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Three things that caught my attention this week that seemed worth sharing with the folks I know (and the folks I want to know).

Dark Matter (and how incredible scientists are)

Dark matter has evaded direct detection for decades because it does not emit, absorb or reflect any light. It is as pervasive as it is inaccessible, making up 85 percent of the matter in our universe, a tease for the particle physicists keen on deciphering its nature.
NY Times September 1, 2026

I’m not a scientist, but I’m fairly fluent in most scientific concepts… and this blows my mind.

This paper (published this week) is a very complicated (for me, not for physicists) description of what the NY Times described “a single, tiny nudge of one particle into another”.

The best part is that the LZ team (250 scientists and engineers from 39 institutions) who published this finding have been looking for this “nudge” for a long time. Even though there’s only a small number of people who can understand this science, it’s clear this may be a game changer in our understanding of the universe… since this amazing team may have actually “seen” dark matter for the first. time.

Rules for a pilgrimage

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad this week. After he retired, he took to the road in his Prius for what turned out to be close to 100 “pilgrimages”. The process started with choosing a distant goal – and then he’d just head out in that general direction. He decided day by day on a route using five “rules” (see below). Sometime in the mid afternoon he’d find one of the many hotels on the road that had breakfast included and he’d pull in. He’d check in, pour a Scotch, and start writing.

1. Freeways are to be crossed, not driven on.
2. If the sun gets in your eyes – turn
3. If you see a Dairy Queen with pick-ups in front of it, stop to join the conversation.
4. Ask anyone who is alone at breakfast if you can join them and take the time to learn their story
5. Anything beautiful warrants a stop.
FLOYD BRANDT

Exercise Snacks

I was able to spend some time with medical students this week as a substitute teacher for their ethics course. We had a great conversation about ethics… but (not surprisingly) we also spent some time talking about more general topics like how hard it is to keep your life in balance as a medical student.

I’ve recently started reading Howard Luks’s blog, an orthopedic surgeon who mostly directs his advice towards people like me (people “of a certain age” as the French say). His advice this week was about “exercise snacks”, which is a great strategy for medical students, residents, and other busy folks (not just those of us who have a few years under our belts) when life it too busy to work exercise into your schedule. “Exercise snacks” are basically “exercise” that takes 30 seconds to a few minutes done multiple times during the day. That’s all. You can do pushups, dance to a song, or (always available in medical schools and hospitals) just take the stairs. Worth trying!

It’s not too late. Find a great end of season tomato and make a BLT or a “Harriet the Spy” tomato sandwich!

Lessons from Space

“On a good, calm day it is hard to know what to make of photos that show, in no uncertain terms, that every single thing you will ever and could ever know is simultaneously galactically insignificant and unspeakably beautiful and precious. Today, the world held its breath waiting for the 8 p.m. eastern deadline Trump set for Iran to agree to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. If his terms weren’t met, he posted this morning, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”… And yet at the very same moment, four flesh-and-blood human beings are hundreds of thousands of miles away taking pictures of our delicate little world. Their mission and their photos remind us of something else entirely—of a yearning to learn, to explore, and to band together to become something greater than the sum of our parts.”
Charlie Warzel

Click here to watch Victor Glover’s short but very moving message on Easter Sunday

The Mandalas of Hildegard de Bingen

Hildegard de Bingen, who lived in the early 12th century, was an astounding polymath, theologian, and visionary. I’ve recently rediscovered her “mandalas”, designs meant to open our eyes to new ways of seeing…

Hildegard of Bingen, “All Beings Celebrate Creation”

“The [mandalas] were thought to be as strong or stronger than the words themselves. There is a gestalt immediacy, what Hindu’s refer to as darshan, meaning the simultaneous act of seeing and being seen by a deity.”
Lillian Sizemore

Hildegard of Bingen, “Cultivating the Cosmic Tree”

#FullMoonJoy

“It’s just everything from the training, but in three dimensions and absolutely unbelievable,” he said. “This is incredible.”

Jacki Mahaffey, a NASA officer in mission control, laughed in response. “Copy, moon joy,” she said.

From Houston, We Have No Problem. But We Do Have a Lot of ‘Moon Joy.’

The astronauts hugging each other after naming a crater after Reid Wiseman’s late wife Carroll. Link to the video

“Unlike happiness, joy can live alongside sadness, boredom, fear, or despair. It expands our capacity to hold contradictory truths at the same time—and because we know joy, we recover a strange, steady confidence that life is still worth loving, even when it hurts.”
Kate Bowler