Reading

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Bread and Roses - Bobby Mcgee

you ever met a talking cat befure?

Name:
Sparklecat, they/them

Age:
bodily 23, mentally being rubberbanded back and forth through time

I mostly post about:
things that are inspiring/recovery related, things related to my studies (religion, demonolatry, sociology, folkways/folk music, appalachian history, union/labor history), fannish ramblings, any art. I feel i will probably use this as a bit of a diary, but im not sure......

I am very much a breaker of the rules of grammar, and a questioner of the rules of society. a slut who overthinks EVERYTHING.

My hobbies are:
(light) writing, crochet, making mix cds (like physically, which im trying to figure out how to translate into shareable art), looking at pretty pictures, about a million other things on any given day. I also make puzzles and have a website for it!

My fandoms are:
I write fanfic for Five Nights at Freddy's and Undertale/Deltarune. My main fandom is The Daycare Attendant community, a subcommunity of FNAF. we are small but mighty, lol. I have a vested interest in x readers and I enjoy self-ship. I also enjoy any form of monster/creature, not really limited to community. i guess you would call me a monsterfucker/lover/appreciator. A friend to monsters, hopefully?

I'm looking to meet people who:
ramble! share their thoughts! want to speak asynchronously! I am very new to this form of social media, being a tumblr native since 2015, and want to make friends!

My posting schedule tends to be:
hopefully multiple times a week, but i want to try to put out more "together" posts at least once. dont hold me to this however. Im hoping to use this journal as a mix between a diary, pinterest, and tumblr.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:
No Minors, sorry! also no fascists/bigots/maga. I am against AI usage on environmental grounds.

Before adding me, you should know:
I am plural/a system and will post about that/other parts will make posts every now and again. we are interested in the experience of other systems and their concept of healthy multiplicity. Also genderfluid and aromantic(ish) and like to ramble about that too.

How brain organoids are revealing what truly makes humans unique

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2498307-how-brain-organoids-are-revealing-what-truly-makes-humans-unique/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Madeline Lancaster created the first brain organoids, which have revolutionised our understanding of how the brain works - but also raised ethical questions

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2498307-how-brain-organoids-are-revealing-what-truly-makes-humans-unique/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Kirigami-inspired parachute falls on target

Posted by No Author

https://physicsworld.com/a/kirigami-inspired-parachute-falls-on-target/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=124218

Inspired by the Japanese art of kirigami, researchers in Canada and France have designed a parachute that can safely and accurately deliver its payloads when dropped directly above its target. Tested in realistic outdoor conditions, the parachute’s deformable design stabilizes the airflow around its porous structure, removing the need to drift as it falls. With its simple and affordable design, the parachute could have especially promising uses in areas including drone delivery and humanitarian aid.

When a conventional parachute is deployed, it cannot simply fall vertically towards its target. To protect itself from turbulence, which can cause its canopy to collapse, it glides at an angle that breaks the symmetry of the airflow around it, stabilizing the parachute against small perturbations.

But this necessity comes at a cost. When dropping a payload from a drone or aircraft, this gliding angle means parachutes will often drift far from their intended targets. This can be especially frustrating and potentially dangerous for operations such as humanitarian aid delivery, where precisely targeted airdrops are often vital to success.

To address this challenge, researchers led by David Mélançon at Polytechnique Montréal looked to kirigami, whereby paper is cut and folded to create elaborate 3D designs. “Previously, kirigami has been used to morph flat sheets into 3D shapes with programmed curvatures,” Mélançon explains. “We proposed to leverage kirigami’s shape morphing capability under fluid flow to design new kinds of ballistic parachutes.”

Wind-dispersed seeds

As well as kirigami, the team drew inspiration from nature. Instead of relying on a gliding angle, many wind-dispersed seeds are equipped with structures that stabilize the airflow around them: including the feathery bristles of dandelion seeds, which create a stabilized vortex in their wake; and the wings of sycamore and maple seeds, which cause them to rapidly spin as they fall. In each case, these mechanisms provide plants with passive control over where their seeds land and germinate.

For their design, Mélançon’s team created a parachute that can deform into a shape pre-programmed by a pattern of kirigami cuts, etched into a flexible disc using a laser cutter. “Our parachutes are simple flat discs, with circumferential slits inspired by a kirigami motif called a closed loop,” Mélançon describes. “Instead of attaching the payload with strings at the outer edge of the disk, we directly mount it its centre.”

