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Leo C. Stein

@duetosymmetry.com

4.2K followers 800 following 1.2K posts

Physics Prof @ U of MS. Sloan Fellow. Black holes, gravitational waves, general relativity & beyond. Formerly Caltech MIT Cornell. Need thin pizza + fruity coffee. He/him 🌐 https://duetosymmetry.com/ @duetosymmetry everywhere

duetosymmetry.com

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 9h

I remember ours started with Legendre function identities!!!

Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 9h

I once lived with a film buff physicist!!!

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein

Yvette Cendes @whereisyvette.bsky.social · 18h

Are you interested in working on astronomical transients/ radio astronomy, all while exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest on your weekends? I'm hiring a postdoc! Come work for me!

aas.org/jobregister/...

Please get in touch if you have any questions!

🔭🧪🎢

Postdoctoral Positions in Time-Domain Astronomy | American Astronomical Society

The department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oregon invites applications for a postdoctoral scholar to work with Prof. Yvette Cendes in the field of time-domain astrophysics. This inc...

aas.org

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 15h

engineering (derogatory) 😉

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 17h

Also in Caltech News! www.caltech.edu/about/news/c...

Catalog of Simulations of Black Hole Collisions Expands

A collaboration between physicists at Caltech and other institutions has released an expanded and refined catalog of simulations of black hole mergers.

www.caltech.edu

Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 17h

And now UMiss News wrote about our latest catalog paper! olemiss.edu/news/2025/01...

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 22h

Sorry in advance to John, but IMO Baez+Muniain is good after you've already had a first course in GR and want a deeper mathematical understanding. For more intuition I'd say something more like Carroll or (my bias showing) MTW!

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 23h

There are also nice diagrams trying to show the algebraic and differential Bianchi identities (nice one in Baez + Muniain!)

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 23h

There are diagrams in MTW trying to help visualize what it means to eat a 2-area and produce an infinitesimal rotation (result of parallel transport). Or you can think of it as an eigenvalue problem in the space of 2-forms, which is sometimes easier to visualize

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 23h

Fair, but not every rank-p tensor is the same! We have different ways of visualizing the Maxwell field strength tensor and the gravitational strain, both rank 2.

I don't have a rank 3 tensor jumping to mind, but for rank 4 we have Riemann. And there are definitely approaches for Riemann!

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 1d

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 1d

Here’s video of the incident

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 1d

I still try to use imagery to try to intuit what's happening in higher dimensional space. I have just learned that my low-d intuition needs to be overridden a lot!

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 1d

Eventually, intuition just means "has done enough similar calculations to guess how this one should go".

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 1d

Once you got the idea — which you clearly did — it's all just practice!

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein

Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 1d

Valuable info about the Physics Nobel Prize today from Prof. Joseph Barranco at SFSU on Martinis and Devoret being a grad student and postdoc in Clarke's lab at UC Berkeley & Clark and Devoret being immigrants. "California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen." ⚛️

Joseph Barranco posted on social media: Go Bears! Nobel Prize in Physics goes to 3 physicists studying mesoscopic quantum phenomena... Work was done in the 1980s in UC Berkeley Professor John Clarke's lab with his graduate student John Martinis and postdoctoral fellow Michel Devoret... all 3 share the Nobel Prize. Must also point out that both Clarke and Devoret are immigrants from the UK and France, respectively. All 3 are pioneers in the race to build the most powerful quantum supercomputers. California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen.

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein

John Pavlovitz @johnpavlovitz.bsky.social · 2d

ICE is made up of men who have failed the human test and have nothing of value to offer this nation.

Adults with decency and options and possibilities don’t do this shit.

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 2d

I am so well aware!! Trying to teach all the topics I wanted to cover in graduate EM almost made me want to write my own textbook .... *almost* ...

Reposted by Leo C. Stein

Chris Schaller @hicommander.bsky.social · 2d

Denying 810,000+ Arizonans our representation in Congress.

Darin Self @darinself.com · 2d

I know we're all focused on the actions of a unbridled executive...but another major danger right now is that the Speaker of the House is refusing to sit a duly elected representative.

The Downballot @the-downballot.com · 2d

Updating this chart because the prior version is out of date. With Mike Johnson refusing to convene the House, the soonest Democrat Adelita Grijalva can get sworn in—and provide the 218th signature to force a vote on the Epstein files—is now three weeks after winning the #AZ07 special election.

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein

SXS Collaboration @sxs-collaboration.bsky.social · 2d

🎉 Happy paper publication day! 🎉 Our third catalog of binary black hole simulations, now published in Classical and Quantum Gravity. And it's open access!

Scheel et al. 2025 Class. Quantum Grav. 42 195017
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Also on the @arxiv.bsky.social at arxiv.org/abs/2505.13378

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 2d

Sounds like homework problems then ;)

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 2d

I remember accidentally "inventing" bug/birdtrack/graphical notation while taking GR, doing a homework problem that involved a lot of dummy indices, and I wanted to stop writing more and more Greek letters. Anyway, my goto reference is @chaosbook.bsky.social's Birdtracks, birdtracks.eu

Group Theory - P. Cvitanovic

birdtracks.eu

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 3d

this is the way

Reposted by Leo C. Stein

Edward Perez @eddieperez.bsky.social · 3d

The President of United States exhorting cadets from one of the branches of the Armed Forces to eliminate one of our two national parties.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Trump to the Navy: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats."

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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 3d

Thanks!

Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 3d

I acquired an old Numerical Recipes in C hardback back in grad school... it's taped together and sitting on my bookshelf. I pull it out to hand to students about once a month! That reminds me, I should try to get Saul to sign it one of these days...