"Synthetic" motion can be faster than light! The trick is to change the properties of a material in a way resembling a Mexican wave: Although no one leaves their seat, their organised motion creates a wave. We can make such a change in a material, faster than light, with intense laser illumination.

If anyone likes to play the NYT game #Strands, I just wrote a solver for it: github.com/razimantv/Da...

#PhysicsFactlet: The "Ashcroft/Mermin Project" I will try to (likely very slowly) make one or more visualization per chapter of "Solid State Physics" by Ashcroft and Mermin, with the hope that they will be useful to people teaching/learning solid state Physics. 1/

Since Steven Strogatz now has a special chapter on the Kuramoto model, this seems like a good time to retweet my movie of 4 metronomes synchronizing! Pantaleone's derivation of the Kuramoto model from the mechanics of the system is here: pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/art...

#Introduction - I am a theoretical nanophotonics researcher at Imperial College London. I study the cool things that happen when light meets materials at the nanoscale. Here is an article I wrote a while ago on why nanophotonics is cool (and important!): qr.ae/pG3l20