Shalma Wegsman
@shalmawegs.bsky.social
Science writer/podcaster
Previously a writing fellow @ Quanta Magazine
Co-host/editor/creator of the ‘Why This Universe?’ podcast
https://www.shalmawegsman.com/
Science is magic!
Previously a writing fellow @ Quanta Magazine
Co-host/editor/creator of the ‘Why This Universe?’ podcast
https://www.shalmawegsman.com/
Science is magic!
Pinned
Nobody asked, but here’s a video of me explaining the Penrose diagram I embroidered on my pants.
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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-...
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...
www.quantamagazine.org
September 15, 2025 at 4:36 PM
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-...
🧪
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...
Listen to the whole episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
September 15, 2025 at 5:58 PM
🧪
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...
Listen to the whole episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
September 15, 2025 at 5:43 PM
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...
Listen to the whole episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
And here's another one I wrote with @quantamagazine.bsky.social 🧪:
In 1981, Richard Feynman famously quipped that “if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical.” Only quantum computers can faithfully model the world in its true nature. @shalmawegs.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/analog-vs-di...
Analog vs. Digital: The Race Is On To Simulate Our Quantum Universe | Quanta Magazine
Recent progress on both analog and digital simulations of quantum fields foreshadows a future in which quantum computers could illuminate phenomena that are far too complex for even the most powerful ...
www.quantamagazine.org
September 5, 2025 at 6:53 PM
And here's another one I wrote with @quantamagazine.bsky.social 🧪:
Thanks for the shout-out @seanmcarroll.bsky.social! And a funny coincidence—the Fourier transform really is everywhere you look.
Completely coincidental that @quantamagazine.bsky.social just published a nice article by @shalmawegs.bsky.social on the history of Fourier transforms! I did not know that Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was slated to be guillotined. Narrow escape there.
www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-...
www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-...
What Is the Fourier Transform? | Quanta Magazine
Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, de...
www.quantamagazine.org
September 5, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Thanks for the shout-out @seanmcarroll.bsky.social! And a funny coincidence—the Fourier transform really is everywhere you look.
My latest story is out in Quanta Magazine. Had a lot of fun digging into both history and math for this one!
At 26, during the Reign of Terror in France, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier narrowly avoided the guillotine. A decade later, he made a discovery that changed mathematics forever. @shalmawegs.bsky.social reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-...
www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-...
What Is the Fourier Transform? | Quanta Magazine
Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, de...
www.quantamagazine.org
September 3, 2025 at 6:13 PM
My latest story is out in Quanta Magazine. Had a lot of fun digging into both history and math for this one!
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Fingers crossed. Keep telling your members of Congress this is important.
The Senate appropriations committee has voiced its intent to ignore the request by President Donald Trump to slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation and NASA science programs. scim.ag/4nW7XWi
Senate spending panel would rescue NSF and NASA science funding
Its support for a flat budget is a sign of congressional resistance to drastic cuts Trump has proposed
scim.ag
July 10, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Fingers crossed. Keep telling your members of Congress this is important.
My last story with Quanta dove deeeeep into quantum crystals. You can’t read about research this fresh anywhere else! 🧪
Physicists recently mapped the hidden geometry that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous. @shalmawegs.bsky.social reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry | Quanta Magazine
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
www.quantamagazine.org
July 6, 2025 at 6:59 PM
My last story with Quanta dove deeeeep into quantum crystals. You can’t read about research this fresh anywhere else! 🧪
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
BREAKING: The United States of America
July 3, 2025 at 6:40 PM
BREAKING: The United States of America
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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."
"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."
July 1, 2025 at 4:06 PM
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."
"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."
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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.
"Woke science" seems to be the new "Jewish physics".
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Trump team axes contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature
The action comes as high-ranking US officials criticize top journals as ‘woke’ and ‘corrupt’.
www.nature.com
July 1, 2025 at 3:25 PM
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.
The National Science Foundation is getting kicked out of their building
NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years.
NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."
NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."
June 25, 2025 at 2:12 PM
The National Science Foundation is getting kicked out of their building
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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.
⚛️🧪
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.
⚛️🧪
June 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM
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.
⚛️🧪
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.
⚛️🧪
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
Well this is fucking crazy
Trump just shared this alarming text from Israeli Ambassador Mike Huckabee, effusively praising him while telling him that no president has been in his position "since Truman in 1945" (when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Japan) & that he "will hear a voice from heaven" telling him what to do.
June 17, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Well this is fucking crazy
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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
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
June 16, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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
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
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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.
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.
June 17, 2025 at 5:14 PM
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.
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.
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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
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.
apnews.com
June 17, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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
Wired continuing to do great + important work for the political moment!
Jack and Fiona watched as Trump and Musk turned the US into what they call “a fascist hellscape.” So they turned to tech to organize, creating @stickittofascists.com.
They're one of many mobilizing online. And as millions joined the "No Kings” protests, these tools were powering the movement.
They're one of many mobilizing online. And as millions joined the "No Kings” protests, these tools were powering the movement.
The Online Tools That Fueled ‘No Kings’ and the Trump Resistance
Social media platforms, collaborative online tools, and encrypted messaging are all helping to power a massive, decentralized resistance to the Trump administration.
www.wired.com
June 16, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Wired continuing to do great + important work for the political moment!
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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
Cutting-edge AI models ‘collapse’ in face of complex problems, Apple study finds
Cutting-edge AI models ‘collapse’ in face of complex problems, Apple study finds
‘Pretty devastating’ paper raises doubts about race to reach stage of AI at which systems match human intelligence
Apple researchers have found “fundamental limitations” in cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, in a paper raising doubts about the technology industry’s race to develop ever more powerful systems.
Apple claimed in a paper published at the weekend that large reasoning models (LRMs) – an advanced form of AI – faced a “complete accuracy collapse” when presented with highly complex problems. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
June 9, 2025 at 9:52 PM
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
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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/doi/10.1098/...
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 ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
June 11, 2025 at 6:28 AM
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/doi/10.1098/...
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.
Sam Altman wrote a blog post to tell us that he doesn't understand human creativity, technology, science, politics, history, ethics, or even his own AI. He does, however, have some grasp of marketing.
blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-s...
blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-s...
The Gentle Singularity
We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be.
Robots...
blog.samaltman.com
June 11, 2025 at 2:46 PM
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.
Reposted by Shalma Wegsman
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.
There's a lot of big news today/this week, but Apple just dropped a nuke of a paper about LLMs & LRMs, specially around "high-complexity tasks where both models experience complete collapse." This is the biggest sign yet that if AI ever lives up the hype, it won't be via those approaches:
The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity
Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models
(LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes…
machinelearning.apple.com
June 9, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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.
Mark is such a talented and passionate science illustrator it was a pleasure to work together on this!
Check out this new story at Quanta about quantum geometry - new research about the hidden shapes that underlie the quantum behaviors of a crystal.
I had so much fun producing graphics for this cool story with @shalmawegs.bsky.social + @nattyover.bsky.social.
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
I had so much fun producing graphics for this cool story with @shalmawegs.bsky.social + @nattyover.bsky.social.
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry | Quanta Magazine
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
www.quantamagazine.org
June 8, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Mark is such a talented and passionate science illustrator it was a pleasure to work together on this!
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!
Physicists recently mapped the hidden geometry that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous. @shalmawegs.bsky.social reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma...
First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry | Quanta Magazine
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
www.quantamagazine.org
June 6, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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!
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!
Out now in TiCS, something i've been thinking about a lot:
"Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
(by Balaban & me)
relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...
"Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
(by Balaban & me)
relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...
June 3, 2025 at 8:37 PM
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!