Science

Feedback is delighted to discover that two academics have taken a scholarly interest in dad jokes, but is unsurprised by their key finding: the people who most enjoy dad jokes are dads

Attempts to describe quantum physics are rarely enjoyable, but Paul Davies' zeal in Quantum 2.0 sometimes steers too close to hype, finds Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Researchers created scalable quantum circuits capable of simulating fundamental nuclear physics on more than 100 qubits. These circuits efficiently prepare complex initial states that classical computers cannot handle. The achievement demonstrates a new path toward simulating particle collisions and extreme forms of matter. It may ultimately illuminate long-standing cosmic mysteries.

Researchers created scalable quantum circuits capable of simulating fundamental nuclear physics on more than 100 qubits. These circuits efficiently prepare complex initial states that classical computers cannot handle. The achievement demonstrates a new path toward simulating particle collisions and extreme forms of matter. It may ultimately illuminate long-standing cosmic mysteries.

Researchers have found a way to make “dark excitons”—normally invisible quantum states of light—shine dramatically brighter by trapping them inside a tiny gold-nanotube optical cavity. This breakthrough boosts their emission 300,000-fold and allows scientists to switch and tune them with unprecedented precision. The work unlocks new possibilities for ultrafast photonics, on-chip quantum communication, and exploring previously unreachable quantum states in 2D materials.

Researchers have found a way to make “dark excitons”—normally invisible quantum states of light—shine dramatically brighter by trapping them inside a tiny gold-nanotube optical cavity. This breakthrough boosts their emission 300,000-fold and allows scientists to switch and tune them with unprecedented precision. The work unlocks new possibilities for ultrafast photonics, on-chip quantum communication, and exploring previously unreachable quantum states in 2D materials.

A lot of the protests and kerfuffles on campus two years ago involved a student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  Their favorite metier seemed to be disrupting access through the Quad, using bullhorns to shout slogans (“river to the sea. . . ” etc.), and in general touting the actions of Hamas and demonizing Israel.  Now when these actions are done according to campus rules, they’re fine—it’s free speech, and that kind of expression is of the glories of our University.  But often SJP people are involved in violating campus regulations; in April of last year I documented four instances of the organization or its members violating campus regulations. Those included sit-ins that constituted trespassing and led to the arrest of both students and faculty. But, this being Chicago with a woke mayor, all charges were dropped.

What about the rest of the violations? There was almost no discipline: the University, as noted in the link above, simply gave SJP a slap on the wrist, for the last thing the University of Chicago wants to see is officials or police “laying hands on students”. Below is the “punishment” that the Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct meted out to SJP after they shouted down a Jewish “teach-in” in 2023, violating campus rules.

This isn’t even a slap on the wrist, but a tap on the wrist. It’s even lighter punishment than the warning the cops give you if they catch you speeding a little.

In light of SJP’s repeated violations of university rules, I wrote a letter to the student newspaper in January of last year asking “Should Students for Justice in Palestine be a recognized student organization?” I provided no answer save to say that the University should mete out genuine punishment to people who repeatedly violate campus rules about public demonstrations.  The University did get serious once, when it used the UC police—the Chicago police refused to participate—in taking down the illegal encampment that defaced our quad and prevented free access to buildings.

Things have been quiet for the last year, and probably for two reasons: Hamas has been trounced in Gaza, and a lot of the participants in anti-Israel demonstrations appear to be outsiders rather than members of the University community.  Demonstrators may well be afraid to have a public presence because Trump sent ICE to Chicago, and if you entered the country illegally, now is not the time you want to fall into the hands of the authorities.

Regardless, I continue to promote free speech that adheres to our policies while at the same time deploring the hatred and antisemitism that seems to motivate groups and individuals like the SJP.  And so they’ve put up a legal “installation” on our quad again. It’s okay that they did so, but it’s a performative, misguided, and hate-filled “installation.”  It went up a few days ago for a week, and here are some photos:

Note that it was  erected by SJP.

What we have here is a work of art accusing one John Kirby of genocide. Well, I didn’t know who John Kirby was, but Wikipedia says he was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who later took up positions in the media and also in the government under Democratic Presidents:

In the Biden administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 2021 to 2022 and as White House National Security Communications Advisor from 2022 to 2025. He worked as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN from 2017 to 2021. In the second Obama administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary from 2013 to 2015 and as Spokesperson for the United States Department of State and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 2015 to 2017.

