David Neilson

@dtneilson.bsky.social

120 followers 240 following 40 posts

Physicist and Optical Communications. Bell Labs

Videos

Physics 39%

Political science 17%

Posts Replies Media Videos

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · 5d

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
Carl Sagan

Josh Goldstein @joshisimmigration.bsky.social · 10d

One of the biggest moments of my career:
USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

Garry @thegmcconnachie.bsky.social · 13d

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · 13d

An Ince; it is small, and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away; we must never let them take it from us.
Alan Moore(ish)

Reposted by Michael Cox, Dorothy Bishop, Peter Thorne , and 24 more Michael Cox, Dorothy Bishop, Peter Thorne, James M. Bullock, Steve Peers, Tom Shakespeare, Praveetha Patalay, Leigh Sparks, Catherine Baker, Lesley A. Hall, Alex Callinicos, Simon Wren‐Lewis, Alan Stewart, Rebecca Williams, Kate Lancaster, Margot C. Finn, Stephen Ryan, Steven Fielding, Aurélien Mondon, Stuart White, Katrina Navickas, Lukas Graf, Jon Dean, Christina Pagel, Farah Mendlesohn, David Neilson, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · 13d

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

This is the saddest day of my professional life.
Today is not only the final recording of the latest series of The Infinite Monkey Cage, it is my last ever Monkey Cage.
I never thought that I would have to leave the show. I always imagined going on until | dropped dead under the studio lights due to a brain aneurysm caused by my final attempt to understand notions of quantum gravity or the shock of being told about fly maggot infestations in the sacks of macaque monkeys.
I resigned in September, after sixteen years of dedication to the show,
A show that I named and helped develop over all those years.
Unfortunately, my opinions outside the BBC have been considered problematic for sometime, whether it has been voicing support for the trans community, criticism of Donald Trump, numerous other outlandish opinions, including once gently criticising Stephen Fry.
These things were considered to conflict with being a freelance BBC science presenter

In a recent meeting where BBC Studio executives again voiced problems with me, I realised my choices.
Obedience and being quieter to remain making Monkey Cage, or 'Resign and have the freedom to speak out against what I believe are injustices'.
•
I chose the latter.
It broke my heart.
I love this show and I love the audience, and it is because of the audience in particular, that this decision was so difficult to make.
I kept thinking about all the extremist voices promoting hate and division. They are being given so many platforms, while voices that represent kindness, open mindedness, empathy seem to be scarcer and scarcer.
I felt I couldn't pamper myself with the luxury of silence.
One of my many privileges is that I am able to resign and I can speak out even if it is to the detriment of my career.

I have thought a lot about my heroes, Sinead O Connor, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and so many more.
I think of Sinead's words, "the job of an artist is to be themselves at any cost".
James Baldwin said prejudice was really just a word for cowardice.
Audre Lorde, viewing her life, wrote that her only regrets were her silences.
I think of my father as I resign, he brought me up to believe in fairness , justice and kindness.
Though my heart is broken, it is also full of fire.
I apologise to our incredible listeners for my departure, your love of the show means a great deal.
I am so sorry to let you down.
I hope that you can understand my reasoning.
I have to accept that I am not what the current
BBC expects of their freelance presenters.

Despite this I should add that I have always worked far more than my contracted hours to try and ensure the show was always the best it could be, as well as making myself accessible and responsive to the audience wherever and whenever I met them. Every night, we have recorded, I have been filled with determination to make the best show possible. This was not
"just a job"
I hope that with my departure I can be a better ally to the LGBTQ community, to the neurodivergent community, to activists fighting against those who aim to brutalise society, to those currently in prison on hunger strike, and to all those who fight for a more inclusive world.
From many conversations, I know there are many Monkey Cage listeners who support these communities and activists too.
The strawberry is dead.
Long live the strawberry. B

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · 13d

The model of “full-time teams of researchers, scientists, and engineers who will enjoy operational autonomy” is still one we have at Bell Labs

Reposted by David Neilson

Mikhail Kats @mickeykats.bsky.social · 14d

NSF has an RFI out for a new initiative called "Tech Labs" 🧪

www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-ann...

