Jonathan Oppenheim
@postquantum.bsky.social
Quantum mechanic with a lot of ontological baggage. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/oppenheim/
We invite applications for Research Fellow positions as part of a new initiative to be launched in late 2026 at the interface of quantum information theory and gravity! Please RT and let potentially interested researchers know. www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical... 1/2
Opportunities
As part of a major new initiative at UCL, we will be recruiting postdocs and PhD students (for Oct 2026) and appointing at least three new academics over the next four years. Join us! Details below.
ucl.ac.uk
In late 2025, tools Like Claude Code crossed a threshold. Like hyperactive master's students, their physics calculations can now be made more reliable with domain expertise and some scaffolding. Check out Tobias Osborne's talk on using a swarm of agentic verifers to do physics.
Large Language Models -- A Physicist's Perspective
A seminar by Tobias Osborne on orchestrating a swarm of coding agents to work on physics problems
superposer.substack.com
Congratulations to Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard for winning the 2026 Turing Award (akin to the Nobel Prize for Computer Science)! They invented quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. awards.acm.org/turing 🧪 ⚛️ 1/
awards.acm.org
"Good luck to future me." That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post: superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
Teaching an AI to Do Physics by Wiping Its Memory
“Good luck to future me.”
superposer.substack.com
What have our members achieved in the last year..? Quite a lot it turns out. qspace.fqxi.org/news/165315/... @alyssaney.bsky.social @nicoleyh11.bsky.social @seanmcarroll.bsky.social @nafshordi.bsky.social @saraimari.bsky.social @rovelli.bsky.social @coecke.bsky.social @postquantum.bsky.social
Every December since 2017, I've delivered a keynote at Q2B Silicon Valley, commenting on recent progress in quantum computing. Here is what I said this time. It's been a good year for quantum. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/12/26/q...
Quantum computing in the second quantum century
On December 10, I gave a keynote address at the Q2B 2025 Conference in Silicon Valley. This is a transcript of my remarks. The slides I presented are here. The first century We are nearing the end …
quantumfrontiers.com
OpenAI leadership are promoting a paper in Physics Letters B where GPT-5 proposed the main idea — possibly the first peer-reviewed paper where an LLM generated the core contribution. One small problem: GPT-5's idea tests the wrong thing. My technical comment: scirate.com/arxiv/2512.0... 1/
![As part of a broader effort to demonstrate AI’s po-
tential in scientific research [1], OpenAI executives have
pointed to a recently published paper by Hsu [2] as evi-
dence that AI can contribute original ideas to physics [3,
4]. Hsu credits GPT-5 with proposing the core idea of the
paper de novo, possibly the first published physics article
where the main idea came from an LLM, and discusses
the methodology in a companion piece [5]. We examine
whether GPT-5’s criterion is correct.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:uknpj5mh4cfutreceecdbv7x/bafkreia3jerjfcqdui45n4upaqci5u5r6st7o7pqmdzahhjtidtostpooq)
"A single person claims to have authored 113 academic papers on artificial intelligence this year, 89 of which will be presented this week at one of the world’s leading conference on AI and machine learning," www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’
AI research in question as author claims to have written over 100 papers on AI that one expert calls a ‘disaster’
theguardian.com
We are in the era of Science Slop! (and it's exciting): open.substack.com/pub/superpos...
We are in the era of Science Slop
(and it's exciting)
open.substack.com
Great article on quadratic gravity, and why researchers are attracted to it (it's renormalisable). The pure gravity action of postquantum-classical gravity is the same us that of quadratic gravity but with a different interpretation, and it doesn't suffer from ghosts! arxiv.org/abs/2402.17844 ⚛️🧪
Renormalisation of postquantum-classical gravity
One of the obstacles to reconciling quantum theory with general relativity, is constructing a theory which is both consistent with observation, and and gives finite answers at high energy, so that the...
arxiv.org
Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · 9mo agoIn a theory called quadratic gravity, “ghost” particles violate physicists’ intuition of quantum fields. This made the theory unpopular for decades. Now, it’s experiencing a resurgence. @walkingthedot.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/old-ghost-th...