Kirby has also just been appointed as director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, a nonpartisan venue for free discussion aimed at inspiring students to go into politics and public service.  It has invited people from all sides of the ideological spectrum to speak, though when someone who doesn’t hate Israel speaks, miscreants sometimes have demonstrations outside the building or have even invaded the building (they were heaved out).  Again, those demonstrations are legal if they don’t violate university rules, but they sometimes have (I have heard of no punsihments).

At any rate, Kirby’s position in the military, and some words he said, prominently displayed in the first photo below, convinced SJP that he is complicit in GENOCIDE.  In fact, Kirby has been careful about the use of the word than has SJP, applying it only to Hamas. This is from the Guardian when Kirby was working under Biden:

Challenged at a White House briefing to confront the term “Genocide Joe” by some protesters to described Biden, Kirby, who had previously ruled out “drawing red lines” for Israel’s actions in Gaza, embarked on an animated exposition.

“People can say what they want on the sidewalk and we respect that. That’s what the first amendment’s about,” he said. “But this word genocide’s getting thrown around in a pretty inappropriate way by lots of different folks. What Hamas wants, make no mistake about it, is genocide. They want to wipe Israel off the map.

“And they’ve said that they’re not going to stop. What happened on the 7th of October is going to happen again and again and again. And what happened on the 7th of October? Murder; slaughter of innocent people in their homes or at a music festival. That’s genocidal intentions.

“Yes, there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza … And yes, we continue to urge the Israelis to be as careful and cautious as possible. But Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel’s not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. If we’re going to start using that word – fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”

There are three quotes from Kirby (one of them fell over last night), including one that apparently refers to the U.S. providing aid to Israel (second photo). The other two seem to show him claiming that Israel did not violate international human rights law (you can read them by clocking twice on the first photo to enlarge it).

Two points:

1.)  This is a performative “installation” that accomplishes nothing. There was never a “genocide,” and even if you think there was, there’s now a cease-fire.

2.)  Why do you never see students demonstrating against a real genocide: the one that’s a huge goal of Hamas, which wants to kill all the Jews and wipe out Israel? (Read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, especially the introduction and Article Seven.)

3.)  It shows, in my view, that hatred of Jews and Israel hasn’t disappeared here (who would ever think that, anyway?) but is bubbling under the surface, waiting to emerge should the conflict in Gaza begin again.

4.) These installations, while they should be legal, nevertheless forment the atmosphere of hatred that, in my view, keeps Jewish students (who never erect similar “installations” about Hamas) from speaking their minds or wearing paraphernalia like Stars of David and yarmulkes (I’ve heard this directly from Jewish students).  This kind of intimidation—which in America also chills discussions about abortion and gender issues,—still falls within University regulations, so there’s nothing to do about it, but according to statistics, it does chill speech.

Matter with “forbidden” symmetries was once thought to be confined to lab experiments, but is now being found in some of the world’s most extreme environments

Google’s latest model reportedly beats its rivals in several benchmark tests, but issues with reliability mean concerns remain over a possible AI bubble

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called body2, is the very first strip. As the email noted:

It’s Jesus & Mo’s 20th birthday sometimes around now. I don’t remember the exact date because it wasn’t originally in this format. Thanks to all our readers! If you want to give us a birthday present, the best thing you can do is became a patron here: https://www.patreon.com/jandm

Do subscribe!

And see Mo get out of trouble:

 

To make quantum computers more efficient and reliable, some of their basic components must be constantly reused – several quantum computer designs can now do just that

Hooray! I received two batches of photos last night, so we can keep going until Thursday, at least.

Today’s photos are from David Riddell; his captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  These photos were taken last weekend.

Went out last Saturday on a seabird-watching “pelagic” trip off the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  The weather was looking marginal, but we’d postponed twice and really wanted to get out there, so set out at dawn from the small seaside town of Whangamata, heading for the deep water where the open ocean specialists live.  In the end we saw 19 “tubenose” species (Procellariiformes: the albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters and their relatives), plus little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor).

