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Charlie Wood

@walkingthedot.bsky.social
402 followers 179 following 31 posts

Physics staff writer @QuantaMagazine, R(ecovering)PCV, exJET, language enthusiast. SHERP36. formerly @PopSci, @csmonitor He/him

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Reposted by Charlie Wood
Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Yes it could be argued that keeping up with world events is important but alternatively can I interest you in hugging an ancient mossy boulder that looks like a face and quietly listening while it tells you stories from centuries cloaked in mist.
A lovely mossy boulder with a face. I walked past this venerable stone gentleman on Dartmoor when I was beginning to write my first novel, Villager, and it whispered all 104,000 words of the book to me. So now I have to pay it all of my royalties. Unfortunately my ex-publisher stopped paying me royalties last year. Understandable, the boulder was not happy. But now I have a new publisher and the book has been republished. So remember if you purchase a copy you will be helping a boulder to eat, pay the rent on his riverside moss garden, and feed his boulder family.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/04/2026
Whoa 🤯 The Moon, in full eclipse, with the #Artemis II Orion spacecraft. Part of the Moon and spacecraft are lit by Earthshine, and both Saturn and Mars are visible to the lower right. Incredible. Details: images.nasa.gov/details/art0...
[alt text by NASA] The Moon, seen here backlit by the Sun during a solar eclipse on April 6, 2026, is photographed by one of the cameras on the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings. Orion is visible in the foreground on the left. Earth is reflecting sunlight at the left edge of the Moon, which is slightly brighter than the rest of the disk. The bright spot visible just below the Moon’s bottom right edge is Saturn. Beyond that, the bright spot at the right edge of the image is Mars. Credit: NASA
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mark belan | science illustrator + info designer @markabelan.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
A fun illustration I made for Quanta's story on deSitter space www.quantamagazine.org/in-expanding...
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4gravitons.bsky.social @4gravitons.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Physicists of Bluesky! I'm writing a piece for @quantamagazine.bsky.social : "What is Mass?" a collection of different perspectives on mass in physics, in the vein of Natalie Wolchover's "What is a Particle?" piece a few years back. If you've got a cool perspective to share, send me a message!
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Eva Miranda @evamirandag.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Fascinated once again to see @walkingthedot.bsky.social work his magic, explaining this story with the perfect touch. Happy to have contributed a small grain to it. Congratulations on this piece! It beautifully captures the emotion of the moment and the roller-coaster nature of research 🎢
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Americans, you could have this.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 31/10/2025
🎃 The carved pumpkins that we call “Jack-o’-lanterns” get their name from 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘶𝘴, a natural phenomenon that many cultures have associated with the paranormal. Last month, a group of chemists published a study that offers one explanation for how these faint orbs illuminate.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 22/10/2025
LEGAL RELEASE FORM: You agree to let us film you ME: Seems OK FORM: We own your face forever ME: Ummm FORM: We own your face via technologies that haven’t been invented yet ME: FORM: in other galaxies ME: OK hold on FORM: If we kill you during filming you’re not allowed to scream
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 08/10/2025
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.
ember-energy.org
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.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 08/10/2025
"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.
bloomberg.com
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.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 07/10/2025
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...
nobelprize.org
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...
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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
The world: 🔥🔥🔥 Scientists, in the background:
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 15/09/2025
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...
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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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
huh. along with abundant clean energy, fusion reactors might also be able to make *tons* of gold. arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461
arxiv.org
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...
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Opal @opalescentopal.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
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.com · 21/07/2025
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 · 18/07/2025
150 years ago you could get published in Nature by just describing how cute your pets are. www.nature.com/articles/012...
nature.com
Hereditary Affection of a Cat for a Dog - Nature
Nature - Hereditary Affection of a Cat for a Dog
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LISA Community @lisacommunity.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
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 · 15/07/2025
"The Chipotle where Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense" encapsulates so much American history
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Oh no
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
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...
NSF LIGO plan
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
First sigma-eight. Now g-2. Anomalies are dropping like flies this year.
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Katherine Applegate @kaaauthor.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
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 · 27/05/2025
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...
quantamagazine.org
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.
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Knowable Magazine @knowablemag.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
👀 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...
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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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
It is that one glorious week of the year where New York feels like The Room in Community youtu.be/VxxYqE4Gil8?...
youtu.be
the room temperature room
YouTube video by Toran Seru
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Love it when my worlds collide
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
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...
