Brian Skinner
@gravity_levity
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"All who have passed the age of 30 are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance" -George Orwell
Joined September 2009
I guess I'm on the other site now. Give me a heads-up (here or there) if you want me to follow you there.
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Here is a talk by me on one variant of this question. It turns out that if you subject a collection of particles to random dynamics, but you force them to conserve their center of mass, then they will only obey ergodicity if their density is high enough https://t.co/4kQcnctekT
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There is lots of great ongoing work in physics on exactly this question: when does the ergodic hypothesis (e.g., entropy maximization) hold and when does it not? In other words, when does thermodynamics work and when does it not?
I don't...buy the ergodic hypothesis in stat mech. Any recs for how to get comfortable (even empirical?) Seems just obviously not something that follows from first principles - unless it's like every system is noisy and that's why? But aren't there attractor trajectories that
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Harvard. PEPFAR. LIGO. Basic science. And dozens of other crown jewels of not just the US, but of humanity. And one extremely corrupt man and his cronies and enablers are attempting to partly or totally destroy them
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Watching electronic ice melt | Science https://t.co/ozJjmv0jCG Iâm delighted to share a perspective I co-authored with Brian Skinner (@gravity_levity), highlighting an exciting new experiment that captures quantum melting in a disordered 2D Wigner solid.
science.org
An experiment captures images of the transition between liquid and solid states of an electron system
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"Gut Biomes win championships" - Nico Harrison
JJ Redick said that Luka Doncic hasnât been feeling well for 24 hours. He doesnât think Doncic slept much last night. He was throwing up all afternoon going into the game. And Redick isnât sure what caused the halftime delay to cause him not to start the second half.
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Weâre celebrating #IYQ2025 with monthly #quantum science collections. Marchâs edition explores measurement-induced quantum phase transitions â where measurement competes with internal evolution, triggering a phase transition in entanglement structure. đ https://t.co/C2ZcaH5SxE
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@InnaVishik The utility of photovoltaics seems possible precisely because the science is so boring: it's the same p-n junction that we've had since the 1940s. The more interesting the science, the more skeptical one must be of claims of utility.
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the story of the Microsoft claim of topological qubits so far
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Briefly poking my head into this site to make sure you know that Microsoft has absolutely not realized a new phase of matter, nor have they created a new type of qubit.
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If you want to contact your senators/congressmen about the NIH freeze, the advice I've been given is to keep it brief and emphasize why it matters to you personally. Here's what I sent just now. https://t.co/pXKkNmnyG6
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If I link it here will people see it? đ€ https://t.co/YigX7KkJWe
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Posted my first scientific explainer thread in forever over at the other site
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This is one of the great (and dangerous) things about getting a PhD: it the last remaining realm of education where there is enormous variance in what and how you learn. It still produces a wide range of thinking styles and competencies among people getting the same degree.
That one time @DavidDeutschOxf spoke to Richard Feynman: âWe had a wide-ranging conversation, mostly about quantum theory and computation, but we deviated a bit to talk about physics generally. And I said that physics seems to have slowed down, and he said, âThere will be no
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... huh.
QC's WK9 NFL Thoughts - https://t.co/EujnwGGPXZ
#Patriots Mayo shouldâve gone for 2 vs #Titans with hat tip to âŠ@gravity_levityâ©; also #Saints dump after loss to #Panthers; #Cowboys collapsing
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Join us TOMORROW, 11/4, at 12:45 pm in Foldy Room and Zoom for a condensed matter seminar! Brian Skinner (@gravity_levity) of @OSUPhysics will be speaking on "Johnson noise thermometry using ohmic and hydrodynamic electrons." #physics #condensedmatter @cwru @CWRUartsci
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Sometimes being a dad means that you have to make a promise to your toddler and you end up lecturing to your graduate class wearing a giant sloth costume
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This is one of the most aesthetically unpleasant things I have ever seen. Imagine thinking that quantum mechanics is just a jumble partial differential equations and ugly special functions.
Schrödinger's cat made with Schrödinger's equation. âïž
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Update: I plan to release a second edition of Plastic Fantastic by Kindle and Paperback through Amazon, correcting typos but otherwise not making changes. If you are or know a skilled typesetter available to help me reformat the cover art and manuscript please reach out.
Today the rights to publish Plastic Fantastic: How The Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook The Scientific World, originally published 2009 by Palgrave Macmillan concerning the fraud of Jan Hendrik Schon at Bell Labs, reverted to me the author. đ§”
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