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Author Archives: dabacon
Goodbye Professor Tombrello
This morning I awoke to the horrible news that Caltech Physics Professor Tom Tombrello had passed away. Professor Tombrello was my undergraduate advisor, my research advisor, a mentor, and, most importantly a friend. His impact on me, from my career … Continue reading
Sailing Stones: Mystery No More
My first research project, my first research paper, was on a perplexing phenomenon: the sliding rocks of Death Valley’s Racetrack playa. Racetrack playa is a large desolate dry lake bed that has one distinguishing feature above and beyond its amazing … Continue reading
Posted in Geology, Go Ahead, Waste Your Time
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Two Cultures in One of the Cultures
A long time ago in a mental universe far far away I gave a talk to a theory seminar about quantum algorithms. An excerpt from the abstract: Quantum computers can outperform their classical brethren at a variety of algorithmic tasks….[yadda … Continue reading
Error correcting aliens
Happy New Year! To celebrate let’s talk about error correcting codes and….aliens. The universe, as many have noted, is kind of like a computer. Or at least our best description of the universe is given by equations that prescribe how … Continue reading
Portrait of an Academic at a Midlife Crisis
Citations are the currency of academia. But the currency of your heart is another thing altogether. With apologies to my co-authors, here is a plot of my paper citations versus my own subjective rating of the paper. Hover over the … Continue reading
When I Was Young, I Thought It Would Be Different….
When I was in graduate school (back before the earth cooled) I remember thinking the following thoughts: Quantum computing is a new field filled with two types of people: young people dumb enough to not know they weren’t supposed to … Continue reading
Why I Left Academia
TLDR: scroll here for the pretty interactive picture. Over two years ago I abandoned my post at the University of Washington as a assistant research professor studying quantum computing and started a new career as a software developer for Google. … Continue reading
A Paradox of Toom's Rule?
Science is slow. You can do things like continue a conversation with yourself (and a few commenters) that started in 2005. Which is what I’m now going to do 🙂 The below is probably a trivial observation for one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Physics
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Walk up to a physicist at a party (we could add a conditional about the amount of beer consumed by the physicist at this point, but that would be redundant, it is a party after all), and say to him or … Continue reading
The Quantum Interregnum Decoherence Continues
The College of Cardinals has been in conclave for over a month now and leaks to the public indicate that the cardinals are still stalemated. What does this portend for the world? The end? A new beginning? Only entropy (which … Continue reading
Posted in Off The Deep End
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