Mark Mitchison
@mitchison.bsky.social
Theory of Controlled Quantum Systems | @royalsociety.org University Research Fellow @ King’s College London | Editor @quantum-journal.bsky.social & New Journal of Physics | He/him | posts ≈ 60% science/30% politics/11% nonsense
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
As someone who uses ChatGPT for zero things whatsoever, the fact that they're putting ads in it is extremely funny
January 17, 2026 at 6:31 AM
As someone who uses ChatGPT for zero things whatsoever, the fact that they're putting ads in it is extremely funny
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Researchers uncover a fundamental, universal limit to how precisely time can be measured in noisy, fluctuating systems. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/cracking-t...
Cracking the limits of clocks: a new uncertainty relation for time itself – Physics World
Physicists uncover a universal limit on timekeeping precision, proving that anything from heartbeats to ocean waves can be a clock – but none escape the noise
physicsworld.com
January 9, 2026 at 12:05 PM
Researchers uncover a fundamental, universal limit to how precisely time can be measured in noisy, fluctuating systems. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/cracking-t...
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Our work modelling heat engines driven by finite reservoirs has been published in PRE!
What I really like about this work is that the reservoir's entropic temperature takes centre stage to explain stochastic engines’ performance🔥
journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...
journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...
Steady-state heat engines driven by finite reservoirs
We provide a consistent thermodynamic analysis of stochastic thermal engines driven by finite-size reservoirs, which are in turn coupled to infinite-size reservoirs. We consider a cyclic operation mod...
journals.aps.org
January 14, 2026 at 10:14 AM
Our work modelling heat engines driven by finite reservoirs has been published in PRE!
What I really like about this work is that the reservoir's entropic temperature takes centre stage to explain stochastic engines’ performance🔥
journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...
journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Merry Xmas BlueSky!! Breakfast today is chicken mappas and appam… They know how to celebrate in Kerala 🤩🎄
December 25, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Merry Xmas BlueSky!! Breakfast today is chicken mappas and appam… They know how to celebrate in Kerala 🤩🎄
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Hey! Our work made the list! Adding it to my CV
December 23, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Hey! Our work made the list! Adding it to my CV
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)
December 22, 2025 at 11:53 PM
2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Women made up 21% of faculty members in US physics departments in 2024, up from 16% a decade earlier. The percentage of women faculty members in the nation’s astronomy departments rose from 19% in 2014 to 25% in 2024. #academia #womeninscience #faculty
Upward trend in percentage of women physics and astronomy faculty in US
physicstoday.aip.org
December 22, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Women made up 21% of faculty members in US physics departments in 2024, up from 16% a decade earlier. The percentage of women faculty members in the nation’s astronomy departments rose from 19% in 2014 to 25% in 2024. #academia #womeninscience #faculty
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
December 17, 2025 at 4:38 PM
If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Enough of this finite initial segment nonsense. A number is even if there is no remainder when divided by 2. \Aleph_0 = 2 \Aleph_0, so by cardinality, there is an even number of naturals *and* an even number of integers. And even if there was one more, that would still be an even number!
December 17, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Enough of this finite initial segment nonsense. A number is even if there is no remainder when divided by 2. \Aleph_0 = 2 \Aleph_0, so by cardinality, there is an even number of naturals *and* an even number of integers. And even if there was one more, that would still be an even number!
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.
December 16, 2025 at 11:41 PM
I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.
This is grossly asymmetrical and wrong. There are N positive numbers from 1 to N, and another N negative numbers from -1 to -N. Including 0, that makes 2N+1 numbers (for arbitrarily large N). I rest my case.
Obviously there's an even number of numbers.
December 16, 2025 at 10:44 AM
This is grossly asymmetrical and wrong. There are N positive numbers from 1 to N, and another N negative numbers from -1 to -N. Including 0, that makes 2N+1 numbers (for arbitrarily large N). I rest my case.
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
December 13, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Man, I hadn't thought about this as a consequence of LLM use. The first "theory of everything" I ever received was in grad school and I suspect it was probably because I was early in the alphabet at MIT. That one didn't strike me as reflecting any particularly disordered thinking... <1/n> 🧵
I am by no means a prominent public intellectual, but my inbox is increasingly filled with messages from people who have been convinced by sycophantic chatbots that they have discovered revolutionary theories that entirely upend our scientific understanding of the universe.
November 21, 2025 at 4:30 AM
Man, I hadn't thought about this as a consequence of LLM use. The first "theory of everything" I ever received was in grad school and I suspect it was probably because I was early in the alphabet at MIT. That one didn't strike me as reflecting any particularly disordered thinking... <1/n> 🧵
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Having Johnson & Cummings in Downing Street when Covid struck was, just like Brexit, an entirely avoidable disaster caused largely by utterly appalling journalism. And now exactly the same clowns, arses & bigots with bylines are rolling out the red carpet for Farage.
www.thetimes.com/article/1b15...
www.thetimes.com/article/1b15...
