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Martin Bauer

@martinmbauer.bsky.social
3.5K followers 915 following 319 posts

I'm a theoretical physicist at Durham University

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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
What would really be the implications of taking Santa Claus seriously? It's the time of the year to review the current state of the physics of Santa Claus 1/12
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Really interesting event that would require black holes thatcan't be produced via any conventional mechanism!
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
The hierarchy problem (finetuning) of the Standard Model of particle physics is often presented as the question 'why the weak scale is so much smaller than the Planck scale' But there is also a geometric interpretation that can be understood with little maths (but a lot of physics) 🧵1/11
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Short explanation of the physics Nobel Prize 2025 In classical mechanics you can know where a particle is and its momentum at the same time. In Quantum mechanics you can't. All information is in the wavefunction. Even if a particle is trapped, part of the wavefunction.. 🧵1/7
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
This night 102 years ago, Hubble discovered that there're stars outside our galaxy by observing a Cepheid variable star 1 million light years away Until barely a century ago, no human ever knew whether there was more than one galaxy in the Universe. Think about that!
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Today LHCb presented a new measurement of the decay of a B meson into a K* and a μ+ μ- pair Previous results disagreed with the Standard Model prediction for the branching fraction and angular distribution The new measurement has almost twice as much data and still disagrees! 🧵1/6
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
In 3 (or more) dimensions, all fundamental particles are either fermions and bosons. But why? This is a direct consequence of the properties of the configuration space for identical particles 🧵 1/14
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Here is it: The worlds best measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon In great agreement with previous experimental results and in agreement with the Standard Model prediction using the LO HVP contribution from lattice input
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Livestream of the final result of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon measurement at Fermilab right now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=huLv...
youtube.com
Final Muon g-2 Measurement at Fermilab
YouTube video by Fermilab
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Before the charm quark was discovered in bound states, it was predicted via indirect effects. An early success story of the electroweak model and QFT! Mary Gaillard and John Rosner, who both passed last week, contributed to calculating the charm quark mass 🧵1/11
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Even if you don't care one bit about scientific research, it's important to recognise the value of publicly funding people working on very hard problems and training bright young minds on how to solve them.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Excellent news: Germany invests €200M in fundamental physics, funding clusters in Mainz, Siegen, Bonn, Dortmund, Munich & Hamburg focused on particle physics, astrophysics & cosmology The selection of *all* fundamental physics finalists marks a major boost in support! www.dfg.de/de/service/p...
dfg.de
Entscheidungen in zweiter Wettbewerbsrunde der Exzellenzstrategie: Exzellenzkommission wählt 70 Exzellenzcluster aus
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Are neutrinos their own anti-particles? They are the only fundamental fermions that could have this unique property. But they're so elusive, how could we figure that out? A brilliant experiment could answer this question without detecting a single neutrino 🧵1/11
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Does quantum mechanics really need to be complex? Why can't we just use real wavefunctions? 🧵1/15 *some math, non-relativistic QM
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
The proton (uud) is lighter than the neutron (udd) because the up quark is lighter than the down quark. Then why is the delta resoncance Δ++ (uuu) heavier than both? This can be fully understood via a symmetry argument 1/12
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Renormalisation is a central concept in modern physics. It describes how the dynamics of a system change at different scales. A great way to understand and visualise renormalisation is the Ising model (some math, but one can follow without it ) 1/13
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
A search for additional Higgs bosons has found evidence for Toponium, a bound state from top quark-antiquark pairs that has the mass of two gold atoms, decays in 5x 10^-25 s and 1% the size of a proton. This wasn’t expected to be observable at the LHC cerncourier.com/a/cms-observ...
cerncourier.com
CMS observes top–antitop excess – CERN Courier
The signal could be caused by a quasi-bound top–antitop meson commonly called "toponium".
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Physicists in Innsbruck have shown for the first time that it is possible to create quantum superpositions from thermally excited states (mixed states instead of pure states) phys.org/news/2025-04...
science.org
Hot Schrödinger cat states
A thermal initial state with low quantum purity is put into a superposition of displacements, while retaining its entropy.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
All supernovas ever observed, tens of thousands of dying stars Once the Rubin Observatory is completed it will be able to see several millions of supernovas, dwarfing what we've seen so far This is from a brilliant website by Isaac Shivvers. ishivvers.github.io/maps/sne.html
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Reposted by Martin Bauer
🇵🇸Tim Henke (tɪm 'ɦɛŋ.kə) @timhenke.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Big fan of this description of science from @martinmbauer.bsky.social I like that it accurately captures the role of so-called "giants", as people who see the structure of large amounts of previous work of the innumerable vital scientists who usually don't make it into the history books
Tweet by Martin Bauer

Science is like assembling a mosaic: each person contributes a few small, unique pieces. Some refine one piece until its flawless, others discover entire fragments that seamlessly interlock, and sometimes a giant steps back, discerns a new structure and enables the completion of large sections of the puzzle
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Do you want to see what it'd look like to fly through the DESI map of the Universe? Our Universe is absolutely huge. Each dot here is a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQkF...
youtube.com
DESI Galaxy Flight with captions
YouTube video by Fiske Planetarium
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Reposted by Martin Bauer
Astronomy Picture of the Day 🪐 @apod.shinyakato.dev · 03/03/2025
🔭 Blue Ghost on the Moon Image Credit: Firefly Aerospace apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25030...
A dark sky is shown above a bright desolate landscape. The landscape is the Moon and large shadows appear, with one being the shadow of lunar lander. A bright dot appears over the horizon that is distant planet Earth. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
What happens if a planet gets too close to a white dwarf? Data from NASAs X-ray telescope Chandra suggest a white dwarf only 650ly from earth is slowly ripping a planet apart via tidal forces. This could explain variations in the X-ray spectrum observed since the 80s chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/h...
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Excellent FAQ on the Majorana qubit chip from Microsoft by Scott Aaronson: scottaaronson.blog?p=8669
scottaaronson.blog
FAQ on Microsoft’s topological qubit thing
Q1. Did you see Microsoft’s announcement?A. Yes, thanks, you can stop emailing to ask! Microsoft’s Chetan Nayak was even kind enough to give me a personal briefing a few weeks ago. Yest…
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
The most energetic neutrino ever observed just smashed into the Mediterranean and left a signal that was picked up by the K3Mnet neutrino telescope 2400m under the sea At the moment we don't really know where this neutrino came from, nor should they really be there. A short 🧵1/10
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
posted without comment
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Sam Gregson @badboyofscience.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Ep3 of the "Case for a new collider" series is out! Why is mapping the Higgs potential at a new collider so important? Such a mapping may allow us to understand how the universe may end and why we are even here to ask any questions at all. 🧪⚛️ Link: youtube.com/playlist?lis...
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Really interesting interview with the incoming Director General cerncourier.com/a/a-word-wit...
cerncourier.com
A word with CERN’s next Director-General – CERN Courier
Mark Thomson, CERN's Director General designate for 2025, talks to the Courier about the future of particle physics.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
It’s the year 100 AQM www.sciencenews.org/article/quan...
sciencenews.org
Quantum mechanics was born 100 years ago. Physicists are celebrating
Quantum physics underlies technologies from the laser to the smartphone. The International Year of Quantum marks a century of scientific developments.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
The US government now instructs CDC scientists to withdraw, halt or remove their names from research papers that are currently in the publication process to screen the language for "forbidden terms" So much for free speech. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...
reuters.com
US CDC orders pullback of new scientific papers involving its researchers, source says
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seeking to withdraw all papers involving its researchers that are being considered for publication by external scientific journals to allow for a review by the Trump administration, a federal official told Reuters.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
My debate with Luke Barnes on whether the Universe is fine-tuned for life is online. Let me know what you think! www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...
youtube.com
Is the universe fine-tuned for life? Luke Barnes vs Martin Bauer with Philip Goff Debate
YouTube video by Premier Unbelievable?