When dropped, a combination of air resistance and the weight of the free-falling payload deformed the parachute into an inverted, porous bell shape. “The slits in the kirigami pattern are stretched, forcing air through its multitude of small openings,” Mélançon continues. “This ensures that the air flows in an orderly manner without any major chaotic turbulence, resulting in a predictable trajectory.”

The researchers tested their parachute extensively using numerical simulations combined with wind tunnel experiments and outdoor tests, where they used the parachute to drop a water bottle from a hovering drone. In this case, the parachute delivered its payload safely to the ground from a height of 60 m directly above its target.

Easy to make

Mélançon’s team tested their design with a variety of parachute sizes and kirigami patterns, demonstrating that designs with lower load-to-area ratios and more deformable patterns can reach comparable terminal velocity to conventional parachutes – with far greater certainty over where they will land. Compared with conventional parachutes, which are often both complex and costly to manufacture, kirigami-based designs will be far easier to fabricate.

“Little hand labour is necessary,” Mélançon says. “We have made parachutes out of sheets of plastic, paper or cardboard. We need a sheet of material with a certain rigidity, that’s all.”

By building on their design, the researchers hope that future studies will pave the way for new improvements in package home delivery. It could even advance efforts to deliver urgently needed aid during conflicts and natural disasters to those who need it most.

The parachute is described in Nature.

The post Kirigami-inspired parachute falls on target appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/kirigami-inspired-parachute-falls-on-target/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=124218

Entry tags:

!buddy assignments

October Buddy Assignments

The themes for October are:
CONTEMPORARY // HISTORICAL // LGBTQ // THRILLER // HORROR // FEMALE AUTHOR
You must choose books with these genres and themes for your buddy. If you think you might not have books in your TBR pile that fits this month's choices, please let your buddy know.

You can find your buddy's TBR lists here.

monkiainen &

flareonfury

yourivy &

badfalcon

You have until the 5th to choose your partner's books.

The best new science fiction books of October 2025

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2497314-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-october-2025/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Science fiction legend Ursula K. Le Guin is honoured with a new collection out this month, and sci-fi fans can also look forward to fiction from astronaut Chris Hadfield and award-winning authors Ken Liu and Mary Robinette Kowal

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2497314-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-october-2025/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum theory

Posted by Margaret Harris

https://physicsworld.com/a/nobel-prizes-youve-never-heard-of-how-an-obscure-version-of-colour-photography-beat-quantum-theory-to-the-most-prestigious-prize-in-physics/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123876

Black-and-white photo of Gabriel Lippmann. He's dressed formally, in a suit with a bow tie tucked beneath the collar, and he's wearing round spectacles. He has a large moustache with pointy, waxed ends. — **Gabriel Lippmann.** (Courtesy: Nobel Foundation archive)

By the time Gabriel Lippmann won the Nobel Prize for Physics, his crowning scientific achievement was already obsolete – and he probably knew it. Four days after receiving the 1908 prize “for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference”, Lippmann, a Frenchman with a waxed moustache that would shame a silent film villain, ended his Nobel lecture with the verbal equivalent of a Gallic shrug.

After nearly 20 years of work, he admitted, the minimum exposure time for his method – one minute in full sunlight – was still “too long for the portrait”. Though further improvements were possible, he concluded, “Life is short and progress is slow.”

Why did Lippmann win a Nobel prize for a method that not even he seemed to believe in? It certainly wasn’t for a lack of alternatives. The early 1900s were a heady time for physics discoveries and inventions, and other Nobels of the era reflect this. In 1906 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the physics prize to J J Thomson for discovering the electron. In 1907 its members voted for Albert Michelson of the aether-defying Michelson–Morley experiment. So what made the Academy choose, in 1908, a version of colour photography that wouldn’t even let you take a selfie?

An elegant solution

Let’s start with the method itself. Unlike other imaging processes, Lippmann photography directly records the entire colour spectrum of an object. It does this by using standing waves of light to produce interference fringes in a light-sensitive emulsion backed by a mirrored surface. The longer the wavelength of light given off by the object, the larger the separation between the fringes. It’s an elegant application of classical wave theory. It’s easy to see why Edwardian-era physicists loved it.

A photo of bright red flowers in a vase. The colours are very vivid — **Capturing colour** A still life taken by Lippmann using his method between 1890 and 1910. By the latter part of this period, the method had fallen out of favour, superseded by the simpler Autochrome process. (Photo in public domain)

Lippmann’s method also has an important practical advantage. Because his photographs don’t require pigments, they retain their colour over time. Consequently, the images Lippmann showed off in his Nobel lecture look as brilliant today as they did in 1908.