Covid inquiry live: ‘Inexcusable’ delays under Johnson led to 23,000 deaths
Lockdowns may have been avoided if Boris Johnson’s government had acted faster, damning report finds
www.thetimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Having Johnson & Cummings in Downing Street when Covid struck was, just like Brexit, an entirely avoidable disaster caused largely by utterly appalling journalism. And now exactly the same clowns, arses & bigots with bylines are rolling out the red carpet for Farage.
www.thetimes.com/article/1b15...
www.thetimes.com/article/1b15...
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Couldn't be more proud of this collab! Watch out for Quantum Quest in Portuguese, Gujarati, and Hindi 🐈⬛
Last week I witnessed the birth of a new animation phenomenon: Quantum Quest! Born out of a collab between @aspects-quantum.bsky.social @khalak.bsky.social @saulovmo.bsky.social and our talented friends at Cassette Vision — watch here! cassette.ie/quantum
Cassette Vision
The official project page for the animation film "Quantum Quest"
cassette.ie
November 17, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Couldn't be more proud of this collab! Watch out for Quantum Quest in Portuguese, Gujarati, and Hindi 🐈⬛
Last week I witnessed the birth of a new animation phenomenon: Quantum Quest! Born out of a collab between @aspects-quantum.bsky.social @khalak.bsky.social @saulovmo.bsky.social and our talented friends at Cassette Vision — watch here! cassette.ie/quantum
Cassette Vision
The official project page for the animation film "Quantum Quest"
cassette.ie
November 17, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Last week I witnessed the birth of a new animation phenomenon: Quantum Quest! Born out of a collab between @aspects-quantum.bsky.social @khalak.bsky.social @saulovmo.bsky.social and our talented friends at Cassette Vision — watch here! cassette.ie/quantum
Very happy to see our latest work out in PRL doi.org/10.1103/5rtj... and highlighted by both @apsphysics.bsky.social Physics and @physicsworld.bsky.social
Small thread below 🧵⬇️
Small thread below 🧵⬇️
Quantum fluctuations produce no entropy, so if you can count those fluctuations as clock “ticks”, you can make a clock with no entropy and nonzero precision. Or can you? New research hints at why there is (still) no free lunch, even in the #quantum world. ⚛️🧪 physicsworld.com/a/researcher...
Researchers pin down the true cost of precision in quantum clocks – Physics World
Trade-off between precision and entropy production lies in measurement process
physicsworld.com
November 16, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Very happy to see our latest work out in PRL doi.org/10.1103/5rtj... and highlighted by both @apsphysics.bsky.social Physics and @physicsworld.bsky.social
Small thread below 🧵⬇️
Small thread below 🧵⬇️
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
Is there a prominent Brexiter left who hasn’t torn off their mask to reveal the rancid racism beneath? Boris Johnson’s chief fluffer accusing anyone else of being over-promoted is peak process. The bitterness of insanely privileged men with empty souls knows no bounds.
For anyone still tempted to take Dominic Cummings at all seriously, he's now an advocate of Donald Trump-style open racism.
November 6, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Is there a prominent Brexiter left who hasn’t torn off their mask to reveal the rancid racism beneath? Boris Johnson’s chief fluffer accusing anyone else of being over-promoted is peak process. The bitterness of insanely privileged men with empty souls knows no bounds.
Come on @natureportfolio.nature.com , get your 💩 together please
5️⃣/🔟 In Scientific Reports, 5 of the top 10 most cited articles have an article number of 1.
5️⃣/🔟 In Nature Communications the same: 5 of the top 10 are article 1s.
Coincidence? 👇
scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0...
I think not.
5️⃣/🔟 In Nature Communications the same: 5 of the top 10 are article 1s.
Coincidence? 👇
scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0...
I think not.
November 6, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Come on @natureportfolio.nature.com , get your 💩 together please
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
"Dear Sir, Your good name has been bought to my attention as a trustworthy man and a believer in God. I am the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My mother left me forty-five million pounds and the city of York but I am unable ..."
October 30, 2025 at 8:22 PM
"Dear Sir, Your good name has been bought to my attention as a trustworthy man and a believer in God. I am the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My mother left me forty-five million pounds and the city of York but I am unable ..."
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
A majority of voters, and a plurality of white voters, think that Reform is a racist party with racist policies.
October 28, 2025 at 2:03 PM
A majority of voters, and a plurality of white voters, think that Reform is a racist party with racist policies.
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
No they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
October 23, 2025 at 4:36 PM
No they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
Reposted by Mark Mitchison
