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Will Morong

@wmorong.bsky.social

I'm trying to build a quantum computer in sunny Los Angeles, CA, USA. I like discussing other people's research papers and ideas. As always, any insights should be credited to the authors themselves, and any misconceptions to me alone.

53 Posts231 Follower331 Folgt
Will Morong@wmorong.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I had never heard of this paper that seemed to accurately predict the Higgs boson mass based on asymptotic safety. This naively looks like a very impressive success for that program, am I missing some reason it's not talked about more? arxiv.org/abs/0912.0208

Asymptotic safety of gravity and the Higgs boson mass

There are indications that gravity is asymptotically safe. The Standard Model (SM) plus gravity could be valid up to arbitrarily high energies. Supposing that this is indeed the case and assuming that...

arxiv.org

Will Morong@wmorong.bsky.social · 12mo ago

🧪 New blog post: What makes quantum physics special (or "strange" or "weird")? I take a whirlwind tour through 80 years of attempts to pinpoint the answer, from early thought experiments to recent developments inspired by thinking about quantum computers. wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...

What makes quantum physics special?

A brief tour through eighty years of answers (photo credit: one of the most popular images used to abstractly convey quantum physics. original author unknown)

wmorong.github.io

John Forbes@redshiftless.bsky.social · last yr.

PSA to scientists: Google calculator appears to no longer do basic unit conversion correctly! n.b. the correct answer here is 223.4 Myr, a factor of about 60 larger than Google's answer. 🔭 🧪

A screenshot of a google search result for "2*pi*(8 kpc)/(220 km/s)" which is roughly the time it takes the Sun to go around the Galaxy. In the screenshot, google's calculator has popped up and parsed the expression correctly, but then returns the result 3 899 243.9 years, and answer which is off by 2 orders of magnitude.
Will Morong@wmorong.bsky.social · last yr.

Why do quantum computers work? Although it's missing some modern developments, I think this twenty-year old (!) article from Steane is still provocative. His answer: entanglement allows them to avoid representing unnecessary intermediate results in some calculations. arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...

A quantum computer only needs one universe

The nature of quantum computation is discussed. It is argued that, in terms of the amount of information manipulated in a given time, quantum and classical computation are equally efficient. Quantum s...

arxiv.org

Will Morong@wmorong.bsky.social · last yr.

Can't stop thinking about these lovely pictures of atoms doing their thing from the Zwierlein group. Left: bosons condensing into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Center: fermions avoiding each other. Right: molecules paired up.

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Mark M. Wilde@markwilde.bsky.social · last yr.

To be clear, one of my major grants is among the 75 stop work orders sent to Cornell yesterday. This means that, as of yesterday, we are not allowed to spend on this grant. The grant funds the work of several graduate students, all of whom are extremely dedicated & doing outstanding research

Rachael Sirianni, PhD@docsirianni.bsky.social · 2y ago

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

Will Morong@wmorong.bsky.social · 2y ago

Inspired by this post, I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for especially well-written papers. Here's one I stumbled on recently, on a subject I know almost nothing about, and really enjoyed: arxiv.org/abs/1903.12621

The Complexity Geometry of a Single Qubit

The computational complexity of a quantum state quantifies how hard it is to make. `Complexity geometry', first proposed by Nielsen, is an approach to defining computational complexity using the tools...

arxiv.org

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 2y ago

I feel that physicists and astronomers don’t openly talk about the importance of good writing in creating a successful arXiv paper, especially for theorists. Yes the science matters but you gotta get people to read your pet theory! More generally cultivating writing skills helps a lot! 🧪🔭⚛️