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Fascinating finding: animo acids, the building blocks of life, have been found on asteroids However on Earth, they're almost all left-handed; on asteroids, left and right-handed variants appear in equal amounts This will help to determine how life developed on earth www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist.
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
She isn't wrong: “It is outdated that we have legislative scrutiny carried out by representatives of one Christian denomination. The only other legislature that has religious theocrats as members by right is Iran” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Scrap automatic right of bishops to sit in Lords, says Harriet Harman
Former Labour MP puts forward amendment to reform bill aiming to end privilege for 26 C of E bishops
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
George RR Martin and the physicist Ian Tregillis published a paper deriving a Lagrangian to model the spread of the wild card virus Goes to show both the power of the variational principle and how creative G.RR.Martin has become in avoiding to write winds of winter pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/art...
pubs.aip.org
Ergodic Lagrangian dynamics in a superhero universe
Editor's Note: Looking for a new way to engage your students' imagination, encourage their exploration and curiosity around open-ended physics research question
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Feynman: "We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery....
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
My colleagues in Durham used optical tweezers to realise long-lived entanglement between pairs of molecules The progress in this field is astonishing phys.org/news/2025-01...
phys.org
'Magic-wavelength optical tweezers' achieve quantum entanglement of molecules
Researchers at Durham University have successfully demonstrated long-lasting quantum entanglement between molecules, opening new doors for future advancements in quantum computing, sensing, and fundam...
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Quantum field theory predicts that light can scatter off light, an effect beyond classical electrodynamics. Maxwells equations are linear such that two photons never interact with each other 1/3
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
European recommendation letter: This is a good candidate I've worked with closely for 3 years. Here is a page with the most notable achievements US recommendation letter: This candidate will 100% win a Nobel prize. We met for 30 min on a conference once and here are 8 pages explaining why
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
2025 could be the year we see the first solid state nuclear clock Nuclear clocks keep time 10x better than the best atomic clocks and have the potential to be much more robust We are in the process of witnessing a breakthrough! physicsworld.com/a/solid-stat...
physicsworld.com
Solid-state nuclear clocks brought closer by physical vapour deposition – Physics World
Fabrication technique reduces amount of expensive isotope needed
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Nice interview with @astrokatie.com in @cerncourier.bsky.social cerncourier.com/a/exploding-...
cerncourier.com
Exploding misconceptions – CERN Courier
Cosmologist Katie Mack talks to the Courier about how high-energy physics can succeed in #scicomm by throwing open the doors to academia.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 09/01/2025
#PhysicsJournalClub "Blending Optimal Control and Biologically Plausible Learning for Noise-Robust Physical Neural Networks" by S. Sunada et. al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 017301 (2025) a 🧵 1/ 🧪🎢
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Physicists have analysed which body shape is ideal for hula hooping. It won't come as a surprise to any father who ever tried to keep up with his kids: "Crucially, the body cross-section must be concave or hourglass shaped and with a sufficiently curvy “waist”"
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Durham on the weekend from Liam McCormick
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
If a+b+c=pi
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Really nice, short ASCI history of physics (from Piet Hut, IAS) From the babylonians to Aristoteles: 🧵 1/12
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Really nice, short ASCI history of physics (from Piet Hut, IAS) From the babylonians to Aristoteles: 🧵 1/12
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Happy New Year everyone! 1925 was a pivotal year in physics history in which Heisenberg realised that there are fundamentally non-commuting observables, ringing the death knell for classical determinism Let‘s see what 2025 brings!
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Every single research group I ever worked in was highly international - in the UK, US and Germany. 1/5
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Explains why Santa is so difficult to observe: Colliding children at very high energy is currently the only known method to produce Santa Claus
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Martin Bauer @martinmbauer.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Could we tell whether anyone in our galaxy uses a warp drive? This sounds like a crazy question, but it can be answered using numerical GR (one of the fun highlights of the annual theory meeting presented by Katy Clough) 🧵1/7
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