Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋

Science writer covering physical sciences and complexity | 🦋@elisecutts.bsky.social

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Thank you to all the researchers who so generously took the time to speak with me for this story. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

And thank you to my editor for taking a risk on me with this story! It's wild to see something I wrote on a magazine cover.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

The Free Energy Principle is an ambitious framework that started in cognitive science but now defines what it means for something to exist at all.

For New Scientist, I asked what the FEP is, really: a theory of everything? Or maybe not a theory at all?

https://t.co/2wTv8CHwgJ

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@Astro_Jonny No question: a probe precision-engineered for the sole purpose of settling the Venus phosphine debate once and for all 😅😂

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Thinking about this, I wonder whether networks formed by researchers agreeing with each other would look different than networks formed when papers cite each other mainly to bash each other..

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Does anyone have a good tool for visually seeing scholarly citation networks? I'd love a way to quickly get a sense of which papers are "hubs" within a field and who cites who.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

I'm working on a story about hair loss and want to talk with a few folks who've experienced it.

I'm esp. interested in hearing from women who lost hair in menopause AND/OR people who tried treatments for hair loss.

DM if you want to talk or connect me to someone

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Jokes aside, I'm enjoying this book (Ends of the World by Peter Brannen) enough to look past the author's merciless takedown of the ecosystem I researched for two years during my masters.

But now that I mention it, I was studying... microbial slime. So, point taken I guess.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

I've never seen such a savage take on stromatolites.

"uninspiring mounds of muck" — oof.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@michaelgreshko Echoing some other thoughts here, but *humanness.* Whatever it takes to make it clear that a human wrote the work: on-the-ground reporting, "field notes" from reporting incorperated into the page layouts, podcast interviews/read-alouds with the reporters, etc.

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

How emergence happens has long been debated amongst physicists, biologists and philosophers alike. A new framework identifies the hierarchical structure that’s key to how order emerges on macroscopic scales. @philipcball reports: https://t.co/vG5aPyhrvU

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

I love astrobio but I'd also love it if planets themselves could get half the hype biosignatures do — especially since, right now, we could barely interpret an atmospheric exoplanet biosiganture even if we found one.

https://t.co/zIUM9BiFVB

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

The little hill I will die on is that planets are still interesting even if there's nothing alive on them.

JWST is poised to answer some seriously amazing questions about planets. Whether aliens live on any of them is not one of them.

https://t.co/BEivu4Acnt

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@PlanetaryGao I feel like every other time I happen to open up my feed you're in Europe being happy about trains 😂

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

With new computer models and inspiration from nature, scientists are decoding the secrets of how water freezes. @elisecutts reports: https://t.co/QJ9ZlHQKKE

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

The cats kinda blur into an abstract pattern if you're far enough away. But only if you're far enough away. I don't know if I should be proud of this or ashamed. Probably both.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Realized that the most formal piece of clothing I own is an olive-green, cat-print dress.

And no, not cat print like cheetah spots. I mean literal cats all over the dress.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@duetosymmetry I was also bummed to not include EMRIs in this story. This piece was supposed to focus just on the early universe side of things, but in my research I talked to folks about EMRIs + testing GR as well.

LISA's exciting possibilities clearly deserve more than one story, I think!

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@colemathis__ Right? Seems a bit like Venus Posphine Saga 2.0 to me from my perspective on the outside.

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

Me again on the "biosignatures are tricky" beat:

DMS, that biosignature gas that was ***maybe*** found on habitable-zone exoplanet K2-18b has now been found on a lifeless comet.

Barring unimaginably weird comet life, DMS must have an abiotic source.

https://t.co/W05xCMoKIA

[Elise Cutts has migrated 🐦🦋 @elisecutts]

@SquigglyVolcano Thank you! I hope I don't end up getting too much of a reputation for biosignature skepticism, because I really do love astrobiology 😅🤷‍♀️But covering its uncertainties is important, I think — having big open questions to answer is what makes this field so exciting.