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Will Morong

@wmorong.bsky.social
233 followers 331 following 53 posts

I'm trying to build a quantum computer in sunny Los Angeles, CA, USA. I like discussing other people's research papers and ideas. As always, any insights should be credited to the authors themselves, and any misconceptions to me alone.

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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
@kpc.bsky.social got my copy, can't wait to read it!
hardback copy of the book "entangled states", by karmela padavic-callaghan
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Recently stumbled on a lovely old essay by Prof. Brian Swingle: "The Illusion of Hilbert Space": (seems to only be available online by the link in this forum post, don't let that scare you away) forums.fqxi.org/d/1559-the-i...
forums.fqxi.org
The Illusion of Hilbert Space by Brian Swingle - QSpace Forums
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
I had never heard of this paper that seemed to accurately predict the Higgs boson mass based on asymptotic safety. This naively looks like a very impressive success for that program, am I missing some reason it's not talked about more? arxiv.org/abs/0912.0208
arxiv.org
Asymptotic safety of gravity and the Higgs boson mass
There are indications that gravity is asymptotically safe. The Standard Model (SM) plus gravity could be valid up to arbitrarily high energies. Supposing that this is indeed the case and assuming that...
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Roger Schonfeld @rschon.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
arXiv is being spun out from Cornell University and is looking for an inaugural CEO. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678...
jobs.chronicle.com
Chief Executive Officer - New York City, New York (US) job with arXiv | 37961678
arXiv seeks its first CEO to champion open, free scientific discovery and guide the platform’s next chapter as an independent nonprofit.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
New post: wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b... I’m sure we will hear from others who are much more qualified to directly speak about Tony Leggett’s contributions and legacy. Here is a view from the relative sidelines, of how much I learned from him about the fields in which I've worked and studied...
wmorong.github.io
Appreciating Tony Leggett (1938-2026)
Sir Anthony James Leggett. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Awful for academics but great news for Borges fans
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Karmela's ability to weave threads from physics, culture, and society together into original insights always astounds me. Looking forward to this.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
New on arxiv: a group from IBM claim a new record for the largest GHZ state, of 120 qubits* arxiv.org/abs/2510.09520 * terms and conditions (postselection) apply
arxiv.org
Big cats: entanglement in 120 qubits and beyond
Entanglement is the quintessential quantum phenomenon and a key enabler of quantum algorithms. The ability to faithfully entangle many distinct particles is often used as a benchmark for the quality o...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
🧪 New blog post: What makes quantum physics special (or "strange" or "weird")? I take a whirlwind tour through 80 years of attempts to pinpoint the answer, from early thought experiments to recent developments inspired by thinking about quantum computers. wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...
wmorong.github.io
What makes quantum physics special?
A brief tour through eighty years of answers (photo credit: one of the most popular images used to abstractly convey quantum physics. original author unknown)
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John Forbes @redshiftless.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
PSA to scientists: Google calculator appears to no longer do basic unit conversion correctly! n.b. the correct answer here is 223.4 Myr, a factor of about 60 larger than Google's answer. 🔭 🧪
A screenshot of a google search result for "2*pi*(8 kpc)/(220 km/s)" which is roughly the time it takes the Sun to go around the Galaxy. In the screenshot, google's calculator has popped up and parsed the expression correctly, but then returns the result 3 899 243.9 years, and answer which is off by 2 orders of magnitude.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
Why do quantum computers work? Although it's missing some modern developments, I think this twenty-year old (!) article from Steane is still provocative. His answer: entanglement allows them to avoid representing unnecessary intermediate results in some calculations. arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...
arxiv.org
A quantum computer only needs one universe
The nature of quantum computation is discussed. It is argued that, in terms of the amount of information manipulated in a given time, quantum and classical computation are equally efficient. Quantum s...
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Chad Orzel @orzelc.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Some thoughts on the influence of the late Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey on the culture of AMO physics: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...
open.substack.com
Founder Effects in Physics
The legacy of Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
As a physics journalist, it is fairly wild to see the names of the PIs with terminated grants: Misha Lukin, Philip Kim, Lisa Randall, Subir Sachdev, John Doyle... bsky.app/profile/benn...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Can't stop thinking about these lovely pictures of atoms doing their thing from the Zwierlein group. Left: bosons condensing into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Center: fermions avoiding each other. Right: molecules paired up.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
One of the finest explainers of quantum physics for the public is, for now, a victim of political suppression. @mattstrassler.bsky.social profmattstrassler.com/2025/04/17/b...
profmattstrassler.com
Blog on Indefinite Pause
As the US government pursues massive attacks upon my host institution, it is impossible to continue with my normal activities. The blog will be on pause.
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Mark M. Wilde @markwilde.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
To be clear, one of my major grants is among the 75 stop work orders sent to Cornell yesterday. This means that, as of yesterday, we are not allowed to spend on this grant. The grant funds the work of several graduate students, all of whom are extremely dedicated & doing outstanding research
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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
🧪⚛️. This is self-defeating and objectively bad for the country and beyond. www.npr.org/2025/03/26/n...
npr.org
Trump cuts threaten a measurement lab critical for advanced chips and medical devices
The Atomic Spectroscopy Group provides standardized measurements used across wide swaths of science and industry. The Trump administration plans to cut it.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
This is a super cool story: a problem from quantum physics led to pure math research that led to better bulbs.
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Rachael Sirianni, PhD @docsirianni.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
I've seen it happen more times that I can count: a physics press release announces the discovery of a "new phase of matter", and the public interprets this as being a bigger deal than it really is. So, I made a short blog post to explain what this actually means: wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...
wmorong.github.io
What is a phase of matter?
And why do you keep hearing that we’ve discovered a new one?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
I doubt that anyone following me needs to be convinced of the importance of basic research, but the details here are fun and fascinating.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
Inspired by this post, I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for especially well-written papers. Here's one I stumbled on recently, on a subject I know almost nothing about, and really enjoyed: arxiv.org/abs/1903.12621
arxiv.org
The Complexity Geometry of a Single Qubit
The computational complexity of a quantum state quantifies how hard it is to make. `Complexity geometry', first proposed by Nielsen, is an approach to defining computational complexity using the tools...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
I have a soft spot for textbooks that present some aspect of physics in an ideosyncratic or unconventional way. Any I should add?
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