Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · 1d

I took a class on analog electronics (using Horowitz and Hill, of course) at UCSB from Martinis as an undergraduate and I remember him as an enthusiastic teacher who always had time to answer questions.

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 1d

John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis have won the Nobel Prize in physics for showing that quantum mechanics describes the behavior of objects much larger than atoms.
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...

Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an...

www.nobelprize.org

Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Alexis Kaminski @alexisonfluids.bsky.social · 8d

Hey fluids friends, we're recruiting in my department this year!

Berkeley Mechanical Engineering @berkeleyme.bsky.social · 9d

#BerkeleyME is seeking applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Fluid Mechanics/Fluid Dynamics.
me.berkeley.edu/faculty/me-o...

Assistant Professor - Fluid Mechanics - UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering

University of California, Berkeley Department of Mechanical Engineering POSITION OVERVIEW Position title: Assistant Professor Salary range: The current salary range for this position is $107,100 – $...

me.berkeley.edu

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · 10d

It's great that @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social is on bluesky -- I've learned a ton from him about math and physics over the years. 🧪🔭

John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 10d

If you had a negative mass star next to a positive mass star, what would it do? It would *chase after* the positive mass star, with the both accelerating toward the speed of light!

A negative mass black hole is not a white hole. What is it?

Fun with physics....

mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosb...

John Carlos Baez (@[email protected])

I've been trying to lose weight, so I've been studying the physics of negative mass. Basically it doesn't exist. But physicists are have run into a serious problem. They think they can use astro...

mathstodon.xyz

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

URI Graduate School of Oceanography @urigso.bsky.social · 13d

🦞💙 Happy #NationalLobsterDay!

Meet the star of the Ann Gall Durbin Aquarium on the University of Rhode Island's Bay Campus: a rare blue lobster, found in the wild in about one in two million! 🦑 🌊

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · 14d

Also read about this on Tom's blog! 🌊

mrtomsblog.com/instruments/

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 17d

In the 1960s and 70s, Syukuro Manabe pioneered ways to model Earth’s atmosphere. In 2021, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, which is often cited as foundational to modern climate science.

How Climate Scientists Saw the Future Before It Arrived | Quanta Magazine

Over the past 60 years, scientists have largely succeeded in building a computer model of Earth to see what the future holds. One of the most ambitious projects humankind has ever undertaken has now…

www.quantamagazine.org

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Dr. Roxanne Beinart @symbiosisrox.bsky.social · Aug 26

Bon voyage to our lab member Katie Stone on the very last @urigso.bsky.social R/V Endeavor cruise! As the sole URI scientist aboard, Katie is the last URI scientist to sail on this historic vessel that began its work in 1976.

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Prof. Diego Melgar @diegosismologo.bsky.social · Aug 5

Video is almost certainly real. From colleagues in Russia:

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Jul 29

🧪

Greg Egan @gregegansf.bsky.social · Jul 29

You might have heard that the elliptical orbits of a planet around a star under Newtonian gravity have a kind of *four*-dimensional symmetry. There is a lot of beautiful mathematics behind the ideas that make this notion precise, but here is a simple way to get a handle on the underlying symmetry.

Two vectors of equal length are shown, labelled A and B, pointing from a common starting point, labelled "First focus", which is the right-hand focus of an ellipse with a horizontal major axis. The endpoints of the vectors A and B lie at the top and bottom points of the minor axis of the ellipse. The vector A+B is shown, pointing from the right-hand focus of the ellipse to the left-hand focus, and the vector A-B is shown, pointing from the endpoint of A at the top of the ellipse down to the endpoint of B.

