Charlie Wood

New York

Freelance Science Journalist at Freelance

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

Articles

Sidney Nagel Solves Physics Mysteries Hiding in Plain Sight

5 days ago | realclearscience.com | Charlie Wood

A stain drying on the counter. A raindrop splashing onto the sidewalk. A pile of gravel settling. Historically, such phenomena have rarely caught the attention of physicists, as they seem mundane and devoid of fundamental significance. Read Full Article » Show comments Hide Comments Related Articles
Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences

5 days ago | quantamagazine.org | Charlie Wood

A stain drying on the counter. A raindrop splashing onto the sidewalk. A pile of gravel settling. Historically, such phenomena have rarely caught the attention of physicists, as they seem mundane and devoid of fundamental significance. At the same time, these everyday happenings are also deceptively hard to understand. Out of balance and disordered, they sit outside the comfort zone of the typical physicist. But Sidney Nagel of the University of Chicago is not typical.
Can Quantum Gravity Be Created in the Lab?

3 weeks ago | quantamagazine.org | Shalma Wegsman |Philip Ball |Charlie Wood |Steven Strogatz

Introduction Quantum gravity is one of the biggest unresolved and challenging problems in physics, as it seeks to reconcile quantum mechanics, which governs the microscopic world, and general relativity, which describes the macroscopic world of gravity and space-time.
Scientists Are Mapping the Boundaries of What Is Knowable and Unknowable

1 month ago | technewstube.com | Charlie Wood

Math and computer science researchers have long known that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict.
Scientists Are Mapping the Boundaries of What Is Knowable and Unknowable

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Charlie Wood

NowWhen Apple launched its suite of AI features, Apple Intelligence, it was available for six iPhones: the four phones making up the iPhone 16 series and the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. But one feature was excluded from the last two phones. It’s just arrived. Here’s all you need to know. Until …
Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.

1 month ago | quantamagazine.org | Charlie Wood |Elise Cutts |Lyndie Chiou

Introduction Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening. The bombshell result, based on the team’s observations of the motions of millions of galaxies combined with other data, was tentative and preliminary.
The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Elise Cutts |Charlie Wood |Lyndie Chiou |Matt von Hippel

Introduction In the late 1970s, Saturn’s odd moon Titan, a hazy orange world, was expecting visitors — first, NASA’s Pioneer 11 probe, then the twin Voyager spacecraft. Most moons are airless or boast little more than gauzy, gaseous veils. But Titan is cloaked in a blanket of nitrogen and methane so thick that, with a pair of wings and a running start, astronauts on the frosty satellite could fly just by flapping their arms.
‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability

2 months ago | realclearscience.com | Charlie Wood

‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability The French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace crisply articulated his expectation that the universe was fully knowable in 1814, asserting that a sufficiently clever “demon” could predict the entire future given a complete knowledge of the present. His thought experiment marked the height of optimism about what physicists might forecast. Since then, reality has repeatedly humbled their ambitions to understand it. Read Full Article »
‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Charlie Wood

The French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace crisply articulated his expectation that the universe was fully knowable in 1814, asserting that a sufficiently clever “demon” could predict the entire future given a complete knowledge of the present. His thought experiment marked the height of optimism about what physicists might forecast. Since then, reality has repeatedly humbled their ambitions to understand it. One blow came in the early 1900s with the discovery of quantum mechanics.
Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.

Jan 16, 2025 | quantamagazine.org | Charlie Wood |Henry Carnell |Janna Levin |Natalie Wolchover

Introduction Sunlight melts snowflakes. Fire turns logs into soot and smoke. A hot oven will make a magnet lose its pull. Physicists know from countless examples that if you crank the temperature high enough, structures and patterns break down. Now, though, they’ve cooked up a striking exception.