Quick Links for Friday, August 11

› Finished Robert Wright’s Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (✭✭✭✭✫)

Don’t miss the new Icon of the Seas cruise ship—the largest ever—launching in 2024. It’s unreal. A floating city. More and more info.

› Speaking of cruise ships, check out these photos from inside the world’s first cruise ship, the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise, launched in 1900.

Is math real? Mathematics is fundamental to modern life, and so the question of whether math is a universal reality or a product of human invention has major philosophical and practical implications, including our ability to communicate with aliens.

Physicists measure the gravitational force between the smallest masses yet. Physicists have successfully conducted the first-ever measurement of the gravitational force between two tiny gold spheres, each about the size of a sesame seed and weighing as much as four grains of rice. The gravitational pull of one sphere on the other was "more than 10 million times smaller than the force of a falling snowflake."

Four crucial tests LK-99 must pass to be a true superconductor. Great read.