Royal Society Open Science
Careless speech is a new type of harm created by large language models (LLM) that poses cumulative, long-term risks to science, education and shared social truth in democratic societies. LLMs produce ...
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
I'm reading Meghan O'Gieblyn's "God, Human, Animal, Machine" and now I can't stop seeing its argument everywhere: that the whole idea of the technological singularity is the newest iteration in a long history of religious prophecies — a metaphor taken literally.
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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
I would love to think that everyone has known for a long time that LLMs aren't going to lead to "general intelligence," but all the evidence suggests there are plenty of people who resist this, so it's good to have a paper from researchers Apple making the point strongly.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Mark is such a talented and passionate science illustrator it was a pleasure to work together on this!
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
For my latest story at @quantamagazine.bsky.social I dug into cutting edge research that’s using geometry to understand the bizarre quantum behaviors of materials. Huge shoutout to @markabelan.bsky.social for bringing the abstract ideas to life with 3D graphics!
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
This is tickling the part of my brain that got me excited to work on video game physics in the past—cognitive science taking inspiration from computer graphics!
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/01/2025
In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪 🧵 1/26 drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...
nazi germany & physics
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, PhD
Department of  Physics,University of Washington, Seattle
APS April Meeting, January 2017
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Enjoying the diversity of opinion at the Natural Philosophy Symposium, ft. @seanmcarroll.bsky.social and Nima Arkani-Hamed
Nima Arkani-Hamed, the theoretical physicist, presents a slide that says “Two cheers for shut up and calculate”Sean Carroll, the physicist and philosopher, presents a slide titled “Two cheers for noisy philosophizing”
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
This EO is a lot of words for a rule that basically says, political appointees will overrule scientists in deciding what the government considers factual information.
whitehouse.gov
Restoring Gold Standard Science
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 21/05/2025
The conceptual consequences of Noether’s theorem are hard to overstate.
quantamagazine.org
How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics | Quanta Magazine
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
As a physics journalist, it is fairly wild to see the names of the PIs with terminated grants: Misha Lukin, Philip Kim, Lisa Randall, Subir Sachdev, John Doyle... bsky.app/profile/benn...
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 13/05/2025
“My deep and abiding feeling is that if you look at anything closely enough, there will be new riches to be found.” — Sidney Nagel, physicist at the University of Chicago
quantamagazine.org
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.
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
I guess thinking is counterculture now
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...
time.com
Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress
I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Just a few days after Columbia announces the Pulitzers, the university goes and suspends its own student journalists.
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Saleh Waziruddin صالح وزيرالدين @salehw.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
"Celgene had kept the price of Thalomid low when it was initially intended for AIDS patients...as the company “didn’t want huge numbers of people demonstrating in front” of its office. That wasn’t a problem with cancer patients. There was “plenty of room for very substantial increases”..."
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Shalma Wegsman @shalmawegs.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
"It’s been more than two months since Israel cut off all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies into Gaza... Two million Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children, are now surviving on a single meal every two or three days."
nytimes.com
Opinion | This Is the Moment of Moral Reckoning in Gaza
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
It's incredibly irresponsible to report on the "antisemitism problem at Harvard" without mentioning the way that fascists are using a moral panic about antisemitism to attack academic freedom, jail dissidents, and illegally deport ethnic and religious minorities.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones
US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.
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Hannah Waters @hanner.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
"A maggot knows things about the outside world in a way that no computer does." Read @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social fun + fascinating feature: AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK www.quantamagazine.org/ai-is-nothin...
quantamagazine.org
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK | Quanta Magazine
The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 30/04/2025
AI is changing what it means to do science and what it means to be a scientist. Today, we are publishing a series that explores this shift. Here’s what’s in it 🧵 www.quantamagazine.org/ai-changes-s...
A banner that reads "Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI"
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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Critically, Republicans have terminated ~800 NIH grants over 8 weeks. But that's only half the story. *Republicans have also cancelled nearly 1,000 NSF grants in 8 *days*. The work continues. Report your terminated NSF grant here: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...
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STAT @statnews.com · 21/04/2025
A STAT EXCLUSIVE NIH moving to ban all future grants to universities with DEI programs or Israel boycotts, document suggests www.statnews.com/2025/04/21/t...
statnews.com
NIH moving to ban all future grants to universities with DEI programs or Israel boycotts, document suggests
NIH appears to be preparing to prohibit the awarding of new grants to institutions that have DEI programs or boycott Israeli companies
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