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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Eduardo García-Molina @egarcmol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
What a day to have studied Latin in Chicago.
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Andy Hall @testtubegames.com · 06/05/2025
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 · 06/05/2025
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.
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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 05/05/2025
#GravitationalWaves provide a unique way to study black holes This Orrery (by Zoheyr Doctor) illustrates the diverse black hole binaries and neutron star black–hole binaries from our O3b run. More massive binaries are shown as orbiting more slowly #BlackHoleWeek 🔭
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Just incredible that Trump is turning Onion headlines into real headlines in less than a month theonion.com/trump-calmly... www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/u...
theonion.com
Trump Calmly Reminds Nation That Desire The Root Of All Suffering
WASHINGTON—Seeking to reassure the public after his latest tariffs sent both U.S. and international markets into free fall, President Donald Trump calmly reminded the nation Thursday that desire is th...
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
how many wikipedia editors does it take to change a light bulb? so far 3439 different people have contributed to the "incandescent light bulb" article but it's not done being changed yet so who knows
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Robert Palgrave @robertpalgrave.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Pocket guide to materials discovery calculation methods (repost from the other place)
A table comparing the computational power of HPC and a furnace
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Everyone go check out Quanta's new special feature about AI. It was a huge undertaking by the team and we hope you enjoy it. www.quantamagazine.org/series/scien...
quantamagazine.org
AI Changes Science and Math Forever | Quanta Magazine
An exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing what it means to do science and math, and what it means to be a scientist.
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Ross Andersen @rossandersen.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
I wrote about the new color gift link: www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...
theatlantic.com
The ‘Profound’ Experience of Seeing a New Color
The ecstasy of “olo”
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 17/04/2025
Light signatures can help astronomers deduce the atmospheric gases of planets circling stars many light years away. Determining the nature of these alien skies is one of the goals of the James Webb Space Telescope. 🧵1/5
A graphic explaining that telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope use starlight to measure molecular signatures. The graphic includes an example of how traces of starlight can provide information about atmospheric signatures in exoplanets.
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
dios mio
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Ross Andersen @rossandersen.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
I wrote about the science (and media roll out) behind that “possible sign of life on a distant planet” gift link: www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...
theatlantic.com
A Scientific Revolution by Push Notification
About that “possible sign of life” on a distant planet ...
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Matt Carlstrom @mattcarlstrom.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
#todayilearned that any sequence of numbers categorized in the On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences can be exported as a MIDI file. Here's the audio for part of the Fibonacci sequence played on a grand piano. It's... not as nice as you would hope for it to be.
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
New rule of thumb: No matter how fast you think solar is growing, it's growing faster than you think (even if you already know this)
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Elizabeth Tasker @elizabethtasker.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Last time we all lost our minds over K2-18b 🔭 , I wrote this blog post. The summary is... don't.
girlandkat.com
K2-18b. We urgently need to get our shit together about life detection — Girl & Kat
We have not discovered life on K2-18b. We have not even discovered water on K2-18b. All we can say is that the planet does not… not… have an ocean.
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Kenny Higginbotham @qgkenny.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Does that mean the walls are CFTs??
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
A year and a half ago I told @mmoyer.bsky.social I wanted to do a deep dive into whether spacetime was real. After he said yes, the result became a good chunk of this package, with a ton of work from the whole Quanta team and beyond. So thrilled we got to do this, and that it has won this award
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Charlie Wood @walkingthedot.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Remember when we "de-extincted" dinosaurs back in 2011? Me either www.ted.com/talks/jack_h...
ted.com
Building a dinosaur from a chicken
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He's found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. ...
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Hannah Waters @hanner.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Took 1.5 years at Quanta to assign my first bird story 😇 @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social's beautiful writing + excellent reporting about the evolution of intelligence — evidence that birds evolved complex brain circuits independently of our mammal intelligence www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence...
quantamagazine.org
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine
Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.
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Ben Brubaker @benbenbrubaker.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Today is International Beaver Day! The internet tells me it is a great time to lead a hike to a beaver pond. It's also a great time to supplement your doomscrolling with a deep dive into my favorite theoretical computer science breakthrough from last year.
quantamagazine.org
Amateur Mathematicians Find Fifth ‘Busy Beaver’ Turing Machine | Quanta Magazine
After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 07/04/2025
Calling someone bird-brained is, in fact, a way of calling someone highly intelligent. @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence...
quantamagazine.org
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine
Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.
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Metropolitan Transportation Authority @mta.info · 02/04/2025
Say hello to a new subway map! 🗺️ Today, the MTA unveiled a new subway diagram that provides riders with essential travel information in an easily readable, bright, and orderly manner.
2025 version of the NYC subway map
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