The method’s disadvantages, though, are numerous. As well as needing long exposure times, the colours in Lippmann photographs are hard to see. Because they are virtual, like a hologram, they are only accurate when viewed face-on, in perpendicular light. Lippmann’s original method also required highly toxic liquid mercury to make the mirrored back surface of each photographic plate. Though modern versions have eliminated this, it’s not surprising that Lippmann’s method is now largely the domain of hobbyists and artists.

A French connection

If technical merit can’t explain Lippmann’s Nobel, could it perhaps have been due to politics? The easiest way to answer this question is to look in the Nobel archives. Although the names of Nobel prize nominees and the people who nominated them are initially secret, this secrecy is lifted after 50 years. The nomination records for Lippmann’s era are therefore very much available, and they show that he was a popular candidate. Between 1901 and 1908, he received 23 nominations from 12 different people – including previous laureates, foreign members of the Academy, and scientists from prestigious universities invited to make nominations in specific years.

Funnily enough, though, all of them were French.

Faced with this apparent conspiracy to stamp the French tricolour on the Nobel medal, Karl Grandin, who directs the Academy’s Center for History of Science, concedes that such nationalistic campaigns were “quite common in the first years”. However, this doesn’t mean they were successful: “Sometimes when all the members of the French Academy have signed a nomination, it might be impressive at one point, but it might also be working in the opposite way,” he says.

A clash of personalities

Because Nobel Foundation statutes stipulate that discussions and vote numbers from the prize-awarding meeting of the Academy are not recorded, Grandin can’t say exactly how Lippmann came out on top in 1908. He does, however, have access to an illuminating article written in 1981 by a theoretical physicist, Bengt Nagel.

Drawing on the private letters and diaries of Academy members as well as the Nobel archives, Nagel showed that personal biases played a significant role in the awarding of the 1908 prize. It’s a complicated story, but the most important strand of it centres on Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish physical chemist who’d won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry five years earlier.

Today, Arrhenius is best known for predicting that putting carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere will affect the climate. In his own lifetime, though, Grandin says that Arrhenius was also known for having a long-running personality conflict with a wealthy Swedish mathematician called Gustaf Mittag-Leffler.

“Stockholm at the time was a small place,” Grandin explains. “Everyone knew each other, and it wasn’t big enough to host both Arrhenius and Mittag-Leffler.”

Arrhenius and Mittag-Leffler — **Double trouble** The feuding between Svante Arrhenius (left) and Gustaf Mittag-Leffler played a major role in Gabriel Lippmann winning the Nobel Prize for Physics. (Images in public domain)

Arrhenius wasn’t the chair of the Nobel physics committee in 1908. That honour fell to Knut Angstrom, son of the Angstrom the unit is named after. Still, Arrhenius’ prestige and outsized personality gave him considerable influence. After much debate, the committee agreed to recommend his preferred choice for the prize, Max Planck, to the full Academy.

This choice, however, was not problem-free. Planck’s theory of the quantization of matter was still relatively new in 1908, and his work was not demonstrably guiding experiments. If anything, it was the other way around. In principle, the committee could have dealt with this by recommending that Planck share the prize with a quantum experimentalist. Unfortunately, no such person had been nominated.

That was awkward, and it gave Mittag-Leffler the ammunition he needed. When the matter went to the Academy for a vote, he used members’ doubts about quantum theory to argue against Arrhenius’ choice. It worked. In Mittag-Leffler’s telling, Planck got only 13 votes. Lippmann, the committee’s second choice, got 46.

A consensus winner

Afterwards, Mittag-Leffler boasted about his victory. “Arrhenius wanted to give it to Planck…but his report, which he had nevertheless managed to have unanimously accepted by the committee, was so stupid that I could easily have crushed it,” he wrote to a French colleague. “Two members even declared that after hearing me, they changed their opinion and voted for Lippmann. I would have had nothing against sharing the prize between [quantum theorist Wilhelm] Wien and Planck,” Mittag-Leffler added, “but to give it to Planck alone would have been to reward ideas that are still very obscure and require verification by mathematics and experimentation.”

A photo of the Matterhorn rising above an Alpine landscape. The colours are a little washed out, but do not appear artificially tinted — **True colours** A photo of the Matterhorn taken by Gabriel Lippmann between 1891 and 1899, using his then-newly-developed method of colour photography. The colours appear as they did in the original image, and were not added afterwards. (Image in public domain)

Lippmann’s work posed no such difficulties, and that seems to have swung it for him. In a letter to a colleague after the dust had settled, Angstrom called Lippmann “obviously a prizeworthy candidate who did not give rise to any objections”. However, Angstrom added, he “could not deny that the radiation laws constitute a more important advance in physical science than Lippmann’s colour photography”.

