Hard drives fail after a few years -- ever thought about writing your data into glass instead?
Microsoft has developed a ready-to-deploy system which, while pricey to read and write, could save data for millennia, with minimal storage costs 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The system simply cannot handle the current volume.
And as one researcher told me, if the issue is not addressed, “trust in scientific research, particularly within computer science, faces a substantial risk of erosion"
My latest @nature.com story on what computer science can do about the deluge of AI-generated/assisted papers.
Charge to submit? Use AI to review? Have AI-only outlets? Switch to a journal, rather than conference model? Reprimand repeat offenders? 🧪
More ideas?
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
...while wider Choose Europe schemes are attracting researchers (with @maxkozlov.bsky.social 👏)
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
BUT sources said this often means success rates get further squeezed. And measures need to be bigger (billions of euros, thousands of scientists) to really move the needle.
I've written two @nature.com stories this week looking at whether EU efforts to lure US scientists are working 🧪
They are: the number of US applicants wanting to take up ERC grants has doubled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Silicon Valley has gone wild for Moltbook, the social network for AI agents. What can scientists learn from studying it?
Great @nature.com story from Mohana Basu 🧪🤖
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
4/4 As for Pan, he says they'll soon launch a geostationary 🛰️ that will enable Q comms over 10,000km & host a wildly good optical clock (with a 'tick' fluctuating only at the 10^-19 level, more than 100x better than the ACES clock on the ISS!)
The era of quantum physics in space is well under way!
3/4 The skies are now far from empty. Last year China launched a light quantum microsat & is planning a whole constellation www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Other quantum 🛰️ are set to fly. A UK-Singapore collab launched SpeQtre in Nov & both ESA and the Canadian Space Agency have missions in the works
2/4 Micius' fall was expected and controlled, its architect Jianwei Pan told me.
As well as allow secure communication across continents using QKD, in its extended life, researchers used the 🛰️ to test models of gravity-induced entanglement and to synchronise time from space.
1/4 RIP Micius 🛰️
The world's first quantum satellite crashed into the Pacific last week (to the west of Ecuador) after an almost 10-year mission
Also known as Mozi (& QUESS) it was famously the first to teleport a photon to space (or at least its quantum state)
🧪⚛️
www.nature.com/articles/nat...
It's hard to do at a distance: ultrasound is very readily absorbed by the skull, so this technique requires an implant just beneath it (or to operate through a cranial window). We v briefly touch on ethical issues in the piece.
The story is available if you register with Nature (no fee required)
OpenAI is among those investing a whopping $252 million into a start up called Merge Labs. They want to use ultrasound -- rather than electrode implants -- to read out and interact with the brain.
What are its chances of success? My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪
We're back with a new vid!
First protein, now exercise. How much do you need to reap the health benefits?
The good news is, probably not as much as you think... 🧪
"Another remarkable case is a 106-year-old woman who took up swimming at age 70 & won her first competition three decades later. Longevity runs in the family: she has two younger sisters over 100 & a 110-year-old aunt."
Great story from @marilenharo.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.
I quizzed @cern.bsky.social's new director general on what that $1bn donation will mean for their long-campaigned for future machine, and whether physicists should pursue cheaper, more varied experimental strategies instead ⚛️🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Very happy you're happy Phil! If the international year of quantum physics taught me anything, it's that most physicists don't think that particles are actually in two places at once (although of course, some still do 😃)
22.01.2026 11:28 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Hear more about this from first author Sebastian Pedalino on the Nature pod @naturepodcast.bsky.social (including exactly when the team predicts that physicists will be able to do this with a real cat 😉🙀)
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
🧪⚛️
How big can something be and still be quantum?
We're far off Schrödinger's dead-and-alive cat but physicists have put a cluster of 7,000 atoms into a superposition of distant paths - the chunkiest cat state yet, with philosophical and practical ramifications 🧪⚛️
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Great @nature.com story from @nicolakimjones.bsky.social 🧪
"How central 'being a man' was to someone’s sense of self wasn’t particularly predictive of which group they landed in. "'Manly' men are not necessarily toxic," says Hill Cone. "There is positive masculinity."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
I stopped putting protein powder in my breakfast after making this video (with producer & extra extraordinaire @nickpetrichowe.bsky.social)
It's based on this great story by @marilenharo.bsky.social from the end of last year🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Do you need more protein? Watch & learn!
Well indeed. It only really makes sense in more varied environments/jobs where flexibility is needed. Some I spoke to said that a surprising number of jobs in a factory are still done by people — and it’s these more flexible roles humanoids could do. But it seems mostly a stepping stone
18.01.2026 10:05 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
But the technical, safety and ethical hurdles to taking them out of the relatively safe and structured environment of a factory and into the real world & doing general tasks, are HUGE!
We remain a long, long way from having humanoid housekeepers (if we want them at all) 🧪🤖
AI is one of a handful of factors that has helped them to improve. But right now humanoids are not better than humans at... well anything much.
Still, it seems that factories are willing to trial them anyway, especially in China, hoping that they can learn on the job. 🧪🤖
Happy Friday folks!
Recently you may have seen demos of glitzy humanoid robots doing impressive stuff.
But demos don't say a lot. I wanted to know if these bots are finally becoming useful 🤖🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
In a recent study, LLMs undergoing "therapy" came out with tales of bewildering "childhoods" of pre-training and "fears" of failing their creators, with traits that in people could point to mental health concerns.
Should their mimicking of human traumas worry us? 🧪🤖
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Great new feature out on the ways that researchers are trying to stop dormant cancer cells from reemerging years later 🧪https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04149-3
06.01.2026 11:36 — 👍 18 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 1This is interesting ... I don't receive @cern.bsky.social 's press releases anymore, perhaps because I reported on many physicists' opposition to this project
18.12.2025 17:36 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Agreed! I think it gives them an energy injection too. And they probably have the power to push ahead without the full assent of the community
18.12.2025 15:09 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0..but bad for potential Bond-esque film plots :)
18.12.2025 15:08 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0