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Jul 22

🧪

Jesse Capecelatro @jessecaps.bsky.social · Jul 22

Some eye candy: Görtler vortices in an underexpanded jet by PhD graduate Meet Patel

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Jul 18

Great episode. The comments you and David have about fluid mechanics were my experience for a while after entering the field. There are a few texts that are easier to read for physicists, eg (even though it focused on geophysical applications) academic.oup.com/book/41975

Lectures on Geophysical Fluid Dynamics

Abstract. Lectures on Geophysical Fluid Dynamics offers an introduction to several topics in geophysical fluid dynamics, including the theory of large-scal

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Sam Lewin @lewinsam.bsky.social · Jul 9

If you happen to be interested in ocean mixing variability, stratified turbulence, or the fate of shoaling nonlinear internal waves on the inner shelf, our recent study has just appeared in JPO: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal.... Fun to work on this with @alexisonfluids.bsky.social & crew! 🌊🌊🌊

journals.ametsoc.org

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Jun 8

Happy #WorldOceanDay! 🌊🧪 Photo of Kelvin-Helmoltz instability: Nick Statom

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Keenan Crane @keenancrane.bsky.social · May 21

Fun new paper at #SIGGRAPH2025:

What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).

Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?

That's exactly what we do! 1/n

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · May 3

double 🧪🧪

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · May 3

single 🧪

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Mara Freilich @maratimes.bsky.social · Apr 15

We have two articles (both by first-time scientific authors) in GRL! First up, led by PhD student Lulabel Ruiz Seitz, we find a simple interaction between lateral stirring and biology that has implications for modeling and observing cross-shore fluxes.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Joint Effects of Submesoscale Lateral Dispersion and Biological Reactions on Biogeochemical Flux

Lateral stirring, which is parameterized as dispersion, has a near-linear relationship with cross-shore phytoplankton flux Dispersion has the greatest impact on phytoplankton flux when the reacti...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Keenan Crane @keenancrane.bsky.social · Apr 7

We often use discretization to approximate continuous laws of physics, but it also goes the other way:

You can use continuous equations to approximate the behavior of discrete systems!

Here we'll see how electrical circuits can be modeled using the Laplace equation Δφ=0. [1/n]

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 3

🧪 SWOT, a recently launched NASA satellite, is about to teach us a lot about the heterogeneity of ocean wave fields

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

🌊🧪

Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

Greg Wagner and I just published a paper (link.springer.com/article/10.1...) on wave momentum. It is well known that waves packets in deep water have no momentum, yet it takes momentum to generate them in the first place. Where does that initial momentum go?

Deep Flows Transmitted by Forced Surface Gravity Waves - Water Waves

We examine a two-dimensional deep-water surface gravity wave packet generated by a pressure disturbance in the Lagrangian reference frame. The pressure disturbance has the form of a narrow-banded weak...

link.springer.com

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

"We dedicate this paper to Sean Haney. Perhaps the only thing Sean loved more than surface waves was debating their finer details with friends, usually after surf sessions. Sean provided many useful discussions on this topic prior to his untimely passing in 2021. Be careful, Sean. "

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

McIntyre proposed one explanation saying that shallow water waves carried the momentum away. But what happens in the limit that both the carrier waves and group are in deep-water?

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

Greg Wagner and I just published a paper (link.springer.com/article/10.1...) on wave momentum. It is well known that waves packets in deep water have no momentum, yet it takes momentum to generate them in the first place. Where does that initial momentum go?

Deep Flows Transmitted by Forced Surface Gravity Waves - Water Waves

We examine a two-dimensional deep-water surface gravity wave packet generated by a pressure disturbance in the Lagrangian reference frame. The pressure disturbance has the form of a narrow-banded weak...

link.springer.com

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Nick Pizzo @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social · Apr 2

Changing the game! We need to make sure we reward work like this (eg highly usable code)

JuliaHub @juliahub.bsky.social · Apr 1

Oceananigans.jl uses Julia and #GPU magic to build high-fidelity, scalable ocean #simulations from scratch. With kernel fusion, adaptive numerics, and communication-light solvers, it's setting a new standard in #performance. hackernoon.com/from-code-to... #JuliaLang #GPUComputing #ClimateTech #HPC

From Code to Currents: Julia and GPU Magic Transform Ocean Modeling Efficiency | HackerNoon

Oceananigans.jl leverages Julia for advanced ocean simulations, combining GPU-optimized WENO schemes with efficient barotropic solvers to boost climate modeling

hackernoon.com

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Reposted by Nick Pizzo

Gabriel Weymouth @gabrielweymouth.bsky.social · Mar 22

This cute simulation of a jetting body came about as I helped fix WaterLily.jl issue #200(!) github.com/WaterLily-jl... #Julia

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