Much has been written about excellent scientists getting overlooked for prizes because of biases against them. The flip side of this – that merely good scientists sometimes win prizes because of biases in their favour – is usually left unacknowledged. Nevertheless, it happens, and in 1908 it happened to Gabriel Lippmann – a good scientist who won a Nobel prize not because he did the most important work, but because his friends clubbed together to support him; because Academy members were wary of his quantum rivals; and above all because a grudge-holding mathematician and an egotistical chemist had a massive beef with each other.

And then, four years later, it happened again, to someone else.

The next instalment in this series will be published tomorrow.

The post Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum theory to the most prestigious prize in physics appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/nobel-prizes-youve-never-heard-of-how-an-obscure-version-of-colour-photography-beat-quantum-theory-to-the-most-prestigious-prize-in-physics/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123876

Destroyers of the world: the physicists who built nuclear weapons

Posted by No Author

https://physicsworld.com/a/destroyers-of-the-world-the-physicists-who-built-nuclear-weapons/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123866

The title of particle physicist Frank Close’s engaging new book, Destroyer of Worlds, refers to Robert Oppenheimer’s famous comment after he witnessed the first detonation of an atomic bomb, known as the Trinity test, in July 1945. Quoting the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, he said “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” But although Close devotes much space to the Manhattan Project, which Oppenheimer directed between 1942 and 1945, his book has a much wider remit.

Aimed at non-physicist readers with a strong interest in science, though undoubtedly appealing to physicists too, the book seeks to explain the highly complex physics and chemistry that led to the atomic bomb – a term first coined by H G Wells in his 1914 science-fiction novel The World Set Free. It also describes the contributions of numerous gifted scientists to the development of those weapons.

Close draws mainly on numerous published sources from this deeply analysed period, including Richard Rhodes’s seminal 1988 study The Making of the Atomic Bomb. He starts with Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895, before turning to the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 – described by Close as “the first pointer to nuclear energy [that was] so insignificant that it was almost missed”. Next, he highlights the work on radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898.

After discussing the emergence of nuclear physics, Close goes on to talk about the Allies’ development of the nuclear bomb. A key figure in this history was Enrico Fermi, who abandoned Fascist Italy in 1938 and emigrated to the US, where he worked on the Manhattan Project and built the first nuclear reactor, in Chicago, in 1942.

Fermi showed his legendary ability to estimate a physical phenomenon’s magnitude by shredding a sheet of paper into small pieces and throwing them into the air

Within seconds of seeing Trinity’s blast in the desert in 1945, Fermi showed his legendary ability to estimate a physical phenomenon’s magnitude by shredding a sheet of paper into small pieces and throwing them into the air. The bomb’s shock wave blew this “confetti” (Close’s word) a few metres away. After measuring the exact distance, Fermi immediately estimated that the blast was equivalent to about 10,000 tonnes of TNT. This figure was not far off the 18,000 tonnes determined a week later following a detailed analysis by the project team.

The day after the Trinity test, a group of 70 scientists, led by Leo Szilard, sent a petition to US President Harry Truman, requesting him not to use the bomb against Japan. Albert Einstein agreed with the petition but did not sign it, having been excluded from the Manhattan Project on security grounds (though in 1939 he famously backed the bomb’s development, fearing that Nazi Germany might build its own device). Despite the protests, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month later – a decision that Close neither defends nor condemns.

Other key figures in the Manhattan Project were emigrants to the UK, who had fled Germany in the mid-1930s because of Nazi persecution of Jews, and later joined the secret British Tube Alloys bomb project. The best known are probably the nuclear physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, who initially worked together at the University of Birmingham for Tube Alloys before joining the Manhattan Project. They both receive their due from Close.

Oddly, however, he neglects to mention their fellow émigré Franz (Francis) Simon by name, despite acknowledging the importance of his work in demonstrating a technique to separate fissionable uranium-235 from the more stable uranium-238. In 1940 Simon, then working at the Clarendon Laboratory in wartime Oxford, showed that separation could be achieved by gaseous diffusion of uranium hexafluoride through a porous barrier, which he initially demonstrated by hammering his wife’s kitchen sieve flat to make the barrier.

