I’m heading home from the March meeting, after giving my talk this morning and then having a nice lunch with graduate (and one undergraduate) students at a “Meet the Experts” lunch. Yeah, somehow I slipped by the guards! Luckily a real expert was there, in the form of Paul Kwiat, so all was good and the students didn’t learn anything to disastrous. “What I learned at the March meeting” below the fold.
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March Meeting Bound
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the March Meeting I go. To run and play, and talk all day, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho.
Talks I will most likely be attending: these. Food I will be seeking out this. Exciting physics works I will be on the outlook for: here
Qubits, Qbits, qbits, qubits, q-bits, and light nanoseconds
Hurray! My letter to Physics Today along with a delightful response from N. David Mermin has been published. I particularly enjoyed Mermin’s closing line:
It may be quixotic (but certainly not Qxotic) to try to correct the spelling of an entire community, but I owe it my best shot. What else is retirement good for?
Sweet! Now I can check off from my list of things to do in life: “Get published in Physics Today over issues related to my literature degree.”
"I'm Never Getting Out of New Jersey"
A day in the life of a traveler. For your amusement?
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Twins in Donut Space
Visiting Princeton, the American home to Albert Einstein, I’m reminded of one of my favorite “paradoxes” of special relativity. And, even more so, one of my favorite versions of this paradox which, when I first heard it, it blew my mind. What paradox is this of which I speak? The twin paradox of course! Really just the plain old twin paradox? No. Much better than that: the twin paradox in donut space!
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This Side of Paradise
Quantum Algorithms and the Strange Nature of Quantum Theory
Over at Information Processing, the InfoProcessor talks about teaching Bell’s theorem:
I find that the hardest thing about teaching this material in class is that, after half a year of training students’ brains to think quantum mechanically, it is extremely difficult to get them to feel the weirdness of Bell’s theorem and spooky action. It all seems quite normal to them in the context of the course — they know how to calculate, and that’s just how quantum mechanics works!
Continue reading “Quantum Algorithms and the Strange Nature of Quantum Theory”
The Same Title?
On the arxiv Friday:
arXiv:0802.4248
Title: Coexistence of qubit effects
Authors: Peter Stano, Daniel Reitzner, Teiko Heinosaari
Comments: A paper with identical title is being published on the arXiv simultaneously by Paul Busch and Heinz-Jurgen Schmidt. These authors solve the same problem independently with a different method.
and
arXiv:0802.4167
Title: Coexistence of qubit effects
Authors: Paul Busch, Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt
Comments: A paper with identical title is being published on the arXiv simultaneously by Teiko Heinosaari, Daniel Reitzner and Peter Stano. These authors solve the same problem independently with a different method
Chosing the same title seems a bit strange to me. I mean simultaneous result posting happens quite frequently, but with the same title? But at least this answers a question I’ve always had which is whether the arxiv allows papers with the same title.
You Versus the Chimp
And they says humans are the smart ones:
Morpho Towers
Happy Leap Friday! For your enjoyment, some ferromagnetic fluids jiving to a piano piece: