Sean

@seamsay.xyz

391 Followers 1470 Following

PhD Atomic Physics ⚛️ | RSE | Interested in the overlap of AMO/CM phys, numerical methods, and software dev. Failing to fight the good fight in reproducible computational science. When I'm not staring at absorption spectra, I'm mostly bouldering 🧗‍♂️ He/Him

A heatmap of the maximum expected temperature in the UK and Ireland on Thursday 25th June. Areas in the south near Swindon and Reading are showing up to 40C temperatures.
Immediately after the break-in, the arrested suspects were detained under the UK Terrorism Act, allowing extended detention without charge. However, the formal charges later brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were not terrorism offences; instead they included aggravated burglary, criminal damage, and violent disorder. Nevertheless, the CPS indicated it would argue the offences had a "terrorist connection," which could be treated as an aggravating factor at sentencing. The judge did indeed rule in March 2025 that the defendants would be charged with that terrorism enhancement, though this information was kept secret from the jury and from the wider public until after some convictions were returned in May 2026. For the charge of aggravated burglary to be successful, the prosecution needed to prove the defendants entered the weapons factory with the intent to injure the people inside.
Map of the areas of Britain that are covered by Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks. All Scottish counties north of Fife and Stirling are highlighted, as well as Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. A key point of context for the post is that the Scottish counties are some of the most northern parts of Britain, while Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire are some of the most southern.
A screenshot of a tweet, reading: > Have you read all the sources you ever cited? During my PhD we, along with dozens of other papers, cited a paper that I later found out did not contain the result for which it was commonly cited. I should be banned I guess.
A screenshot from twitter of Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh) quote tweeting Ashton Forbes (@AshtonForbes). Ashton's tweet reads: > It's embarrassing how PhD physicists don't understand quantum mechanics or the Casimir effect. > > They get the most basic things wrong, repeatedly. > > The Casimir effect does prove we can extract zero point energy, otherwise the plates wouldn't come together on their own. That movement is a force that can be used for work. That's undeniable and specifically what Robert Forward showed in his 1984 paper. > > What everyone is actually upset about is PERPETUAL extraction, which in the case of parts requires them to be pulled apart. A valid argument for why that system won't work. > > Naturally, people have been working on designs to get around that, including Sonny White's idea. > > What will shock you is it can be accomplished with plasma and you start to wonder what's really going on with fusion. > > I've given up trying to reach these lost academics. Physics can't progress until they die because they're too much of fragile cowards to debate, since they know they'll lose and look foolish. Sabine's quote reads: > You don't have to believe me when I say the Casimir effect does not allow you to extract energy from the vacuum. You could just do the maths. You must first change the boundary condition which, guess what, requires that you put in the energy which you can then extract again.
A blurred image of a journal article, overlaid are the words "PAPER PUBLISHED" in a Dark Souls "BOSS VANQUISHED" style.
A picture of a coffee mug with an unusual handle, on top of a wooden table. Only one end of the handle connects to the mug, the other end extends below the base of the mug giving the illusion that the mug is floating.
A bell curve meme. Text at the top says "Mary has 2 children. She tells you that one is a boy born on a tuesday. What's the probability the other child is a girl?". Below is an image of an IQ bell curve, annotated with three Wojaks. The low IQ Wojak says "It's 50%", the medium IQ Wojak says "It's 51,8%", and the high IQ Wojak says "It's 50%".
The back of a packet of hiking socks. The text reads: > Recycled Yarns > > These socks are made from recycled eco-friendly yarns helping to save our planet. > > With Arch Support
An activity monitor for a desktop PC, showing all CPU cores at 100% utilisation.
Page 21 of a PhD thesis. The page reads: Chapter 3 Dipole Dynamics in Absorption Spectroscopy "This light is invisible to us but it allows us to see invisible electrons, or electron waves, that move incredibly fast in atoms and molecules. It opens new doors both in basic science and for applications." - Prof. Anne L'Hullier 3.1 Introduction Understanding the motion of electrons is vitally important for understanding not just the structure of atoms, but also the way atoms interact with their environment. These electron dynamics affect the way molecular bonds form, as well as the way atoms interact in chemical reactions and biological processes. However, the timescale on which electrons move is on the order of attoseconds, which is much too fast for conventional imaging techniques to capture. Instead, the dynamics are investigated indirectly using pump-probe schemes that analyse the way the atom's response to two separate laser pulses
Screenshot of a PDF document, only the words "transformed with a real fast Fourier transform" are visible.
A screenshot of the data availability and code availability sections of a paper. This transcribed text follows: Data Availability Simulation and experimental data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Code Availability The simulation, experimental data and data visualization codes that support the plots and data analysis within this paper are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
A visual representation of the Monty Hall problem, drawn as a two layer tree. The first layer of the tree represents which door you choose and has three nodes. Two of the nodes represent picking a door with a goat behind, and the third represents picking the door with the car behind. The second layer of the tree represents whether you switch doors or stay with the door you chose. For the two first layer nodes representing goat, staying leaves you with a goat while switching gets you a car. For the one first layer node representing the car, staying will leave you with a car while switching will get you a goat. This means that if you choose to stay then two of the three possibilities leaves you with a goat and one leaves you with a car. If you choose to switch, however, two possibilities get you a car and one gets you a goat. Therefore switching is the optimal strategy.
Two whiteboards containing working out for a tutorial class on vector geometry. The top board contains working out relating to a problem on finding the vector from one vertex to the midpoint of the opposite side in terms of the two vectors from that vertex to the other vertices. The bottom board contains a definition of the ratio rule. Both boards contain very nicely drawn triangles, if I do say so myself, drawn free hand.