Lee Billings

Hey just FYI I *think* the post to reply to for quantum physics isn't available anymore/has been deleted/is borked? From here: bossett.io/science-feed/. Just tried to reply to get on the science feed and got an error.

This Year’s Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded to Three Scientists for Work in Quantum Mechanics John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work showing how bizarre microscopic quantum effects can infiltrate our large-scale, everyday world

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: This year’s physics Nobel goes to 3 researchers who demonstrated quantum tunneling on a superconducting chip. By bringing this microscopic effect into the macroscale world, they laid important foundations for quantum computing.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/2025...

lol, this mental image is exactly what I needed today. 😆

Is Life inside Enceladus? Saturn’s Ocean Moon Is Awash with Biology’s Raw Ingredients A fresh analysis of old data has found rich organic chemistry within the hidden ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: A fresh look at old Cassini data shows surprising chemical complexity brewing within Enceladus. This time we've found oodles of chonky organic molecules that could be precursors to (or byproducts of) even chonkier biomolecules.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-l...

A cosmic perspective worth fighting for NASA's science budget is under threat. Here's what that could mean to the human endeavor of exploration.

In my latest piece for The Planetary Report, I argue that we’ve largely lost the rhetorical ability to defend the unquantifiable values of space exploration—beauty, curiosity, discovery—in the face of an unrelenting focus on utilitarian pragmatism.

www.planetary.org/articles/a-c...

Thank you for the kind words, Phil!!!

This is a great article by my friends and colleagues Nadia and Lee.

NASA’s First-Ever Alien-Hunting Space Telescope Could Enlighten Our New Dark Age The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earthlike planets are common—if it can get off the ground

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: NASA’s next-gen Habitable Worlds Observatory may be our best chance to find alien life. But can a nation busy ripping itself apart unite to launch a mission to solve life’s cosmic mysteries? By @nadiadrake.bsky.social (and me).

www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-...

The Meteorite That Vanished: A Tale of Lies, Death and Smuggling How a space rock vanished from Africa and showed up for sale across an ocean

"Millennia ago a piece of the sky fell toward East Africa, streaking overhead, born of an ancient collision..."

www.scientificamerican.com/article/insi...

Shiid-birood, a fabled iron meteorite taken amid reports of violence, revealed tantalizing mysteries before vanishing into a shady underworld

Announcing the #SciAmInTheWild Photography Contest Short List To celebrate Scientific American’s 180th anniversary, we invited readers to place our magazine covers in the wild. See our staff’s favorite submissions

We posted some of our favorite #SciAmInTheWild submissions and honestly, these make me so dang happy: www.scientificamerican.com/article/anno...

For Artemis III before taikonauts make moonfall, yeah, Starship’s the bigger concern there.

But more broadly problematic is this: the US has spent big $$$ supporting/building hardware for lunar return (Obama era counts, IMO) for decades on end—only to be here, reliant on a wild Hail Mary via SpaceX

Possible, sure.

But is it more possible than, say, any alternative from “legacy” US aerospace firms eventually being an order of magnitude pricier than that?

😅

Not trying to excuse or defend SpaceX; just noting how remarkably gently the NYT piece treats these other very problematic parts of the Artemis program.

Lol’d at the NYT piece’s framing of SpaceX’s lunar lander as “riskiest”—something which is certainly true for Artemis III.

But meanwhile SLS and Orion are what make Artemis I-IV launches cost >$4 billion *apiece*.

That’s unsustainable—*riskily* so—and is why NASA went to SpaceX in the 1st place.

Want to Get Away? NASA Now Offers More Than 6,000 Alien Worlds to Daydream About It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

We've reached 6,000 confirmed exoplanets! I talked with @aussiastronomer.bsky.social about where things go from here. (A great graphic by @unamandita.bsky.social visualizes the amazing jumps in planet finds since the first ones were confirmed in the 1990s.)

Tomorrow!
NASA HQ 3 PM.
Free & open to the public.

Good thread.

So what I glean about this Mars announcement is that chemicals were found on Mars that on Earth are due to life, and no one knows any other way to make them on Mars. However, this is very far from knowing they *were* made by life. Reminds me of phosphine on Venus; "we don't know" doesn't mean life.

To sum up: we have

🪨 A cool rock from #Mars that may or may not hold evidence of ancient life

🛰️ An internal fight over whether NASA should spend its money on science or human exploration, and on what planet

🤔 A totally uncertain future for this amazing rock

🧪

A Black Hole Collision Shows Einstein and Hawking Were Right Spacetime ripples from a black hole collision across the cosmos have confirmed weird aspects of black hole physics

If an exciting Mars rock isn't your cuppa, try this news from (much) farther afield. Now on @sciam.bsky.social: The best-yet measurement of gravitational waves from merging black holes confirms theories from Einstein and Hawking. By @clarakm.bsky.social.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/best...

This Martian Rock Might Be the Closest We’ve Come to Finding Alien Life The Perseverance rover’s new findings set the stage for bringing Martian samples back to Earth to test whether microbes once inhabited the Red Planet

In the middle of the “second space race,” NASA scientists say we may be looking at the closest evidence yet of ancient life on Mars 🔭🧪

My story for @sciam.bsky.social with edits from @leebillings.bsky.social

www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-t...

Fundamentally the #Mars announcement NASA is making today boils down to: there could have been some chemical reactions in these ancient rocks that could have been mediated by living organisms. The word "could" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there. 🧪

Nice piece by @humbertobasilio.bsky.social.

This Martian Rock Might Be the Closest We’ve Come to Finding Alien Life The Perseverance rover’s new findings set the stage for bringing Martian samples back to Earth to test whether microbes once inhabited the Red Planet

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: The Mars rock that made headlines last year is still worth getting excited about. A new study says the case remains strong for potential biosignatures in the "Cheyava Falls" rock studied and sampled by the Perseverance rover.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-t...

At the Peak of Hurricane Season, the Atlantic Is Quiet. Here’s Why Hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin is historically at its peak on September 10—but not this year

Today is the peak of Atlantic hurricane season. And yet, there's not even a hint of a hurricane anywhere in sight. What gives? Some cool weather stuff here: 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/atla...

This is Carbon Dioxide’s World—We Just Live in It In his latest book, science journalist Peter Brannen argues that CO2 is the most important—and most misunderstood—molecule on Earth

Did you know there was a play called Oxygen in 2001 taking jabs at the Nobel Prize Committee? Did you know CO2 is the Story of Everything? Our physics editor @leebillings.bsky.social talked to @peterbrannen.bsky.social about it earlier this summer! www.scientificamerican.com/article/carb...

But if you’ll indulge me further for a moment, I’m curious: since you’re saying our presentation got this so wrong, how would you characterize the results in a single sentence/headline for the general public, then?

“Hints of heads” in your analogy is ok, IMO—especially since planets aren’t coins, and shouldn’t offer a priori 50/50 odds between “bare rock” and “N2-rich atmosphere.”

Simplifying the derived constraint on the system as a “hint of an atmosphere” thus seems perfectly appropriate to me.

Nature

Why a Hint of an Atmosphere on this Alien Planet is Such a Big Deal A monumental sign of an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e could be the precursor to finally finding a living world around another star

If we’re going to find life, TRAPPIST-1e might be our best bet.

By next year, we should know for sure if this alien planet has an atmosphere. But already there is excitement at hints this is not a barren world.

Story by me in @sciam.bsky.social

www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwst...