Project Ant-Man
The craziest challenge I’ve undertaken hasn’t been skydiving; sailing the Amazon on a homemade raft; scaling Mt. Everest; or digging for artifacts atop a hill in a Middle Eastern desert, near midday,...
View ArticleLearning about learning
The autumn of my sophomore year of college was mildly hellish. I took the equivalent of three semester-long computer-science and physics courses, atop other classwork; co-led a public-speaking...
View ArticleQuantum steampunk is heading to bookstores!
I’m publishing a book! Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow is hitting bookstores next spring, and you can preorder it now. As Quantum Frontiers regulars know, steampunk is a genre...
View ArticleHow a liberal-arts education has enhanced my physics research
I attended a liberal-arts college, and I reveled in the curriculum’s breadth. My coursework included art history, psychology, biology, economics, computer science, German literature, archaeology, and...
View ArticleOne equation to rule them all?
In lieu of composing a blog post this month, I’m publishing an article in Quanta Magazine. The article provides an introduction to fluctuation relations, souped-up variations on the second law of...
View ArticleThese are a few of my favorite steampunk books
As a physicist, one grows used to answering audience questions at the end of a talk one presents. As a quantum physicist, one grows used to answering questions about futuristic technologies. As a...
View ArticleQuantum connections
We were seated in the open-air back of a boat, motoring around the Stockholm archipelago. The Swedish colors fluttered above our heads; the occasional speedboat zipped past, rocking us in its wake;...
View ArticleCrossing the quantum chasm: From NISQ to fault tolerance
On December 6, I gave a keynote address at the Q2B 2023 Conference in Silicon Valley. Here is a transcript of my remarks. The slides I presented are here. A video of my presentation is here. Toward...
View ArticleBeyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine
On December 11, I gave a keynote address at the Q2B 2024 Conference in Silicon Valley. This is a transcript of my remarks. The slides I presented are here. The video of the talk is here. NISQ and...
View ArticleWhat does it mean to create a topological qubit?
I’ve worked on topological quantum computation, one of Alexei Kitaev’s brilliant innovations, for around 15 years now. It’s hard to find a more beautiful physics problem, combining spectacular...
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