This feature-length article was originally written for the September-October 2017 issue of Popular Astronomy magazine. Through a modest 4-inch telescope on a clear night, you might be able to see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. Through a meter-wide telescope, you might just be able to make out the characteristic blips in… Continue reading Bring Me The Event Horizon
When I moved to St Andrews as a long-haired, clean-shaven 17-year-old, it wasn’t to embark on a career as a quantum theorist – my degree was originally to be in astrophysics. For two years, I was an astrophysics student, before eventually ditching space in favour of quantum physics. There were two main reasons for this.… Continue reading Seeing Into The Quantum Heart of Matter
It’s always exciting in science when a surprise comes along and something you thought you knew turns out to be wrong. In the last decade, spurred on by recent experimental advances, condensed matter theorists have turned back to an old problem with renewed enthusiasm, and have discovered an enigmatic phase of matter that behaves unlike… Continue reading My Current Research Topic: Many Body Localisation
One of the biggest problems with researching quantum mechanics is that it’s often hard to visualise what we’re dealing with. Are we talking particles, or are we talking waves? Or are we talking about abstract excitations of a quantum field, somewhere between neither and both? For the most part, we focus on calculating properties that… Continue reading The Role of Disorder: Under the Microscope
Today is exactly one month since one of the best days of my PhD: the viva. Having had a month to come to terms with real life after 8 years of being a student, I wanted to write something about my viva experience. This isn’t a how-to or a guide or anything of the sort… Continue reading The Best Defence Is…
[This post originally appeared on 21stcentury.co.uk] The paradox of perfection is a philosophical idea that for something to be perfect, it must be imperfect. By making something less perfect in form, it can often be made more perfect in function. Whatever the deeper philosophical implications of this statement, it’s almost a literal truth in the… Continue reading The Paradox of Perfection
[This post originally appeared on 21stcentury.co.uk] You might not realise it, but we are currently in the midst of what some are calling the second quantum revolution. From quantum computers to spintronics, from exotic superconductors to unbreakable encryption, we’re moving from the age of passively understanding and using quantum mechanics to the age of actively… Continue reading The Rise of the Quantum
[This feature-length article was originally written for Popular Astronomy and appears in their November/December 2015 issue.] The early twentieth century was something of a golden age for physics. It was a time of upheaval, of bold new ideas overturning long-established concepts and the beginning of the quantum revolution. For many, one particular breakthrough from that… Continue reading 100 Years of General Relativity
Cinema-goers in 1985 could be forgiven for being disappointed with the world in 2015. In Marty McFly’s timeline, 2015 was a time of hoverboards, flying cars and miniature rehydratable pizzas. And though Pepsi may have obligingly created the bottle seen in Back to the Future II, the rest of these innovations seem a long way… Continue reading The Future Soon
Broken Symmetry 