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Jonathan Oppenheim

@postquantum.bsky.social
1.8K followers 285 following 225 posts

Quantum mechanic with a lot of ontological baggage. www.ucl.ac.uk/oppenheim

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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
We're hiring a Senior Operations Officer for the new David Potter Institute for Quantum Information and Spacetime at University College London! A varied role: seminars, visitors, launch events, workshops, website, and grant support. Details at www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical... Please spread the word!
ucl.ac.uk
Opportunities
As part of a major new initiative at UCL, we will be recruiting postdocs and PhD students (for Oct 2026) and appointing at least three new academics over the next four years. Join us! Details below.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Dani Loader, Tobias Osborne and I wrote up some of our LLM workflows: How to train your slop cannon: a short guide to using large language models for research in the natural sciences. Short summary at superposer.substack.com/p/how-to-tra..., and available on github at github.com/Open-Science... ⚛️
superposer.substack.com
How to train your slop cannon
Dani Loader, Tobias Osborne and I wrote up some of our LLM workflows: How to train your slop cannon: a short guide to using large language models for research in the natural sciences.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The path-integral formulation of the Postquantum theory of classical gravity is now in Physical Review X! Other results from our group have been published at the same time, so this is a good opportunity to review progress. ⚛️ 🧪https://superposer.substack.com/p/postquantum-gravity-new-results-and 1/2
superposer.substack.com
Postquantum gravity: new results and the state of play (I)
A covariant path-integral formulation of the Postquantum theory of classical gravity (PQG) has just been published in Physical Review X, and a few other related papers have come at the same time.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
scottaaronson.blog?p=9718
Excerpt from Scott's blog: "So, here it is: if quantum computers start breaking cryptography a few years from now, don’t you dare come to this blog and tell me that I failed to warn you. This post is your warning. Please start switching to quantum-resistant encryption, and urge your company or organization or blockchain or standards body to do the same."
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
We invite applications for Research Fellow positions as part of a new initiative to be launched in late 2026 at the interface of quantum information theory and gravity! Please RT and let potentially interested researchers know. www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical... 1/2
ucl.ac.uk
Opportunities
As part of a major new initiative at UCL, we will be recruiting postdocs and PhD students (for Oct 2026) and appointing at least three new academics over the next four years. Join us! Details below.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
In late 2025, tools Like Claude Code crossed a threshold. Like hyperactive master's students, their physics calculations can now be made more reliable with domain expertise and some scaffolding. Check out Tobias Osborne's talk on using a swarm of agentic verifers to do physics.
superposer.substack.com
Large Language Models -- A Physicist's Perspective
A seminar by Tobias Osborne on orchestrating a swarm of coding agents to work on physics problems
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Congratulations to Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard for winning the 2026 Turing Award (akin to the Nobel Prize for Computer Science)! They invented quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. awards.acm.org/turing 🧪 ⚛️ 1/
awards.acm.org
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
"Good luck to future me." That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post: superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
superposer.substack.com
Teaching an AI to Do Physics by Wiping Its Memory
“Good luck to future me.”
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FQxI @fqxi.org · 12/01/2026
What have our members achieved in the last year..? Quite a lot it turns out. qspace.fqxi.org/news/165315/... @alyssaney.bsky.social @nicoleyh11.bsky.social @seanmcarroll.bsky.social @nafshordi.bsky.social @saraimari.bsky.social @rovelli.bsky.social @coecke.bsky.social @postquantum.bsky.social
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John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Every December since 2017, I've delivered a keynote at Q2B Silicon Valley, commenting on recent progress in quantum computing. Here is what I said this time. It's been a good year for quantum. quantumfrontiers.com/2025/12/26/q...
