Photo 51 showing the X-ray crystallographic image of DNA. It's a blurry outer ring with four dots in the middle radiating out in an X-pattern.

"Photo 51" was the X-ray diffraction pattern that revealed the internal structure of DNA, produced by PhD student Raymond Gosling working under Rosalind Franklin's direction at King's College in London in 1952.

Let's talk about how CORK & a PAPERCLIP played a central role in DNA's discovery.

Mahmood’s migration changes will deliver fraction of claimed savings, data suggests Exclusive: Analysis of government figures indicates public finances will gain £600m not £10bn if migrants’ access to benefits is reduced

My analysis of the fiscal impact of the "earned settlement" proposals, based on government's own data.

The direct savings are a fraction of the Home Secretary's misleading claims, and likely to be offset by the substantial costs of lower work-related migration.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Significant day for UK trade policy. With the announcement of the EU-Australia FTA the UK now only has an FTA where the EU doesn't with Malaysia and Brunei as part of CPTPP. The EU meanwhile has a deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay that the UK doesn't.

Something of a Friday 13th for the science department today

- Chi Onwurah has lambasted Patrick Vallance over "wholly unacceptable" physics cuts

- The NAO has reported a £5.6bn repair backlog to uni infrastructure

- MPs have said regional growth is suffering from poor data on R&D spending

🧵
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Whoa, big news for the most significant scientific dissemination platform in human history! On the face of it, setting up @arxiv.bsky.social as an independent non-profit seems like a good idea to me.

A van has pulled up next to my parked car. It has a large "Quantum Plumbing" logo on the side, with the slogan "phenomenal service!" below, and a cartoon of a strange gnomish bearded man with white pair and pointed ears holding a wrench in one hand and a glowing atom in the other.

I don't want to know what calls for quantum plumbing, but I guess I'm glad it's available if someone needs it.

The Qalypso School on Quantum Science in Malta returns for its 3rd edition Aug 31 - Sep 4 this year! 🏖️

We have a great line up of lecturers covering Quantum Optimisation, Quantum Thermodynamics and Quantum Gibbs Sampling.

Pre-registrations opens today at forms.gle/3NkMJ3Br9V8b...

Do Share!

A sepia toned, seated portrait of mathematician Georg Cantor in his early twenties. His wavy hair is swept back and he has a curly beard and thin mustache. Cantor wears a dark jacket and white shirt, with a tie in a bow at this neck.

Mathematician Georg Cantor was born #OTD in 1845. He is the founder of set theory and developed the concepts of cardinal and transfinite numbers.

These shocking results led his former professor Kronecker to call him a "corrupter of youth."

Image: Oberwolfach Photo Collection

I am disgusted by the British government’s proposals to betray these people, after years of contributing to our society. I have so often heard right-wing voices moaning about “British values” of decency and fairness being eroded by immigration. A hypocrisy now laid bare.

I am disgusted by the British government’s proposals to betray these people, after years of contributing to our society. I have so often heard right-leaning voices moaning about “British values” of decency and fairness being eroded by immigration — a hypocrisy now laid bare.

Very hard to believe that there was really no advance warning to certain parties, for a programme of this magnitude

6 bad doodles with text under each one. horseshoe crab is literally the animal horseshoe crab. shoehorse crab is a crab riding a shoe, cowboy style. crabshoe horse is a horse wearing literal crabs as shoes. shoecrab horse is a horse telling a crab to go away. crabhorse shoe is a pair of shoes, left one crab shaped, right one horse shaped. horsecrab shoe is literally the same pair of shoes, flipped.

#InvertebrateShitposting as per @joabaldwin.com's request

10 years after its founding, driven by the energy, enthusiasm, & dedication of the community @quantum-journal.bsky.social quietly published paper #2000 some days ago.

At least I think this is a big deal, big shout out to the founders & all authors, reviewers, editors, board members & contributors!

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

I cannot speak as to the accuracy of the piece yet I found it a fascinating exercise @adamroberts.bsky.social @drlauravarnam.bsky.social

Credit: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Brazil's Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, center, winner of an alpine ski, men's giant slalom race, jumps in celebration on the podium flanked by second placed Switzerland's Marco Odermatt, left, and third placed Switzerland's Loic Meillard, at the 2026 Winter Olympics.(AP)

What a great photo of Brazilian alpine skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, the first South American to ever win a medal at the Winter Olympic Games.

The physics of the cell surface: from molecular rules to cell-scale behaviour at King’s College London on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The physics of the cell surface: from molecular rules to cell-scale behaviour at King’s College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

I am recruiting a #PhDstudent in Computational #Biophysics at @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @kingslsm.bsky.social for October! Deadline February 28.

Details 👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Please share with interested students!
#PhD #PhDposition #PhDSky #AcademicSky #computationalphysics 🧪⚛️

Hey quantum Bluesky! Allow us to reintroduce ourselves! You may know us as QuIT: Marcus Huber's Quantum Information and Thermodynamics group at TU Wien. But we're so much more than that, and it's time our name reflected it.

So say hello to... 𝗤𝘂𝗢𝗜?

quoi-theory.at

OOPS.

As someone who uses ChatGPT for zero things whatsoever, the fact that they're putting ads in it is extremely funny

Cracking the limits of clocks: a new uncertainty relation for time itself – Physics World Physicists uncover a universal limit on timekeeping precision, proving that anything from heartbeats to ocean waves can be a clock – but none escape the noise

Researchers uncover a fundamental, universal limit to how precisely time can be measured in noisy, fluctuating systems. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/cracking-t...

Our work modelling heat engines driven by finite reservoirs has been published in PRE! 
What I really like about this work is that the reservoir's entropic temperature takes centre stage to explain stochastic engines’ performance🔥

journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

I am tired of Earth. These people.

Chicken mappas (a kind of curry) and appam (a fluffy rice-based savoury pancake)

Merry Xmas BlueSky!! Breakfast today is chicken mappas and appam… They know how to celebrate in Kerala 🤩🎄

Hey! Our work made the list! Adding it to my CV

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved --The Register, 31 Jul 2025

2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)

Upward trend in percentage of women physics and astronomy faculty in US

Women made up 21% of faculty members in US physics departments in 2024, up from 16% a decade earlier. The percentage of women faculty members in the nation’s astronomy departments rose from 19% in 2014 to 25% in 2024. #academia #womeninscience #faculty

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

Enough of this finite initial segment nonsense. A number is even if there is no remainder when divided by 2. \Aleph_0 = 2 \Aleph_0, so by cardinality, there is an even number of naturals *and* an even number of integers. And even if there was one more, that would still be an even number!

I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.

This is grossly asymmetrical and wrong. There are N positive numbers from 1 to N, and another N negative numbers from -1 to -N. Including 0, that makes 2N+1 numbers (for arbitrarily large N). I rest my case.