The End of the Universe is Right Around the Corner

If you're looking to prepare yourself for the end of the universe, Asimov's The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1971) is a nice place to start, maybe Herbert Butterfield's The Origins of Modern Science (1949). Maybe you're a bit more anarchic and would rather focus on the "revolutionary" part; then take it from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which should really start with Ludwig Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935). These things don't happen fast, at least not on the scale of a human life. But these days we are seeing things happen fast. Gravity as we know it is having a kind of identity crisis.   

Foundation AI models trained on physics, not words, are driving scientific discovery

Jan 2026, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-foundation-ai-physics-words-scientific.html

"I continue to be awed by the fact that a multi-disciplinary physics foundation model works at all, let alone at this level." 

While most AI models are trained on text and images, this team trains AI on physics, and then applies the knowledge they gain from one class of physical systems to completely different problems.

These are the models:

Walrus  - 15 terabytes of density, velocity and pressure in physical systems like merging neutron stars, acoustic waves and shifting layers in Earth's atmosphere

AION-1 - 100 terabyte astronomical survey of stars, quasars and galaxies 

via University of Cambridge: Michael McCabe et al, Walrus: A Cross-Domain Foundation Model for Continuum Dynamics, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2511.15684

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2511.15684

Totally unrelated image credit: Monkey with an ice cream cone means something but I'm not sure what - Martin Nicourt for Gibraltar Macaques Project - 2026

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-monkeys-gibraltar-medicate-soil-digest.html

Gravity from positivity: Single massive spin-3/2 particle makes gravity logically inevitable, study claims

Apr 2026, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-gravity-positivity-massive-particle-logically.html

A single massive spin-3/2 particle simply cannot exist in isolation within a consistent theory. Its scattering amplitudes grow too fast with energy, clashing with positivity inequalities. The theory breaks down barely above the particle's own mass. Therefore, supersymmetry is not a postulate: it is a logical necessity. Famous relations between the gravitino mass, the Planck mass, and the supersymmetry-breaking scale emerge here from the sole demand that probabilities be positive and effects propagate within the light cone.

Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, Institut de Physique Théorique, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Santa Barbara, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Brando Bellazzini et al, (Super) gravity from positivity, Journal of High Energy Physics (2026). DOI: 10.1007/jhep03(2026)028

https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/jhep03(2026)028

New quantum theory of gravity brings long-sought 'theory of everything' a crucial step closer

May 2025, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-quantum-theory-gravity-sought-crucial.html

(This short press article doesn't actually explain much, and they still need to prove it, so let's take it easy here.)

via Aalto University: Mikko Partanen et al, Gravity generated by four one-dimensional unitary gauge symmetries and the Standard Model, Reports on Progress in Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1088/1361-6633/adc82e

https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6633/adc82e

Post Consciousness Pre Raphaelite

You can't have massive paradigmatic disruption in the Standard Model without someone completely flipping the chessboard upside down, so let's give this a shot:

Consciousness as the foundation: New theory addresses nature of reality

Nov 2025, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2025-11-consciousness-foundation-theory-nature-reality.html

Consciousness comes first, and structures such as time, space and matter arise afterwards.

The theory is based on the idea that consciousness constitutes the fundamental element of reality, and that individual consciousnesses are parts of a larger, interconnected field.

In this model, phenomena that are now perceived as "mysterious" - such as telepathy or near-death experiences - can be explained as natural consequences of a shared field of consciousness.

"My ambition has been to describe this using the language of physics and mathematical tools. Are these phenomena really mystical? Or is it simply that there is a discovery we have not yet made, and when we do it will lead to a paradigm shift?"

via Uppsala University: Maria Strømme, Universal consciousness as foundational field: A theoretical bridge between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy, AIP Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1063/5.0290984

https://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0290984

You still good? Ok let's get to it. 

First, and more importantly than the article above, please have some consideration for Michael Shermer's invocation of Carl Sagan's Baloney Detector Kit [link], wherein we are presented the maxim, albeit of nebulous origin, that "It's good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out." 

With that in mind, let's take a look at Ms Maria Strømme, the single author of this paper. First impression? Plastic surgery. Sure I'm a superficial snob - look I'm not the one claiming to be a scientist here. Second impression? The article was retracted in 2026 because "a central operator in the theory had no associated measurable quantity and that the theory's predictions could not be empirically verified or falsified." [link] Got it. I'll stick with Modified Newtonian Dynamics. Just kidding, that was squashed too, just this year. 

Post Script:

Dream engineering can help solve 'puzzling' questions: Study offers insights to optimizing sleep

Feb 2026, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-puzzling-insights-optimizing.html

All these years I have never seen a study that uses dreams show up in the science aggregators.

The researchers recruited 20 people who had experiences with lucid dreaming, the state of being aware of dreaming when they are dreaming.

Upon arriving at the lab, participants tried to solve a set of brain-teaser puzzles within a three-minute time limit per puzzle, each puzzle having its own unique soundtrack. Because the solutions to the puzzles were difficult to find, most of the puzzles went unsolved. Then the research team set up polysomnographic recordings to measure the physiology of participants as they slept overnight in the lab.

During periods of REM sleep, the scientists presented soundtracks from 50% of the unsolved puzzles, with the aim of reactivating these puzzles selectively. Several participants performed signals agreed upon before sleep, such as a series of in-out sniffs, to indicate that they heard the cues presented and were working on the corresponding puzzles in their dreams.

By presenting sounds during sleep that reminded study participants of a prior experience of trying to solve a specific puzzle, a method known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR), the scientists were able to encourage participants to have more dreams about randomly selected unsolved puzzles. 

"Even without lucidity, one dreamer asked a dream character for help solving the puzzle we were cueing. Another was cued with the 'trees' puzzle and woke up dreaming of walking through a forest. Another dreamer was cued with a puzzle about jungles and woke up from a dream in which she was fishing in the jungle thinking about that puzzle."

via Northwestern U Paller Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory: Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep, Neuroscience of Consciousness (2026). DOI: 10.1093/nc/niaf067 doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067

https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067

https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/nia