Natalie Wolchover

"Astronomers mapped the motions of hundreds of stars in the in order to deduce the amount of that must be tugging on them from the vicinity of our sun. Their surprising conclusion? There's no dark matter around here. As the researchers write in a forthcoming paper in the ', the stellar motion implies that the stars, all within 13,000 light-years of Earth, are gravitationally attracted by the visible material in our solar system — the sun, planets and surrounding gas and dust — and not by any unseen matter. "Our calculations show that [dark matter] should have shown up very clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!" said lead study author Christian Moni-Bidin, an astronomer at the in Chile."

"I decided to become a physicist when I read ' ... age thirteen. I think it was the tenth anniversary edition of the book ... So I went to Tufts University (for undergrad) ... majored in physics. ... from there I went to grad school at Berkeley — which is where I had always wanted to go. ... And I really liked it there. But then something kind of remarkable happened that I don't really understand very well. ... in the course of one sleepless night during my first year at Berkeley, I had a complete crisis — and realized that I didn't want to be a physicist. I wanted to be a physics writer."

"Above all, I am looking for a new idea or finding that scientists in the relevant community think is important. Even if it’s something really abstruse that doesn’t seem like it would have broad appeal and doesn’t have any buzzwords to speak of, if actual experts think something is a big deal, then there’s a reason for that, and it’s up to me to figure out what the story is and how to tell it. Everything else that makes a compelling story — interesting historical background, strong characters, controversy, vivid scenes — is incidental. I’m thrilled when it’s there (and it almost always is), but I’m first and foremost going after groundbreaking new developments, as judged by experts. Now to find out about those developments before everybody else does, I have to be tapped in and talk to a lot of scientists. Building and maintaining those relationships takes time and is tough to balance with all of one’s other duties as a reporter, but it’s the springboard for everything else."

"Among the brilliant theorists cloistered in the quiet woodside campus of the in Princeton, New Jersey, Edward Witten stands out as a kind of high priest."

"WHY WRITE? Reasons to do : • Societal progress • Scientific progress • Enrich people's intellectual lives • Enrich your own intellectual life"