Theoretical physicist, Rutgers professor.
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The Department of Energy hired five academics to raise doubts about climate change. 85+ climate experts (organized by @andrewdessler.com) reviewed their report. Our conclusion, detailed in 450 pages of analysis: it is biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policy making.
Sean, that’s no way to talk about my last model-building paper.
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
every day i see hundreds of comments of people spinning elaborate scenarios to explain how trump can control everything and all opposition is futile. a) i think a lot of you need to log off and stop following professional doomsayers. b) i think a lot of you are cowards
Thanks, Matt!!! If people want to help or donate, they can go to julie4jersey.com
Super proud of my friend, colleague, and leader in my union, Julie Flynn for stepping up to run against a guy who has been in office longer than I’ve alive. newjerseyglobe.com/congress/chr...
Super proud of my friend, colleague, and leader in my union, Julie Flynn for stepping up to run against a guy who has been in office longer than I’ve alive. newjerseyglobe.com/congress/chr...
Also, don't try to build the Dyson sphere as a rigid object. That's a rookie mistake.
Kind of feel like a real-life Dyson sphere is like the Dyson sphere in Stellaris. Once you can build one, you don't really *need* one. At that point, you're just showing off.
A lot of the Big Questions these people say they need $50 billion and a Magic AI Box to solve can be answered by reading a bunch of questionable sci-fi from the 70s. I mean, you still won't be able to do it, because physical reality remains, confoundingly, a thing.
You need a fleet of Orion pulse-rockets with a drive signature that gives Pluto a sunburn, a backhoe the size of Mars, a solar panel fabrication facility the size of Mercury, and a power-transmission array that is powerful enough to violate local zoning ordinances on Alpha Centauri B1a.
"The Magic AI box will give us the plans for the Dyson sphere we need to power the Magic AI box." First off, I have questions about the chain of causality here. Second, you don't need a Magic AI Box to design a Dyson sphere. You want a Dyson sphere? Here you go:
Going forward, all billionaires are required to build one (1) power-generating satellite or statite in the GW range before they are allowed to publicly opine about Dyson spheres.
Oh for fucks sake.
Did my now-semesterly check on how ChatGPT does on my (upper-level undergrad) homework. Fewer just straight-up algebraic mistakes from last time. However, still making subtle incorrect assumptions that lead to incorrect answers and are also *really* hard to catch if you don't know the right answer.
Honestly, I am amazed too. That's never happened before.
Oh wow, this is the best final exam schedule the Registrar Gods have bestowed upon me in 12 years of teaching. Great, now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Also, 12 years? wow.
Ok August, you win. I'll work on this semester's canvas site. But I won't like it.
Me, seeing arXiv papers described as blog posts.
Well, I did go into physics for the money and power. ...it's possible I was misinformed.
Call me old-fashioned, but I feel like objective reality exists and as a society we should acknowledge that.
He’s copying ideas from bad 1980’s military sci-fi (which don’t work. Which is mildly annoying if you’re claiming to be hard scifi and hugely annoying if you’re putting it on arXiv).
Sauron, who loves mess, gets a bunch of orcs to go rescue the BABY EATING ASSHOLE from a tree, then lets him go again so he can go be messy somewhere that's more entertaining to the Eye. The *drama*
Strider (Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elendil's Heir, the Dunedain, Estel Hope of the West, Elessar Telecontar the Elfstone, Envinyatar) drops Gollum off with the (often pretty assholish) Wood-elves. Wood-elves decide that the BABY EATING ASSHOLE deserves better than dwarves, let him go play up a tree.
Strider captures Gollum. Gollum is an asshole to Strider. Strider (Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elendil's Heir, the Dunedain, Estel hope of the West, Elessar Telecontar the Elfstone, Envinyatar) is kind of an asshole to Gollum, because, surprise the BABY EATING ASSHOLE is kind of a jerk. *ahem*
Here's what this new movie wants to cover: Gollum mopes in a cave. Gollum leaves the cave, hates the Sun and the Moon Gollum, and I cannot emphasize this enough, EATS SOME BABIES Gollum goes to Mordor. Torture Gollum is set loose by Sauron, because Sauron loves mess.
PS if you’re a member of the press: I and my colleagues will happily talk about 3I/ATLAS until the (interstellar) cows come home. But my only comment on whether it’s an alien spacecraft is: Avi is talking nonsense on stilts, and doesn’t understand comets.
Now I might be but of simple country lawyah, but isn't it true *Mayor* Gamgee, that not only are you the beneficiary of Mr. Baggins estate, you were an accomplice of Gollum? One might say you were *friendly* with him? It says here you offered him po-ta-toes?
"The adventures of Gollum between The Hobbit and LOTR": stupid. boring. a cheap money grab. Courtroom drama "Bereaved Beornling Families v Estate of B. Baggins Esq. (served current resident of Bag End, one S. Gamgee)": thought-provoking. gripping. also a cheap money grab.
There is no ethical consumption under feudalism.
"Pity? It's a pity that stayed Bilbo's hand...The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many." Pros: Bilbo's possession of the Ring begins with an act of mercy, not cruelty. Starts a domino-chain that ends with the defeat of the spirit of malice. Cons: No way to sugarcoat this: buncha babies got et
He was eating babies. Is this movie going to show him eating babies? Because, canonically, Gollum was eating babies.
OpenAI has really streamlined future thesis defenses for my PhD students. All I need to do is ask them how many "B"s there are in the word "blueberry" and if they get it right, they clearly aren't at PhD-level yet.
Someone telling you we're going to Moon to mine helium-3 is like an alien telling you they're invading Earth to steal our water. Basic physics tells you they're lying, now your job is figuring out *why* they're lying.
I mean, we did build a working nuclear jet engine. We tested it! It totally would have worked, for certain values of "worked."
- Hafnium nuclear-pumped isomers. Because you want all the fun of the nuclear x ray laser (that doesn't work) at home. - Nuclear bombers. Not bombers with nukes. Nuclear bombers.
- Nuclear pumped x-ray lasers. Now, you might ask: do these work? No. Are they cheap? Also no. Will we carefully investigate the science before wasting a lot of money? Buddy, you are not going to believe this.
- Everyone's favorite: Project Orion, aka Ol' Sparky. Look, if you have a better idea of how to get the USS New Jersey on station around Neptune to fight the Fithp on short notice, I'd like to hear it.
- open-cycle gas core nuclear rockets. You weren't planning on using that orbital path for anything else, right? - XK Pluto, aka fuck this planet in particular.
Fine: top insane shit people suggested for nukes (dredging canals doesn't even make the top 5): - Nike-Ajax, aka "You're not allowed to nuke our cities, only we're allowed to nuke our cities, and coincidentally now we need to invent neutron bombs. But not for the reason you think"
Revisiting terrible nuclear ideas from Days Unfortunately Not As Gone By as one would have hoped reminds me that For All Mankind really went downhill when they ran out of deranged 1960's-70's era rocket plans to put onscreen.
The Arkhangelsk incident in 2019, which was at least sometimes claimed to be some form of nuclear-powered cruise missile.
Onboard the Orion is probably the safest place if you insist on being in the same gravity well. Assuming the shock absorbers hold of course.
Orion pulse engines. When you absolutely, positively must put an Iowa class fast battleship in orbit around Jupiter. Accept no substitutes.
Best viewed from a convenient neighboring continent.
Can I interest you in open-cycle gas core nuclear rocket engine? Perfect for interplanetary travel, take-offs, and landings. Just, you know, only on planets you don't like.
That already came up a few years ago. Except it was Russian. And didn't work. And killed a bunch of people.
Of course, if we're dusting off dogshit ideas from the 1960s, my solar panels will be made the way the steely-eyed missile men of the era intended: as open channels of mercury boiling away in the sunlight.
I’m not falling for that trick again.
Look, just because yours "exists" and "would work by the laws of physics" is no reason to turn up your nose about this other one, which in its defense will waste a ridiculous amount of time and money and also not work.
Hafnium isomer hand grenades. Accept no substitutes.
There's interesting sci-fi about creating a facsimile of a person from their digital imprint. Whatever the merits of that fictional idea, now that I'm running into people who seem to believe this possible in real life I have to assume all of them are confounded by the concept of "an inside voice."
If I had a nickel every time one particular tenured lunatic got press for saying it was aliens when it absolutely was not aliens, I’d have three nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it is absurd it has happened three times.
Hubble flow limits the volume in which anything could be said to be headed towards Earth.
Of all the things which are not happening, this is not happening the most.
In my professional capacity, I cannot emphasize enough how much an alien spacecraft nearly 7 miles wide headed towards Earth is not happening.
I give it a few weeks before major publications start breathlessly describing human cognition as “AI.”
I’m back from vacation and ready to make that everyone’s problem.
There are six Democrats running for Governor. On behalf of our union, my committee spoke with all of them that would sit down with us. Of these, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was the clear choice for our endorsement.