The Manhattan Project set an example for the future of science as a highly collaborative, increasingly international albeit sometimes dangerous adventure

As Close ably documents and explains, numerous individuals and groups eventually ensured the success of the Manhattan Project. In addition to ending the Second World War and preserving freedom against Fascism, there is an argument that it also set an example for the future of science as a highly collaborative, increasingly international albeit sometimes dangerous adventure.

Close finishes the book with a shorter discussion of the two decades of Cold War rivalry between scientists from the US and the Soviet Union to develop and test the hydrogen bomb. It features physicists such as Edward Teller and Andrei Sakharov, who led the efforts to build the American “Super Bomb” and the Soviet “Tsar Bomba”, respectively.

The book ends in around 1965, after the 1963 partial test-ban treaty signed by the US, Soviet Union and the UK, preventing further tests of the hydrogen bomb for fear of their likely devastating effects on Earth’s atmosphere. As Close writes, the Tsar Bomba was more powerful than the meteorite impact 65 million years ago that wreaked global change and killed the dinosaurs, which had ruled for 150 million years.

“Within just one per cent of that time, humans have produced nuclear arsenals capable of replicating such levels of destruction,” Close warns. “The explosion of a gigaton weapon would signal the end of history. Its mushroom cloud ascending towards outer space would be humanity’s final vision.”

2025 Allen Lane £25.00hb 321pp

The post Destroyers of the world: the physicists who built nuclear weapons appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/destroyers-of-the-world-the-physicists-who-built-nuclear-weapons/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123866

A breakthrough in the hunt for dark matter

Posted by Lorna Brigham

https://physicsworld.com/a/a-breakthrough-in-the-hunt-for-dark-matter/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123390

Dark matter makes up over 25% of the universe’s mass, holds galaxies together, and is essential to our understanding of cosmic structure. It doesn’t interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation, and is detectable only through its gravitational effects. While astrophysical and cosmological evidence confirms its presence, its true nature remains one of the greatest mysteries in modern physics.

A leading theory suggests that dark matter consists of extremely light, elusive particles called axions. Traditional axion searches rely on narrow-band resonance techniques, which require slow, step-by-step scanning across possible axion masses, making the process time-consuming.

In this study, researchers introduce a new broadband quantum sensing approach using an alkali-²¹Ne spin system, which works like a very sensitive antenna to listen for signals from dark matter. They identify two distinct ways the system behaves under different conditions. At low frequencies, the spin system naturally adjusts itself to cancel out noise or unwanted effects. This self-compensation makes the system stable and sensitive, even without fine-tuning. It’s like a car that automatically balances itself on a bumpy road, you don’t need to steer constantly. At higher frequencies, the system enters a state where the spins of different atoms resonate together. This resonance boosts the signal, making it easier to detect tiny effects caused by dark matter. Like two musical instruments playing in harmony, the combined sound is louder and clearer. This allows researchers to significantly expand the search bandwidth without sacrificing sensitivity.

Concept sketch of the broadband quantum spin sensor used to search for axion-like dark matter: the galactic “axion-wind” drives tiny spin torques (Courtesy: ChangE Collaboration)

Their experiment covers a vast frequency range, from very slow oscillations (0.01 Hz) to very fast ones (1000 Hz), enabling a comprehensive search for axion-like dark matter. They set new constraints on how axions might interact with neutrons and protons. For neutrons, they reached a sensitivity that beats previous astrophysical limits in some frequency ranges. For protons, they achieved the best lab-based constraints in specific frequency bands.

This work not only advances the search for dark matter but also opens new frontiers in atomic physics, quantum sensing, and particle physics, offering a powerful new strategy to explore the invisible fabric of the universe.

Read the full article

Dark matter search with a resonantly-coupled hybrid spin system

Kai Wei et al 2025 Rep. Prog. Phys. 88 057801

Do you want to learn more about this topic?

Dark matter local density determination: recent observations and future prospects by Pablo F de Salas and A Widmark (2021)

The post A breakthrough in the hunt for dark matter appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/a-breakthrough-in-the-hunt-for-dark-matter/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123390

A step towards bridging gravity and quantum physics

Posted by Lorna Brigham

https://physicsworld.com/a/a-step-towards-bridging-gravity-and-quantum-physics/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123392

A long-standing challenge in physics has been to integrate gravity into the Standard Model, which successfully describes the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. The difficulty lies in the mathematical symmetries: general relativity uses infinite-dimensional space-time symmetries, while the Standard Model relies on compact, finite-dimensional ones, making the two frameworks fundamentally incompatible.

A central question in this context is: is gravity a force? Newtonian mechanics says yes, gravity pulls masses together. Einstein’s relativity says no, it’s the curvature of space-time that guides motion. Quantum field theory suggests gravity may be a force mediated by hypothetical particles called gravitons.