quantumfrontiers.com
Quantum computing in the second quantum century
On December 10, I gave a keynote address at the Q2B 2025 Conference in Silicon Valley. This is a transcript of my remarks. The slides I presented are here. The first century We are nearing the end …
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
🤦 This is why the public doesn’t trust scientists...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
OpenAI leadership are promoting a paper in Physics Letters B where GPT-5 proposed the main idea — possibly the first peer-reviewed paper where an LLM generated the core contribution. One small problem: GPT-5's idea tests the wrong thing. My technical comment: scirate.com/arxiv/2512.0... 1/
As part of a broader effort to demonstrate AI’s po-
tential in scientific research [1], OpenAI executives have
pointed to a recently published paper by Hsu [2] as evi-
dence that AI can contribute original ideas to physics [3,
4]. Hsu credits GPT-5 with proposing the core idea of the
paper de novo, possibly the first published physics article
where the main idea came from an LLM, and discusses
the methodology in a companion piece [5]. We examine
whether GPT-5’s criterion is correct.
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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
"A single person claims to have authored 113 academic papers on artificial intelligence this year, 89 of which will be presented this week at one of the world’s leading conference on AI and machine learning," www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’
AI research in question as author claims to have written over 100 papers on AI that one expert calls a ‘disaster’
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
We are in the era of Science Slop! (and it's exciting): open.substack.com/pub/superpos...
open.substack.com
We are in the era of Science Slop
(and it's exciting)
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Great article on quadratic gravity, and why researchers are attracted to it (it's renormalisable). The pure gravity action of postquantum-classical gravity is the same us that of quadratic gravity but with a different interpretation, and it doesn't suffer from ghosts! arxiv.org/abs/2402.17844 ⚛️🧪
arxiv.org
Renormalisation of postquantum-classical gravity
One of the obstacles to reconciling quantum theory with general relativity, is constructing a theory which is both consistent with observation, and and gives finite answers at high energy, so that the...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
The #QIP2026 list of accepted papers is out! qip2026.lu.lv/programme/ac... highlighting some of the important papers in quantum computing in the past year. This is a fantastic slice from a very rich landscape. Congratulations to the authors! ⚛️🧪
qip2026.lu.lv
Accepted papers
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
A recent @nature.com article claims that classical (unquantised) gravity produces entanglement. We show that their model does not produce entanglement. Even if the model produced entanglement, it would be mediated by the quantised matter interaction, and not gravity. scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0... 🧪⚛️
scirate.com
Classical gravity cannot mediate entanglement
In Nature, 646, 813 (2025), Aziz and Howl claim that classical (unquantised) gravity produces entanglement. We show that their model does not produce entanglement. Even if the model produced entanglem...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
We'll enjoy it while it lasts!
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Another day, another arxiv paper claiming that classical gravity can produce entanglement. Last week's Nature paper continues to cause confusion. But classical fields can't create entanglement *even if* they directly couple two masses. Comment added at superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic...
front page of https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23584
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
As promised... No, classical spacetime can’t produce entanglement. I can create entanglement by turning a knob on a laser, but the knob isn't mediating entanglement. Is the knob "producing" the entanglement? This week's Nature paper is causing confusion! superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic... 🧪⚛️
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
As promised... No, classical spacetime can’t produce entanglement. I can create entanglement by turning a knob on a laser, but the knob isn't mediating entanglement. Is the knob "producing" the entanglement? This week's Nature paper is causing confusion! superposer.substack.com/p/no-classic... 🧪⚛️
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
No they do not. I'll try to write something up in the next few days....
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
What if the measurement problem isn't about explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world... ...but about what happens when quantum systems interact with something that's already classical? Turns out, the collapse postulate + Born rule emerge! scirate.com/arxiv/2510.0... 🧪⚛️🧵1/5
scirate.com
A one-world interpretation of quantum mechanics
The measurement problem is the issue of explaining how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. Here we take a different approach. We assume that there is an objective classical syste...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Maite Arcos's PhD results are hitting the arxiv! A resource theory of gambling, and a paper on adversarial thermodynamics are out today. Gambling provides an operational way to quantify who has more information. And it can be extended into the quantum domain!🧵🧪⚛️ 1/
Maite Arcos (left), Charlie Bennett (center), Lluis Masanes (right)
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John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
6,100 neutral-atom qubits trapped in a grid by lasers @caltech.edu ... is a lot. www.caltech.edu/about/news/c...
caltech.edu
Caltech Team Sets Record with 6,100-Qubit Array
The neutral-atom platform shows promise for scaling up quantum computers.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
They sure take electromagnetism seriously in @quantumaephraim.bsky.social's lab!
