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A (quantum) complex legacy: Part deux
I didn’t fancy the research suggestion emailed by my PhD advisor. A 2016 email from John Preskill led to my publishing a paper about quantum complexity in 2022, as I explained in last month’s blog...
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Memories of things past
My best friend—who’s held the title of best friend since kindergarten—calls me the keeper of her childhood memories. I recall which toys we played with, the first time I visited her house,1 and which...
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Let the great world spin
I first heard the song “Fireflies,” by Owl City, shortly after my junior year of college. During the refrain, singer Adam Young almost whispers, “I’d like to make myself believe / that planet Earth...
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The Book of Mark
Mark Srednicki doesn’t look like a high priest. He’s a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); and you’ll sooner find him in khakis than in sacred vestments. Humor...
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The Book of Mark, Chapter 2
Late in the summer of 2021, I visited a physics paradise in a physical paradise: the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). The KITP sits at the edge of the University of California, Santa...
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Astrobiology meets quantum computation?
The origin of life appears to share little with quantum computation, apart from the difficulty of achieving it and its potential for clickbait. Yet similar notions of complexity have recently garnered...
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The power of awe
Mid-afternoon, one Saturday late in September, I forgot where I was. I forgot that I was visiting Seattle for the second time; I forgot that I’d just finished co-organizing a workshop partially about...
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What geckos have to do with quantum computing
When my brother and I were little, we sometimes played video games on weekend mornings, before our parents woke up. We owned a 3DO console, which ran the game Gex. Gex is named after its main...
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The rain in Portugal
My husband taught me how to pronounce the name of the city where I’d be presenting a talk late last July: Aveiro, Portugal. Having studied Spanish, I pronounced the name as Ah-VEH-roh, with a v...
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Let gravity do its work
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort consisted of two theoretical physicists, one computer scientist, and what appeared to be a normal...
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My favorite rocket scientist
Whenever someone protests, “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I think of my friend Jamie Rankin. Jamie is a researcher at Princeton University, and she showed me her lab this June. When I first met Jamie,...
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