The researchers behind this work propose that gravity can be treated as a gauge interaction, similar to electromagnetism. This approach implies gravity is a force mediated by a field and governed by the same kinds of symmetries as the other fundamental interactions.

They introduce unified gravity, a novel framework that reformulates gravity using the compact symmetries of quantum field theory. Working with an eight-dimensional spinor model, they define a space-time dimension field to recover familiar four-dimensional space-time. By applying four U(1) symmetries, they derive a gauge theory of gravity that mirrors the Standard Model, with the stress-energy-momentum tensor emerging naturally from these symmetries.

Their theory reproduces teleparallel gravity through a special geometric condition and describes gravity in flat Minkowski space-time by another geometric condition, making it compatible with quantum field theory. They develop Feynman rules and show the theory is renormalizable at 1-loop, meaning it handles quantum corrections without mathematical breakdown. Finally, they demonstrate that the theory respects BRST symmetry, which ensures gauge consistency in quantum field theory.

While this remains a mathematical theory, it prompts us to reassess how we conceptualize gravity, not as a curvature of space-time, but as a gauge interaction like the other fundamental forces. If validated experimentally, unified gravity could reshape our understanding of the universe and mark a major turning point in theoretical physics.

Read the full article

Gravity generated by four one-dimensional unitary gauge symmetries and the Standard Model

Mikko Partanen and Jukka Tulkki 2025 Rep. Prog. Phys. 88 057802

Do you want to learn more about this topic?

How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity? by R P Woodard (2009)

The post A step towards bridging gravity and quantum physics appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/a-step-towards-bridging-gravity-and-quantum-physics/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=123392

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

recurring posts

Cuddle Party

Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Uffie - Poolside Goth

Another Dispatch From the Place Of Strange Things - Late September 02025

Let's begin with an academic paper exploring the way that online puppygirl culture embodies a rejection of those things used as markers of human success because of the way that the highly transfeminine nature of puppygirls are usually denied the full markers of humanity based on their transness. The author notes at the end the limitations around embracing inhumanity for persons who have been and continue to be treated as inhuman based on their skin colors and perceived origins, and that the relative homogeneity of participants in online puppygirl culture and media often gives them blinkers in places they could stand to be more inclusive. I enjoyed reading it, perhaps you will, too.

The still-apparently-novel concept that people who have systems tuned toward novelty and curiosity might be beneficial to current society (instead of only the hunter-gatherers) and that environments made for others are not helpful to them.

The Archive of Our Own reminds us that they are dealing with an influx of spam accounts that leave generic praise comments and then offer to discuss off-site things like making fanart for your story. Part of it is that such commercial solicitation is barred on the Archive, but the easiest way to spot it, other than the invitation offsite, is that the comment itself doesn't have anything specific about the story. It's usually posted to the most recent story that's available. And some of these spammers are creating AO3 accounts to spam with, so disabling guest comments won't necessarily protect you from receiving them.

Nostalgia for times where scarcity required planning and people got a certain thrill out of the act of chasing things and not knowing whether their selections would turn out to be good ones. I am more inclined not to be nostalgic for that, but to be annoyed at the way that the expertise of the record clerk, the librarian, and the bookstore buyer are being devalued in favor of machines that their promoters claim have intelligence and can do all of those things a human can do, and better.

Robert Redford, actor, director, and well-known environmental activist, has left the world at 89 years of age. He is also responsible for the body that produces the annual Sundance Film Festival.

Anonymous art creators have unveiled a statue of the current administrator and known child trafficker and pederast Jeffrey Epstein holding hands, celebrating their friendship, and using the text of the administrator's birthday note to Epstein as commentary. You know, that text that strongly suggests that the two of them share an interest in pederasty and molestation of women and young girls, buttressed by some of the public statements the administrator has made about his interest in such. (As well as having been found liable for sexual assault earlier on in his life.)

( EA acquisitions, foolishness and buffoonery, and the usual issues that come with having the unqualified promoted well beyond their incompetence inside )

Last out, the ways in which our understanding of classical Greek depends on the surviving texts that we have to work with, and therefore while sometimes a word does mean dildo, other times, it does not.

Yacht Club Games on the development of modes for Shovel Knight that allow for different-bodied designs and pronoun usage, and a good decision made by them to decouple body designs and gendered pronouns.

