The institutions, projects and individuals named in the article are, in order of appearance:
--1-- Charlotte Mason (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation)
of the Cosmic Dawn Center (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation)
which is associated with the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation, except that the NBI hosts something called the "Niels Bohr International Academy" that has taken money from the Simons Foundation; it doesn't look to me as if Charlotte Mason has any connection with this)
and also with the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation)
--2-- The James Webb Space Telescope (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation)
--3-- Jenny Greene (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with or funded by the Simons Foundation, though she did once give a talk at the Center For Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute which is part of the Simons Foundation)
of Princeton University (not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with the Simons Foundation though I expect it's taken some of their money, but in any case no one needs an excuse for reporting on work done at Princeton)
--4-- Unnamed-in-the-article researchers who found that a "little red dot" is likely a supermassive black hole without stars around it; the Simons Foundation is not mentioned anywhere in the paper they published about this; neither the first-named author of that paper nor the one quoted in the linked article has obvious Simons connections, and both are at the University of Cambridge which, again, no one needs an excuse for reporting on the doings of.
--5-- Rachel Sommerville of the Flatiron Institute. Here there really is a Simons connection; the Flatiron Institute is part of the Simons Foundation. It does computational research in scientific fields, astrophysics being one of them.
--6-- "a meeting in April 2026 in Helsingør, Denmark" about the early universe; this was titled "Charting Cosmic Dawn in Copenhagen" and so far as I can tell has no Simons connection other than the fact that two of the 21 people listed as "invited speakers and tutorial leads" are from the Flatiron Institute, which seems innocuous since the F.I. does in fact do scientific research in this area.
--7-- Hakim Atek (no Simons connection so far as I can see)
of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics (no Simons connection so far as I can see, though I did find evidence that at least once the Simons Foundation has provided funding for a person working there)
of the Sorbonne University (not affiliated with the Simons Foundation; I'm sure they sometimes take S.F. money but, yet again, this is not an institution that anyone needs excuses to report on the work of)
So, I find one, count 'em, one, instance of a Simons-associated entity in the article. How very sinister of Quanta to mention them and hide their own affiliation. Oh, wait: "Editor’s note: The Flatiron Institute is funded by the Simons Foundation, which also funds this editorially independent magazine. Simons Foundation funding decisions have no influence on our coverage."
You may, of course, choose not to believe that last claim. You might be right. But in this article I don't see any obvious sign of bias; they reported on a whole lot of things most of which have no particular connections with the Simons Foundation, and the one S.F.-affiliated thing they reported on does seem relevant. I can't rule out the possibility that Sommerville's work is actually bad and was reported on here only because of the Simons connection, but e.g. she is one of those invited contributors to that conference in Copenhagen which doesn't seem to have had a Simons connection and does seem to have been run by reputable astrophysicists.
Did my PhD at Princeton, knew Jenny Greene personally (not my adviser though). There is zero conflict of interest in Astronomy generally. No one has anything to gain. Various institutions, Simons included, are just one source of much needed funding. Jim Simons is also a legend in the field, known for Chern-Simons (major result), then founding the medallion fund which netted him billions which he then durned around and used to fund fundemental science. Astrophysics is too low paying for anyone who doesn’t genuinely care about it to do it.
Funding institutions can influence which research gets done, that’s what they do by definition. This can steer people towards and away from various topics or questions, but people will loudly speak their mind if they don’t think something is right. It’s a core tenant of the culture. Go to a colloquia and watch people debate and critique each other.
These teen science fair winners almost never amount to anything exceptional, and are a product intense parental supervision. Most universities have wised up.
Sometimes, but I do find his story inspiring. He has taken an age old craft and demonstrated it may have practical applications. I hope he can patent some design based off this and then he can make some money off it. (Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold.)
> Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold
So how could he patent it?
I join the parent: it's a kid who empirically evaluated how much weight an existing fold can hold. It's not like he solved a hundred years old mathematical problem.
That evaluation has value and the possible use case of strong and cheap emergency housing is interesting though it sounds like it would take substantial work to push it to fruition and would need to be competitive with existing solutions.
It's true, it's a bit tricky, but it's an interesting idea. One could imagine a deployable carpet that consists of folded paper sandwiched between thin water impermeable layers to make a lightweight collapsible elevated floor. Maybe there could be other applications too.
That said, it may not be strong enough to hold the weight of an adult on one foot.
I think that's my point: what that kid did is "just" put some books on different origami folds laying on the ground and measuring how much weight they could hold. It's nice that kids have an interest in science, but I don't think it helps them to make them believe they almost solved anything they can imagine (e.g. "building shelters for disaster relief").
At this age at school, I remember making all sorts of physics experiments. I don't think it would have been worth giving us a prize and publishing articles saying that "our work on the Newton's laws may someday lead to new insights about orbital mechanics". We dropped an object and measured the time it took to hit the ground, and checked that the physics formulas were predicting it pretty well. That's all.
People see them on the screen so often they think they know them. I guess the term "parasocial relationship" has been common in the last few years to describe this.
I guess for actors and other types of artist specifically, people relate strongly to the work. It can form the basis for life memories. You remember where you were when you heard a song or saw a movie.
Because the service they render brings joy and entertainment to a large multitude of people. It is a higher visibility job than most, and is largely an individual contribution in and of the service they provide
Why do people like fictional narrative so much? I'm not sure why, other than some platitude like "forming narratives is how people understand the world". But I'm not sure why it follows that fictional narratives are so important to us.
reply