That means we have a real opportunity to get candidates who have won because they appealed to the voters, not because the county party bosses rubberstamped them.
My day job is being a theoretical physicist, but two years ago I took on chairing the legislative committee for the union. Thanks to work by a lot of great people in our state (including the now-Senator Andy Kim) we have, for the first time, primaries that don't have the unfair "county line"
Real talk, are we all collectively too online?
Now look, every other person with niche subject matter expertise eventually succumbs to Poaster's Madness, but I'm sure I'll be fine.
Ah, a technicolorist
Don’t mention ghost fields, don’t mention ghost fields…
Internet Matts: not even once.
As a physicist, I just feel that we have an obligation to try to do cool shit sometimes.
More evidence for my hypothesis that reality has it out for theorists born after 1975.
What a coincidence, this looks exactly like what you'd get if you asked ChatGPT to hallucinate a wearable doodad that looks like it was designed by someone from Apple.
I understand. In my opinion, right now our voices could be used most effectively in highlighting a leader who is doing the right thing (and, more importantly, the civil rights of those he was fighting for), not turning the rhetorical focus elsewhere.
Dark matter viralizes through gravitational interactions. That brings the initial overdensities into the roughly spherical halos composes the dark matter around galaxies and galaxy clusters.
Unless of course, dark matter just got magically poofed into existence in the form of macroscopic clumps very early on.
But getting down to the scale of a snowball cooling without anything *bigger* being affected is difficult. Hard to say it's impossible, but seems very tricky. So in the case that dark matter is a bunch of macro-scale objects, you'd expect to see deviations in larger gravitationally-bound structures.
We know gravitationally that dark matter halos aren't cooled on large scales (the size of a galaxy), but just as a galaxy of normal matter has cooled (that's why there are stars and a gas disk) and the normal matter in a cluster isn't collapsed, you could have dark matter cooling on smaller scales.
Fortunately, it is actually pretty hard to get dark matter into the form of snowballs (or a 20 lbs particle, as per the xkcd comic). To get a lump of matter (dark or otherwise) you need to have the matter cool and collapse.
This actually would be one of the most diabolical forms of dark matter. As I say in seminars and talks, if dark matter were made up of something the size and mass of a snowball, we'd be pretty screwed. xkcd.com/3085/
Thus, I think it is reasonable to conclude from Andor that Emperor Palpatine constructed the Death Star so he could stop having to go to boring parties.
In A New Hope, the minute Palpatine has his Death Star he dissolves the Senate, believing he no longer needs the administrative infrastructure it provides to maintain his grip on the galaxy.
We also see that the Senate comes with a busy social calendar -- one seen as an obligation. Presumably, like all monarchs in history, the Emperor will have to participate in these social events to ensure that key Senators see the personal advantage to their participation in the imperial project.
So in Andor we see that the Empire needs to use local powers to maintain its grip on power. They have vast resources, but not infinite. We also see that part of keeping those powers on board is maintaining the Galactic Senate as institution -- a rubber-stamp body sure, but one that Palpatine needs.
Can’t wait for Bantam’s three book series about the adventures of Paparazzi Droid.
For theorists, we need a journal of "terrible ideas that look plausible at first" just to prevent others from falling down the same rabbit hole.
One of the first physics ambulance-chasing events I was around for as a real grown up scientist was kicked off by someone taking a photo of a slide in an experimentalist's talk. This was just after the introduction of smartphone cameras.
Undergrad specific impacts: Research Experience for Undergrads. This is how we get people into research. There are fewer opportunities now.RE
Theory grants are on the smaller end, and lots of it is taken up by fringe (health care and benefits) and overhead (goes to university operations). Is this the only way we could build a system to do science? No, but if you take this away without a new system in place, that's a problem.
Being a PI is a continual cycle of applying for grants, explaining what you did for the grant, and trying to get a new grant. Is this the most efficient system? Maybe not, but it is the system we work in.
Every person I've ever worked with treats the money we are entrusted with incredibly seriously. The grant process is tedious, lengthly, and relies on massive amounts of volunteered time as well as expert grant officers in the funding agencies.
Note Bene: I know how DOE and NSF grants for theoretical physics work, because that's my system. I know the ins and outs of other systems far less well.
None of us got into science to manage people, but to be honest, *most* people I work with in science do take that responsibility seriously. Every interaction I have had with other PIs as we worry about the future of science funding has been focused on protecting the people we are responsible for.