And a story of corvids who help break the cages around their fellows. Be gay, do crow. And, perhaps, show solidarity by demonstrating how foolish it is to require girls to declare they're "biological females" before they can play in sort. (While the article quotes someone saying it's foolish not only require girls to do this and not boys, and that girls teams are suffering because they can't field enough affirmed players, the real meat is from the teachers saying it's not fair to require this, and the athletes who are also choosing not to participate because of fairness issues.)

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

(no subject)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250930.html

Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250930.html

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

New Year's Resolutions Check In

We made it to the end of September! \o/ If you have completed some of your medium-term goals or subgoals, and/or you're still chugging away at your ongoing goals, then pat yourself on the back. You worked hard for that. We have also started autumn. If you're doing seasonal goals, share what you're working on for this fall.

This year I'm trying something new, continuing to track goals at the end of each month. So far it seems to be helping, so that's encouraging. I'm looking at my goal list more often and trying to keep ticking off more of them. The main drawback is that this update becomes more of a chore each month.

These are the previous check in posts:
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 4
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 10
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 17
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 24
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In February 28
New Year's Resolutions Check In March 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In April 30
New Year's Resolutions Check In May 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In June 30
New Year's Resolutions Check In July 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In August 31

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, October 7

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Witches and Wizards." I'll be soliciting ideas for witches, wizards, other magic users, mentors, elders, teachers, students, adventurers, explorers, damsels/gentlemen in distress, historians, partners, leaders, dark lords, the Chosen One(s), superheroes, supervillains, teammates, fantasy species, ethicists, activists, queerfolk, other unusual fantasy folk, studying magic, doing magic, enchanting artifacts, breaking curses, breaking rules, exploring new territory, meeting new species, upsetting predictions, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, researching, revising theories, parenting, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, experiments changing paradigms, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, other fantastic activities, witch's huts, wizard's towers, magical schools, castles, ruins, stone circles, dungeons, dragon lairs, Underhill, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, kitchens, campfires, libraries, laboratories, apothecary shops, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, unusual magical systems, pointy hats, robes, wands or staves, cauldrons, herbs, crystals, potions, magical artifacts, quests, time periods other than medieval, governments other than monarchy, dragons, unicorns, enchantments, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, inventions that change everything, time travel, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia is about live happy lesbians in a quirky fantasy world.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy about a blacksmith and a golem.

A Conflagration of Dragons has unforseen disasters and cultural upheavals.

Gloryroad Crossing is the weird village where adventurers go to restock.

Kande's Quest is sword & soul with caucasian-inspired demons.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household, where the line between truth and fantasy isn't always clear.

Not Quite Kansas has a helpful demon.

The Ocracies features all the political systems other than monarchy.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks.

Path of the Paladins is low fantasy about paladins trying to restore a world gone to ruins.

P.I.E. is urban fantasy about paranormal investigations.

Polychrome Heroics has primarily superpowers, but magic is described as "sorcery" there. Antimatter & Stalwart Stan are a cross-cape couple, and Antimatter essentially does science-based magic. Aubrey the Alabaster is another sorcerer. Eric the Elven King has interdimensional refugees.

Practical Magics is low fantasy with a prosaic focus.

Quixotic Ideas is contemporary fantasy where magic integrates with modern life in positive ways.

The Ursulan Cycle is genderbent King Arthur.

Yellow Unicorns is a quirky fantasy setting where the only yellow things people can see are the unicorns.

Or you can ask for something new.

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Bingo

I have made bingo down the O column of my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Fest Bingo.

O1 (leak) "Mightier Than" (Princess: The Hopeful)
O2 (lookout) "Simple and to the Point" (An Army of One)
O3 (affiliate) "Bring Unique Qualities" (Daughters of the Apocalypse)
O4 (request) "The Only Thing That You Absolutely Have to Know" (Polychrome Heroics)
O5 (patch) "A Reader, an Interpreter, and a Creator) (Polychrome Heroics: Rutledge)

B4 (parrot) "For Those Who Work at It" (Polychrome Heroics: Dr. Infanta)

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

food,
recipe

Recipe: "Pigeon Peas Stew"

We made this tonight. It's quite tasty. :D We have plenty of pigeon peas left, so I can try other recipes too.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Affordable Housing

Long commutes and small homes are wrecking sleep

Your commute and home size could be quietly stealing your sleep.

Tokyo residents face a trade-off between home size and commute time when it comes to sleep health. A new study shows longer commutes increase both insomnia and daytime sleepiness, while smaller housing also raises insomnia risk. Even with average-sized homes, commuting more than 52 minutes pushed people into the insomnia range. Researchers say smarter housing planning could improve both sleep and quality of life.

