I just saw the news that Alexei Kitaev, a pioneer in quantum computing and an incredible physicst/computer scientist, has won a MacArthur “genius” award. Awesome!
Kitaev was my next door neighbor while I was a postdoc at Caltech, and among the many highlights of my short life I count listening to Kitaev’s amazing, confounding, brilliant and way over my head ideas. One event in particular I will always remember involved Alexei talking to theoretical computer scientists and, halfway through the talk, pointing out how Majorana fermions were essential to understanding what was going on in that particular computer science problem. Sure in retrospect I understood what he was saying, but how the hell did he make that connection?!?! Truly a genius and completely deserving of the MacArthur award. Congrats Alexei!
Update 8pm PST: Seems that news article has been taken down. Hmm.
Update 12:30am PST List of fellows now posted here. In a local note, David Montgomery who studies geomorphology has also been named a MacArthur fellow.
Two New Mersenne Primes
Two new Mersenne primes: 243,112,609-1 and 237,156,667-1. The former is now the largest prime number known. Interestingly the larger was discovered before the former, thus winning $100,000 from the EFF for Edson Smith who installed the software which identified this Mersenne prime on a UCLA computer. The $100K prize was for the first 10 million digit prime. The next prize is $150K for a 100 million digit prime number. Pretty amazing that two 10 million digit Mersenne’s were discovered within weeks of each other.
Continue reading “Two New Mersenne Primes”
University of Maryland Joint Institute Scores Big
The University of Marland’s Joint Quantum Institute has won an NSF Physics Frontier Center. $12.5 million over five years. This is the first frontier center devoted exclusively to quantum information science. Congrats to UM! Press release below the fold.
Continue reading “University of Maryland Joint Institute Scores Big”
A Reminder To Myself
This blog post is for me, not for you. Brought to you by a trip down memory lane visiting my adviser at Caltech.
Continue reading “A Reminder To Myself”
Seattle Scienceblogs Million Comment Party
Scienceblogs has now passed its millionth comment! In celebration many of us are having our own local Scienceblogs million comment parties. See here for your local party.
What does all that boring writing mean in the last paragraph? No need to read it. Just read this one if you’re going to be in Seattle at the end of September:
Join Sandra Porter, Maria Brumm, (hopefully) GrrlScientist, and myself for our millionth comment shin dig at Ozzie’s in lower Queen Anne (105 W Mercer St.) That’s right: beer, beer beer! At 4pm on September 27th. Considering the themes of three of four of the blogs, this will sure shape up to be an epic showdown between rock, physics, and biology. Or at least a good excuse for a party (by the way what is the natural ordering on rock, physics, and biology? Who beats who?) If you can make it drop a note in the comment section so we can get a guesstimate on the number of people attending.
Quantum Jobs
Anyone who is a U.S. citizen working in the quantum information sciences might be interested in this job announcement from the Aerospace Corporation.
John McCain v RIM
This morning, John McCain’s top economic adviser made a bit of a mistake:
Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”
Al Gore, call your office.
(Courtesy of Amie Parnes, on the trail with McCain)
Great fodder for the late night television hosts, considering the fact that Research In Motion is a Canadian company funded by the Canadian institutional investors. Maybe this is really a foreign policy announcement that John McCain supports invading the 51st state Canada. If he can get this going before the election, I’m pretty sure that his selection of Palin as a VP candidate will be seen as forward looking, because I’ve been told that as Alaska goes, so goes Canada.
But what amazes me more is how quickly wikipedia gets updated.
Continue reading “John McCain v RIM”
Pink Floyd Keyboardist Richard Wright Has Passed Away
For many years, and in particular during my college years, I was a huge Pink Floyd fan. Indeed, I suspect the first trace of me on the internet probably involves a post on a Pink Floyd newsgroup of which I am now quite embarrassed (but my ideas was sound, damnit!). Thus it is with great sadness that I learned today via Quantum Moxie that Richard Wright, keyboardist for the Pink Floyd, has passed away due to cancer.
Continue reading “Pink Floyd Keyboardist Richard Wright Has Passed Away”
Back to Caltech, Back to Unreality
Dum, dum, dum, DUM DUM
No, it’s not the monolith from 2001, but instead Millikan library at Caltech which I’m visiting. If you’re ever around Caltech on Halloween, be sure to check out the pumpkin drop where frozen pumpkins are dropped off this gigantic monolith. I thought I saw a blue spark…
Always a bit strange going back to the place where you spent seven plus years of your life. Especially when it’s a place like Caltech, I suppose.
Blog Posts With Scientific Content
The new father, he of uncertain principles, has analyzed whether his science posts gain viewership over time. My biggest problem with writing scientific content into posts is that when I do that it totally messes up my google searching. I mean when I do that then I end up finding my own blog post when I search for something I’m trying ton understand. On the other hand, it saves a click because I can be pretty certain that the link to my blog doesn’t lead to the answer I’m looking for (or if it does it’s time to get my memory checked out.)