The world needs more of the creativity, humor, and warmth of Diana Wynne Jones’s novels. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/09/21/b...

I had fun speaking today at the Quantum World Congress panel on Demystifying Quantum: How to Communicate Cutting Edge Science to Diverse Audiences. Alongside the fantastic moderator @csrday.bsky.social and esteemed panelists @nicoleyh11.bsky.social and Ben Stein #QWC2025

Until today, I've managed to stick to scientific quantum conferences. Seeing so many suits at a quantum gathering is bizarre. #qwc2025

Summer REU students investigating Captain Okoli's Magnificent Steampunk Quantum Engine. (Mine's the one in the back, on the right.) @umdscience.bsky.social

David Gross (at an excellent QuICS Seminar): “I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but there’s quite a lot of hype about quantum computation.”

How many miles to Babylon? You'll get there sometime after ten...

Feynman was an impressive thinker. Just, I'm saddened by how many people let the one-liner "Nobody understands quantum mechanics" limit their, and humanity's, horizons. @conorfeehly.bsky.social

Useful advice from @nicoleyh11.bsky.social. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/08/10/n...

Applying for a postdoc or faculty position this fall? This blog post relates my advice about how to write a research statement. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/08/10/n...

The term "quantum steampunk" is appearing in the wild. 😄 @physicsworld.bsky.social physicsworld.com/a/quantum-th...

"...leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay." ...but at least Quantum Steampunk has made it to a second printing. 🌞 @JHUPress

"I can hear his French-Canadian accent in my memory, but not without hearing him smile at the ends of most sentences." A blog post for Ray Laflamme. @quantumiqc.bsky.social @perimeterinstitute.ca @majidy.bsky.social quantumfrontiers.com/2025/07/27/l...

Loads of research groups across the world have been studying the Mpemba effect, according to which ice cream freezes more quickly if the mixture begins hot than if it begins cold. But how many groups have a student who *makes* ice cream? 🍦😋🍧

With local applied physicist @uffizi

For all my friends who took AP English Literature. @uffizi

Claude Shannon “must have been an alien from another planet or a time traveler, because no human being could have achieved all that he did.” –At-least-approximate quote from David Wolpert @StatPhys29

Mehran Kardar: “Let’s be very statistical-physics-y and introduce an order parameter m.” Indeed, one can't get much more statistical-physics-y than that.

Whimsically, the plots on my collaborator's slide resemble the marble strewn across Florence, where he was presenting. @StatPhys29

Michele Campisi @StatPhys29: To prepare many qubits with high fidelity, use collective behaviors, such as spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Giorgio Parisi opening StatPhys29: AI resembles the heat engine in that the technology arrived before the theory.

Ran across a colleague in Florence this morning.

If you've messaged me since spring and been waiting for a reply, the reason is this place. Jae Dong Noh wanted to present our latest results at StatPhys in Florence next week, so we've been slaving over this paper. It's out with ~a day to spare! arxiv.org/abs/2507.07249

Group dinner/leaving party @TheBoardAndBrew. We’ve loved having Aleks Lasek and Jade LeSchack in the Quantum-Steampunk Laboratory, but we can’t begrudge them the new adventures they have lined up!

Jun Ye pays homage to his former postdoc advisor, Jeff Kimble @caltech.edu, at the Conference on Coherence and Quantum Science. We've lost some good quantum opticians recently...

Chris Monroe on trapped ions for quantum computing, at the Conference on Coherence and Quantum Science: “Don’t ask me how you trap them. There’s a lot of black magic.”

Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobabilities have flooded quantum information science over just the past few years. Yet already, ~100 attendees are expected at QuiDiQua! (Granted, QuiDiQua covers Wigner functions, too. But still.) quidiqua3.sciencesconf.org

Ten points if you can guess which buddy requested that an MIT postdoc association, when its leaders asked how they could improve his life, throw more parties. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/06/22/a...

The quantum-information community has lost something rare and valuable: a great theorist, experimentalist, and human being, plus a founder of our community. Co-supervising a PhD student with Ray Laflamme, as an early-career PI, was like sharing a kitchen with Julia Child.

So pleased to see this correct use of semicolons in a list. Well done, National Postal Museum.

No, squares are quadratic, actually.

My PhD student Twesh proposed that his article about quantum fluctuations be entitled "What the fluc?!" I can understand why his suggestion may have been voted down, but I'm still partial to it. ;) rqs.umd.edu/news/student...

My undergrad gave a speech at this year’s commencement ceremonies at the University of Maryland @univofmaryland.bsky.social! @umdphysics.bsky.social quantumfrontiers.com/2025/06/09/c...

In grad school, I learned to view antimatter as ordinary matter that’s moving backward in time. That fundamental insight can improve our metrological abilities if we have entanglement. Awfully fun collaboration with the groups of David Arvidsson-Shukur and Kater Murch. arxiv.org/abs/2506.04315

What more could I ask for than a giant steam-powered locomotive painted outside where an SFF con was having scientific public lectures? Thanks to Balticon @balticon.bsky.social on for hosting me this Memorial Day weekend!

I believe Charles Babbage would have approved. Thanks to Dan Carney @fourform.bsky.social for the tip about Alp's paper. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/05/25/t...

I learned a new word yesterday. (h/t Jacob Barandes from @harvardphysics at the 2025 Maryland Quantum-Thermodynamics Symposium)

“The paper is not important; the abstract is great.” –Eduardo Martin-Martinez from @quantumiqc.bsky.social at the 2025 Maryland Quantum-Thermodynamics Symposium

The 2025 Maryland Quantum-Thermo Symposium opens with Alaina Green's advice about applying trapped ions to quantum thermo: use phonons as a natural bath, and beware the trickiness of engineering meaningful measurements. @umdscience.bsky.social

Sean Carroll at Balticon: Simplicity is overrated, physicists. Prioritize complexity, for a change. @seanmcarroll.bsky.social @balticon.bsky.social

Apparently, two of my students became very bored after exams ended. Maybe my fellow co-instructor and I should have assigned more work for their final project. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_...

I'm rereading Diana Wynne Jones's Deep Secret in preparation for my first in-person SFF convention. Looking forward to presenting about quantum steampunk at Balticon @balticon.bsky.social this Memorial Day weekend! www.balticon.org

Imagine if Katsu had a quantum upgrade @natashapulley.bsky.social... 🐙⚛️ (see below!) @nicoleyh11.bsky.social also wrote an excellent book on quantum steampunk btw 🙂 👇 www.amazon.co.uk/Quantum-Stea...

Here's a "Get excited for StatPhys!" video. I found the musical flourishes at the beginning and end rather adorable. youtu.be/oyIJTOGSmZE

Shimon Kolkowitz on measuring gravitational redshift over tiny distances, using atomic ensembles: we can detect how much more quickly the top of a penny ages than the bottom. If this fact bothers you, flip your pennies over occasionally. @jqi

Overheard in Writing Quantum Steampunk: -"Dinosaurs are kind of always a little bit funny." -"Let's do time travel." -"One of the grad students hates physicists." "So that makes the story kind of relatable." Ten points if you can guess which classic sci-fi story we were discussing.

I enjoyed chatting with Clara Nellist @particleclara.bsky.social about the early universe, quantum computers, and quantum thermodynamics on APS TV at the Global Physics Summit this March. @apsphysics.bsky.social youtu.be/jJmQUlocPHM?...

One reason why I adore quantum theory is that I adore linear algebra, which models quantum theory. Fabio Anzà @entangled-chaos.bsky.social argues that we should sometimes trade that linearity for differential geometry. I may be starting to come around to the idea!

Postdoc Billy Braasch guest-lectures in Writing Quantum Steampunk: Science-Fiction Workshop. I wish I drew as well as he does—he created all the drawings in the presentation! @UMDPhysics @JointQuICS

The first time I heard of IUPAP's Early-Career-Scientist Award in Statistical Physics, I heard @surajshankar.bsky.social had won it. We were KITP Grad Fellows together, and he's achieved impressive feats. So I'm especially honored to be co-receiving the prize this year. iupap.org/who-we-are/i...

Daniel Harlow sketches why quantum computers can outperform classical ones in some cases—then, “so my friend Scott Aaronson doesn’t get mad at me,” adds that superpositions don't suffice. The specter of Scott comes to mind whenever I reach that step in the explanation, too. @umdphysics.bsky.social