After about three hours the slow, old fishing boat we’d chartered arrived off the edge of the Continental Shelf, beyond Mayor Island. This is an extinct volcano, known for its cliffs of solid, glossy black obsidian, once traded throughout the country by Maori, who made cutting tools out of it.  The mainland behind has almost entirely disappeared in the murk along the horizon

Chopped-up fish bits thrown off the back of the boat soon had a mixed flock of birds gathering to enjoy the feast. Most were flesh-footed shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes), but other species were among them.  There’s a black petrel (Procellaria parkinsoni) right of centre in the picture below, with the bone-coloured bill:

Flesh-footed shearwaters of course have pinkish legs and feet, as well as slightly pinkish, dark-tipped bills. They breed widely on islands off north-eastern New Zealand, as well as off Australia and in the Indian Ocean, though numbers globally are declining:

Black petrels on the other hand have dark feet, and are slightly bigger and blacker. They used to breed widely on the New Zealand mainland but are now confined to two islands north-east of Auckland.  Population estimates range between 20,000 and 38,000.  Their Maori name is taiko, which some may remember from some previous photos of mine posted here. It is also the name of a much rarer bird in the Chatham Islands:

Squabbles over the fish bits grew quite intense! This is a black petrel being pursued by a flesh-footed shearwater:

It was a good day to test identification skills on the dark seabirds. This one is a grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi), which breed on islands around northern New Zealand, as well as a few mainland sites:

Another dark species, and possibly the bird of the day, was this short-tailed shearwater (Ardenna tenuirostris). They may be the world’s most abundant seabird, with an estimated population of 23 million birds, breeding on islands around southern Australia, though few make it across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.  It’s like a smaller, daintier version of the sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) which is almost as abundant, breeding in huge numbers around southern New Zealand, as well as off Australia, Chile and the Falklands.  One of those was seen on Saturday as well, though I missed it myself:

After a while the big guns arrived, drawn in by the smell of the fish. Four albatross species were seen, with white-capped mollymawks (Thalassarche cauta) the most numerous:

There were also several Antipodean albatrosses (Diomedea antipodensis), the local form of wandering albatross (D. exulans), from which it was recently split.  This one is a Gibson’s albatross (D. a. gibsoni); one of the nominate subspecies also turned up:

Hanging out at the back of the feeding frenzy were a few New Zealand storm petrels (Fregetta maoriana). They were two small and distant to get decent photos with my ancient camera, but I thought I’d throw this in just to show they were there.  As I posted here previously, these were believed to be extinct until rediscovered in 2003, more than a century after the previous confirmed sighting.  Since the clearing of rats and cats from their breeding ground on Little Barrier Island their numbers have boomed – until recently they were mainly seen north of Auckland, but we saw five, further south in the Bay of Plenty:

Closer inshore was a different suite of birds, and it was a delight to see several little shearwaters (Puffinus assimilis) fly past. These are normally scattered in ones and twos, and don’t hang around boats like some of the other petrels and shearwaters:

Tracking down black holes at the center of dwarf galaxies has proven difficult. In part that is because they have a tendency to “wander” and are not located at the galaxy’s center. There are plenty of galaxies that might contain such a black hole, but so far we’ve had insufficient data to confirm their existence. A new paper from Megan Sturm of Montana State University and her colleagues analyzed additional data from Chandra and Hubble on a set of 12 potential Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) galaxy candidates. They were only able to confirm three, which highlights the difficulty in isolating these massive wanderers.

An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought

There is a long history of supplements marketed to enhance memory, focus, overall cognitive function, and brain health. None of them are backed by quality scientific evidence, and they seem to go through the typical conveyor belt of claims – by the time one claim is collapsing, such as ginkgo biloba, the industry is happy to move on to the next. The […]

The post Creatine Supplements for Brain Function first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Rather than being a recent cultural development, kissing may have been practised by other early humans like Neanderthals and our ape ancestors

To be fair, all scientific models are in some sense wrong

Galaxies grow massive through mergers with other galaxies. Massive galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda not only merge with other large galaxies, they also absorb their much smaller satellite dwarf galaxies. But these smaller galaxies can become quenched long before they're absorbed, and new research examines this process at Andromeda (M31).

A comprehensive UN report has found that cities and towns are home to 81 per cent of the world’s population, much more than previously thought

Ancient rock art was meant to be heard as well as seen and now acoustic archaeologists are bringing the sounds of prehistoric rituals to life