As a #physics blogger, am I going to be replaced by AI? Maybe someday - but that day is not today. I asked AI to make a physics diagram for circular orbits. The results weren't too good.

https://rjallain.medium.com/can-a-i-make-physics-diagrams-lets-find-out-9992bceea3fd?sk=f8d985c088ba65ae9addb3acd99ab6a6

@Cdespinosa @fivetonsflax @PG19582 @mekkaokereke Just to amplify the implied point of all these responses, including the 2nd law of thermodynamics: you can’t get more power out of a system than you put into it. If only! That’d give rise to infinity machines and perpetual motion. Energy is created using other energy, and the sum of all energy used minus the energy generated has to be zero. Regenerative braking “conserves” used energy by reclaiming it from some aspects of the system.

#Physics

It's 1967 & she's 24 years old. It had taken her 3 months to go through the chart-recorder paper manually. She had helped build the radio #telescope that picked up the waves. There was a pulsating signal, regular; it turned out to be a #pulsar.
Her supervisor didn't believe her. She insisted it's real.

It was. But the press would ask her about boyfriends. Her male colleagues were asked about science.

7 years later, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
would be excluded from the #Nobel Prize of #Physics.

It's 1967 & she's 24 years old. It had taken her 3 months to go through the chart-recorder paper manually. She had helped build the radio #telescope that picked up the waves. There was a pulsating signal, regular; it turned out to be a #pulsar.
Her supervisor didn't believe her. She insisted it's real.

It was. But the press would ask her about boyfriends. Her male colleagues were asked about science.

7 years later, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
would be excluded from the #Nobel Prize of #Physics.

#Physics is such an old field it's a real bitch.

1. Have a nice promising idea all by yourself
2. Find out a well-known guy had it 30 years ago
3. Refine the question so as to go further than the 1st dude.
4. Find out another even better-known guy who looked at this particular question 50 years ago.
5. Look at references in the paper.
6. Find out that Eddington first had a look at this in the early 1930s.
7. Give up and go back to your usual infinitesimally incremental shit or persevere by reading the 200 papers that you discovered along the trail of references, at the risk of facing an even more depressing surprise.

So, after thinking I had an original thought on Monday, here's me studying papers from a century ago to figure out if idea can be salvaged somehow.

#InfiniteLoop #ResearchIsHard #VisMaVieDeScientifique

#Physics is such an old field it's a real bitch.

1. Have a nice promising idea all by yourself
2. Find out a well-known guy had it 30 years ago
3. Refine the question so as to go further than the 1st dude.
4. Find out another even better-known guy who looked at this particular question 50 years ago.
5. Look at references in the paper.
6. Find out that Eddington first had a look at this in the early 1930s.
7. Give up and go back to your usual infinitesimally incremental shit or persevere by reading the 200 papers that you discovered along the trail of references, at the risk of facing an even more depressing surprise.

So, after thinking I had an original thought on Monday, here's me studying papers from a century ago to figure out if idea can be salvaged somehow.

#InfiniteLoop #ResearchIsHard #VisMaVieDeScientifique

🫓 Ultra-flat optic pushes beyond what was previously thought possible

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ultra-flat-optic-previously-thought.html

#optics #imaging #technology #engineering #research #physics

🫓 Ultra-flat optic pushes beyond what was previously thought possible

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ultra-flat-optic-previously-thought.html

#optics #imaging #technology #engineering #research #physics

RE: https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/113555829850124788

Last year a filming team visited me in #Bologna to shoot a few scenes for a documentary about the #Universe and the #Brain to be shown over 360° on the dome of the planetarium in #montreal

Now it's out!
https://hubblo.ca/en/bounds-of-infinity/

With a catchy trailer, in which yours truly appears at 30s:
https://youtu.be/v6rjKBWD5o4?si=4bXSYZCHRl9NX_Fg

The documentary is directed by M. Lam, and it features a few other researchers, artists, and neuroscientists (A. Seth and my friend A. Feletti).
#physics #science #consciousness

Large language models are essentially solutions to nonlinear optimization problems to predict the next token in the output text. Mathematically, these problems are quite similar to problems we routinely face in physics, like finding the ground state of a quantum system.

In these physics problems, we observe a recurring pattern: First, someone comes up with a new class of solutions (we call this a "variational ansatz") and there is tremendous progress, allowing to solve previously hard problems in a near-miraculous way. However, once the low-hanging fruits have been reaped, the remaining problems stay hard. Throwing vastly more computing power at it helps a little bit, but produces quickly diminishing returns.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what has happened with the advent of transformers for natural language processing.

#ai #llm #physics #quantum

RE: https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/113555829850124788

Last year a filming team visited me in #Bologna to shoot a few scenes for a documentary about the #Universe and the #Brain to be shown over 360° on the dome of the planetarium in #montreal

Now it's out!
https://hubblo.ca/en/bounds-of-infinity/

With a catchy trailer, in which yours truly appears at 30s:
https://youtu.be/v6rjKBWD5o4?si=4bXSYZCHRl9NX_Fg

The documentary is directed by M. Lam, and it features a few other researchers, artists, and neuroscientists (A. Seth and my friend A. Feletti).
#physics #science #consciousness

My NSF funding was terminated but I still need to attend AAPT national meetings! Please consider helping me continue my work with two-year college physics and astronomy faculty around the country! I pledge complete transparency and fiscal responsibility. I will appreciate and acknowledge all contributions! #ITeachPhysics #AAPT #OPTYCs #Physics #Workshops #CommunityCollege

https://gofund.me/0ee71402f

Large language models are essentially solutions to nonlinear optimization problems to predict the next token in the output text. Mathematically, these problems are quite similar to problems we routinely face in physics, like finding the ground state of a quantum system.

In these physics problems, we observe a recurring pattern: First, someone comes up with a new class of solutions (we call this a "variational ansatz") and there is tremendous progress, allowing to solve previously hard problems in a near-miraculous way. However, once the low-hanging fruits have been reaped, the remaining problems stay hard. Throwing vastly more computing power at it helps a little bit, but produces quickly diminishing returns.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what has happened with the advent of transformers for natural language processing.

#ai #llm #physics #quantum

My NSF funding was terminated but I still need to attend AAPT national meetings! Please consider helping me continue my work with two-year college physics and astronomy faculty around the country! I pledge complete transparency and fiscal responsibility. I will appreciate and acknowledge all contributions! #ITeachPhysics #AAPT #OPTYCs #Physics #Workshops #CommunityCollege

https://gofund.me/0ee71402f

I hear so often: 'People don't want to get #knowledge, ah, I tried to explain them complicated stuff and they didn't listen.' Stop!
Try to get a more peopley perspective. See their #curiosity! Perhaps you could teach your stuff differently?

Evie Unraveling does it - connecting #science and #knitting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5btQokB32dQ

@fiberarts

#SciComm #algorithms #algorithmicDesign #physics #materialScience #science #womenInSTEM #technology #FiberArts

When an atom loses an electron from the valence shell, it has a positive charge and becomes a cat-ion

#caturday #caturdayeveryday #chemistry #physics