Quantum optics table with Nick Mantella's muscle in the foreground and his Maxwell eqn tattoo.
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FQxI @fqxi.org · 03/09/2025
In a recent Substack post, FQxI's Jonathan Oppenheim discusses how far #LLMS have progressed. @postquantum.bsky.social says "their answers often look very convincing on the surface until you go through them more carefully". DISCUSS: forums.fqxi.org/d/4283-how-g...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
The CERN whitepaper, on testing the quantum nature of gravity, has even more co-authors and is now available on the arxiv, scirate.com/arxiv/2509.0.... Check it out! 🧪⚛️
scirate.com
A Spin-Based Pathway to Testing the Quantum Nature of Gravity
A key open problem in physics is the correct way to combine gravity (described by general relativity) with everything else (described by quantum mechanics). This problem suggests that general relativi...
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Nature @nature.com · 13/08/2025
There is one fundamental phenomenon that quantum physics can't explain: gravity go.nature.com/45v70f1
go.nature.com
Is gravity quantum? Experiments could finally probe one of physics’ biggest questions
Physicists are developing laboratory tests to give insight into the true nature of gravity.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
I'm at the African Institute for Mathematical Science Ghana this week for a quantum hackathon. Which is apparently called a Quantathon! Excited to interact with great students and researchers from across Africa. Live feed at t.co/J8UzPKc6Vx & schedule at qtedu.aims.edu.gh. Public lecture on Friday.
Panel discussion at QTEdu.
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David Rankin @asteroiddave.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
FACT THREAD on New Interstellar Object #A11pl3Z This story unfolded pretty fast yesterday for a few reasons. The object was discovered on July 1st UTC by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS team. A #NASA funded survey at the University of Hawaii. atlas.fallingstar.com 🔭🧪
Orbit diagram of interstellar object A11pl3Z
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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
!!!!! Waking up to the news that we might have found an interstellar object passing through our Solar System - only the third ever seen. Looks convincing based on the orbit.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 24/06/2025
Just click on this: skyviewer.app/explorer #RubinTelescope
skyviewer.app
Explorer | Skyviewer
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Sad news, Ray was both a a really kind man and a great scientist.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 13/06/2025
What if gravity isn’t a pull from mass, but a push from entropy? @georgemusser.com reports on the latest version of an old idea. www.quantamagazine.org/is-gravity-j...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Is there a way to stem the endless cavalcade of cats, birds, and sunsets flooding my feed? No matter how many times I hit 'show less like this,' they keep coming. Anyone else drowning in cats? @rose.bsky.team @jay.bsky.team @support.bsky.team
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Oz Amram @ozamram.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Scientists for Palestine is holding a school on quantum physics Palestinian students in Jordan in July, but they need donations to make it happen! 🇵🇸 www.scientists4palestine.org/palestinian-... www.gofundme.com/f/support-pa...
scientists4palestine.org
Palestinian Advanced Physics School 2025 - Scientists For Palestine
The Palestinian Advanced Physics School 2025 (PAPS) will be held in-person at the University of Jordan between 26th — 31st July 2025. Additional students will join remotely from Gaza. The school is ai...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
On Sunday, I'll be at the Cheltenham Science Festival, with Andrew Pontzen, Hiranya Peiris and Cham Ghag, discussing whether the phenomena we attribute to dark matter, could be explained by stochastic fluctuations in spacetime. Come say hello! www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/quant... 🧪⚛️
cheltenhamfestivals.org
Quantum Dark Matter | Cheltenham Festivals
Astronomers have been amassing evidence for “dark matter” in space –  far more mass than can be seen directly. Yet, despite intensive efforts, there is no
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 18/05/2025
Elon Musk wanted to buy Wikipedia so that he could determine our society’s collective view of truth. He couldn’t, so he created grok. Do not let these machines be arbiters of truth. It is abundantly clear that they are being used to push absurd far-right conspiracies.