The #QIP2026 list of accepted papers is out! qip2026.lu.lv/programme/ac... highlighting some of the important papers in quantum computing in the past year. This is a fantastic slice from a very rich landscape. Congratulations to the authors! ⚛️🧪
Accepted papers
qip2026.lu.lv
A recent @nature.com article claims that classical (unquantised) gravity produces entanglement. We show that their model does not produce entanglement. Even if the model produced entanglement, it would be mediated by the quantised matter interaction, and not gravity. scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0... 🧪⚛️
Classical gravity cannot mediate entanglement
In Nature, 646, 813 (2025), Aziz and Howl claim that classical (unquantised) gravity produces entanglement. We show that their model does not produce entanglement. Even if the model produced entanglem...
scirate.com
Another day, another arxiv paper claiming that classical gravity can produce entanglement. Last week's Nature paper continues to cause confusion. But classical fields can't create entanglement *even if* they directly couple two masses. Comment added at superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic...
As promised... No, classical spacetime can’t produce entanglement. I can create entanglement by turning a knob on a laser, but the knob isn't mediating entanglement. Is the knob "producing" the entanglement? This week's Nature paper is causing confusion! superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic... 🧪⚛️
Jonathan Oppenheim@postquantum.bsky.social · 10mo agoNo they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
As promised... No, classical spacetime can’t produce entanglement. I can create entanglement by turning a knob on a laser, but the knob isn't mediating entanglement. Is the knob "producing" the entanglement? This week's Nature paper is causing confusion! superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic... 🧪⚛️
Jonathan Oppenheim@postquantum.bsky.social · 10mo agoNo they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
No they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
Nature@nature.com · 10mo agoNature research paper: Classical theories of gravity produce entanglement go.nature.com/4qm8j9R
What if the measurement problem isn't about explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world... ...but about what happens when quantum systems interact with something that's already classical? Turns out, the collapse postulate + Born rule emerge! scirate.com/arxiv/2510.0... 🧪⚛️🧵1/5
A one-world interpretation of quantum mechanics
The measurement problem is the issue of explaining how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. Here we take a different approach. We assume that there is an objective classical syste...
scirate.com
Maite Arcos's PhD results are hitting the arxiv! A resource theory of gambling, and a paper on adversarial thermodynamics are out today. Gambling provides an operational way to quantify who has more information. And it can be extended into the quantum domain!🧵🧪⚛️ 1/
6,100 neutral-atom qubits trapped in a grid by lasers @caltech.edu ... is a lot. www.caltech.edu/about/news/c...
Caltech Team Sets Record with 6,100-Qubit Array
The neutral-atom platform shows promise for scaling up quantum computers.
caltech.edu
In a recent Substack post, FQxI's Jonathan Oppenheim discusses how far #LLMS have progressed. @postquantum.bsky.social says "their answers often look very convincing on the surface until you go through them more carefully". DISCUSS: forums.fqxi.org/d/4283-how-g...
The CERN whitepaper, on testing the quantum nature of gravity, has even more co-authors and is now available on the arxiv, scirate.com/arxiv/2509.0.... Check it out! 🧪⚛️
A Spin-Based Pathway to Testing the Quantum Nature of Gravity
A key open problem in physics is the correct way to combine gravity (described by general relativity) with everything else (described by quantum mechanics). This problem suggests that general relativi...
scirate.com
There is one fundamental phenomenon that quantum physics can't explain: gravity go.nature.com/45v70f1
Is gravity quantum? Experiments could finally probe one of physics’ biggest questions
Physicists are developing laboratory tests to give insight into the true nature of gravity.
go.nature.com
I'm at the African Institute for Mathematical Science Ghana this week for a quantum hackathon. Which is apparently called a Quantathon! Excited to interact with great students and researchers from across Africa. Live feed at t.co/J8UzPKc6Vx & schedule at qtedu.aims.edu.gh. Public lecture on Friday.
FACT THREAD on New Interstellar Object #A11pl3Z This story unfolded pretty fast yesterday for a few reasons. The object was discovered on July 1st UTC by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS team. A #NASA funded survey at the University of Hawaii. atlas.fallingstar.com 🔭🧪
!!!!! Waking up to the news that we might have found an interstellar object passing through our Solar System - only the third ever seen. Looks convincing based on the orbit.
Michael Busch@michael-w-busch.bsky.social · last yr.For any asteroid observers who have not heard about it already: Newly-discovered #A11pl3Z is a candidate interstellar object. cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/scout/#/obje...
NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."