( Read more... )

We now know why a belly button becomes an 'innie'

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2498288-we-now-know-why-a-belly-button-becomes-an-innie/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Scientists have discovered a new abdominal structure called the umbilical sheath, which anchors the remnant of the umbilical cord to deep abdominal tissues and helps determine the shape of your navel

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2498288-we-now-know-why-a-belly-button-becomes-an-innie/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

Little suns

It occurred to me the other day that since the SAD-fighting daylight lamp I have is pretty old now, it still has a big light bulb in it that gets really hot even in the short amounts of time it's supposed to be used. And I'm not as poor as I used to be so I could get a new one.

As always when I need to purchase anything, I asked V for help because they're very good at this. They suggested I might want to try one of those sunrise alarm clocks too. Which I'd never thought about because I'm not really an alarm kind of person a lot of the time, thanks to sleep-maintenance insomnia. But when they sent me a link to what they found and I saw it does a "sunset" thing where you can have gradually-diminishing light and sounds to put on at bedtime, I thought that might be worth a try. I've had increasing trouble settling down to sleep in recent months, and I don't love the workarounds I've resorted to.

Both arrived today, so I write this with orangey light and nature sounds next to me, and the daylight lamp set up by my desk downstairs waiting for me in the morning. We'll see how they work.

Leo Cancer Care launches first upright photon therapy system

Posted by Tami Freeman

https://physicsworld.com/a/leo-cancer-care-launches-first-upright-photon-therapy-system/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=124209

Leo Cancer Care is a trans-Atlantic company that’s pioneering the development of upright radiotherapy – a totally new take on radiation delivery in which the patient is treated in an upright position and rotated in front of a fixed treatment beam. At this week’s ASTRO 2025 meeting in San Francisco, the company introduced its first upright photon therapy system, named Grace, to an enthusiastic crowd in the ASTRO exhibit hall.

Upright treatments have a host of potential advantages over conventional radiotherapy, where patients typically lie on their back during treatment. Studies have shown that the more natural upright posture could deliver more consistent anatomical positioning and organ stability, as well as enabling more comfortable treatment positions, with patients who have experienced the technology reporting improved comfort and greater patient–therapist connection.

A fixed treatment beam also simplifies system design, reduces space and shielding requirements, and lowers infrastructure costs. And for proton therapy in particular, removing the need for a bulky and expensive gantry could help increase global access to advanced cancer treatments. Indeed, a partnership between Leo Cancer Care and Mevion Medical Systems led to the development of the MEVION S250-FIT, an ultracompact upright proton therapy system that fits inside a linac vault.

Moving on from Leo Cancer Care’s initial focus on proton therapy, the new Grace system will deliver conventional X-ray radiation therapy with patients positioned upright. Grace – named after American computer scientist and US Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper – comprises an upright patient positioning system (with six degrees of freedom and 360° continuous rotation) in front of a stationary 6 MV photon linac.

“Our future innovation, Grace, will take a proven technology, photon therapy, and rethink the way it can be delivered,” Sophie Towe, the company’s director of marketing, tells Physics World. “Upright treatment isn’t just about comfort; it’s about consistency, stability and ultimately accessibility. By integrating advanced CT imaging, faster beam delivery and a more natural patient position, we are opening the door to more adaptive and affordable care. Our goal is to show that innovation in radiotherapy doesn’t always mean bigger or more complex; it can mean smarter and more human.”

The system features a fan-beam CT scanner at the treatment isocentre, enabling planning-quality imaging throughout the entire treatment workflow. It also incorporates a large, ultrafast multileaf collimator that, in combination with the stationary photon beam delivery system, is designed to optimize dose conformity and treatment efficiency.

“Leo Cancer Care is already known for delivering upright particle therapy technology, and over the past few years we have seen a real paradigm shift as a result,” says co-founder and CEO Stephen Towe in a press statement. “Grace represents a return to our original company focus of delivering more cost-effective photon treatments to a global stage without sacrificing on treatment quality. Our technology has always been bold, but we are pioneering with purpose and that purpose is to put the patient truly back at the centre of their treatments.”

The company will install the first pre-commercial Grace systems at healthcare institutions within the Upright Photon Alliance research collaboration, which include Centre Léon Bérard, Cone Health, IHH Healthcare, Mayo Clinic and OncoRay.

The post Leo Cancer Care launches first upright photon therapy system appeared first on Physics World.

https://physicsworld.com/a/leo-cancer-care-launches-first-upright-photon-therapy-system/

https://physicsworld.com/?p=124209