theguardian.com
Musk’s AI bot Grok blames ‘programming error’ for its Holocaust denial
Grok doubted 6 million death toll, days after peddling conspiracy theory of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa
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Timothy Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
I wonder what the "Why don't you go and protest in China?" brigade will make of this news. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-cle...
carbonbrief.org
Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time - Carbon Brief
For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
I'm at the Quantum Symposium at @uniofnottingham.bsky.social and they have a working Lego interferometer!
Photo of the Lego interferometer
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
If we want fewer psychopaths in charge, we should start with ranked-choice voting. It’s about as complicated as picking pizza toppings with friends.
Donald Trump post on Truth Social, "RANKED_CHOICE VOTING IS ONE OF THE GREATEST THREATS TO DEMOCRACTY. It is a total, and very fraudulent, JOKE! https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5253950-ranked-choice-voting-unpopular-legislatures/"
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
The final session, on "Table-top quantum experiments for gravity" with Flaminia Giacomini, Richard Howl and Sougato Bose, closes out the QISS conference in Vienna vienna2025.qiss.fr/index.html. The recorded talks and subsequent discussion should appear online in the coming days. 🧪⚛️
Sougato Bose, Flaminia Giacomini, Richard Howl
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Mark M. Wilde @markwilde.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
This past week, I received a second stop work order on one of my grants. This now means that we can no longer spend on *two* of my major grants. Several of my group members will now graduate earlier than expected, I am looking into being a consultant for the summer, and students will do internships
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
As someone who loves paradoxes and these two in particular, I'll be very disappointed if they're actually the same...
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
I've been asking various AI models math questions. I'm sure they'll one day be impressive mathematicians, but wow, they're insufferable! Confidently wrong, dopamine-addicted, and desperate for likes. I wrote up my experience here: open.substack.com/pub/superpos...
open.substack.com
Insufferable mathematicians
AI mathematicians will one day be impressive, but for now, they're confidently wrong, dopamine-addicted, and desperate for likes.
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Tim Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social claimed that Grok solved the Dubnový Blázen problem as an April Fools Day joke. Now Google thinks the Dubnový Blázen problem is a real problem in graph theory (it's Czech for "April Fools").
Google AI summary:
The "Dubnovy Blazen problem" in graph theory, as mentioned in a recent X post by Anthony Bonato, is a well-known problem that AI model Grok solved after several attempts. 
Here's what we know from the X post: 

    Problem: The "Dubnovy Blazen problem" is a well-known problem in graph theory.
    Solution: AI model Grok solved the problem after several attempts.
    Significance: This event is noteworthy, as it marks a potential milestone in AI's ability to solve complex mathematical problems.
    Context: Anthony Bonato, who made the announcement on X, had been working on the problem for over a year.
    Where to find more information: You can find the X post by Anthony Bonato here: https://twitter.com/Anthony_Bonato/status/1907056400573800768.April fools day tweet by Timothy Gowers: "It's finally happened: after several unsuccessful attempts, I found a prompt that got Grok to solve a maths problem (the well-known Dubnovy Blazen problem in graph theory) I've been working on for over a year. How long till it's better than human mathematicians across the board?"
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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
"Despite the hype, it’s been surprisingly challenging to find quantum algorithms that outperform classical ones. In this episode, Ewin Tang discusses her pioneering work in “dequantizing” quantum algorithms — and what it means for the future of quantum computing."
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Simon Lewis @simonlewis.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
#TakedownTesla demo in London. Important to stand up to the xenophobic anti-science class war Musk and Trump are waging.
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