With the above structure, the Tech Labs program will offer sustained, multi-year support to
innovative and institutionally independent organizational structures operating outside of
existing academic, start-up, and industry constraints to fill a vital gap in the innovation
ecosystem. Awards will support a dedicated, full-time team with substantial operational
independence and the flexibility to adapt quickly to evolving technology landscapes. A
strong team will include leaders and experts who demonstrate a clear vision to address
their Tech Lab’s mission. A Tech Lab will have autonomy in hiring staff and is not expected
to apply with a complete team. A team’s focus and personnel may necessarily evolve over
time as milestones are achieved and strategic or operational needs change.

Reposted by David Neilson

goldingcartoons.bsky.social @goldingcartoons.bsky.social · 16d

Australia’s world-first teen social media ban begins.

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Nov 5

It’s just phase noise … but then you have to understand noise …

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Oct 26

I’m not aware of any

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Oct 26

Taking bad metrics and making them worse

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Oct 22

Rule of goats 🐐

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Oct 10

That’s longer than Jansky was alive 😢

Reposted by David Neilson

Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · Oct 10

The Very Large Array, part of The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, was formally dedicated #OTD in 1980.

It was renamed the "Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array" in 2012. Happy 45th birthday, VLA! 🧪 🔭 📡

An image from the movie “Contact” shows Jodie Foster’s character listening to headphones in front of a line of VLA radio dishes that stretch off towards the horizon. One of the dishes is my shaggy golden doodle Linus, wearing a post-surgery cone around his head.

Reposted by David Neilson

Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · Sep 26

Happy 120th birthday, special relativity!

Albert Einstein introduced special relativity in the paper "On The Electrodynamics Of Moving Bodies," published in Annalen der Physik #OTD in 1905. 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭

Manuscript: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
English: www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einst...

A black and white photo of Albert Einstein, around age 25, sitting at a desk. He is a wearing a flannel suit and resting his right arm on the desk. Einstein is looking to the left of the photographer in this posed photo.

The first paragraph of the paper, in German. Translated to English is reads:

It is known that Maxwell's electrodynamics—as usually understood at the present time—when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. Take, for example, the reciprocal electrodynamic action of a magnet and a conductor. The observable phenomenon here depends only on the relative motion of the conductor and the magnet, whereas the customary view draws a sharp distinction between the two cases in which either the one or the other of these bodies is in motion. For if the magnet is in motion and the conductor at rest, there arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet an electric field with a certain definite energy, producing a current at the places where parts of the conductor are situated. But if the magnet is stationary and the conductor in motion, no electric field arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet...

Reposted by David Neilson

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · Sep 23

Finding good information is hard.

A study done on 2.5M pregnant women who took Tylenol during pregnancy showed no adverse fetal effects.

However, pregnant women with untreated fevers had increased fetal risk of:

Neural tube,
Heart,
And abdominal wall,

Defects.

Plus cleft palate and more!

Reposted by David Neilson

Henry Legg @henrylegg.bsky.social · Sep 19

On a side note: Whilst writing my data analysis lecture this week, I discovered that the spurious correlations on tylervigen.com now come with AI explanations!

They're brilliant: Here's the explanation why GMO corn growth in North Dakota correlates with Google Searches about headaches.

Reposted by Siegfried Hekimi, David Neilson

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · Sep 19

With the viral season upon us, the debate over vaccination will flare up again.

It remains strange to watch: the advantages are many, well established, and increasingly better supported by evidence, including benefits against non-communicable diseases.
1/10

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Sep 4

RFK Jr. rolled out that old chestnut again about how healthy Americans were in the 60’s, so here’s a fact check.

In 1965:

-42% of American adults smoked; it’s 11% now.

-The infant morality rate was 24.7/1000; it’s 5.6/1000 now.

-Overall life expectancy was 70 years; it's about 77 years now.

Reposted by David Neilson

Paul Guinnessy @paulguinnessy.bsky.social · Aug 13

I love Christine's writing

"Those of us who have been lucky enough to live in countries that have had several decades without a war can cling on to our fantasy that we are in some way in charge of our destiny, that peace is our right and the norm."

"Peace is not the norm." I think we forget that.

Beauty and the Beast

The game we're all caught up in

christinapatterson.substack.com

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Jul 28

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Reposted by David Neilson

Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · Dec 1

The mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was born #OTD in 1792. He developed a non-Euclidean geometry that shows up in areas ranging from relativity to the designs of M.C. Escher. (1/n) 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭

Portrait: Lev Kryukov (wikimedia)

Reposted by Bertrand Guillaume, David Neilson

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · Jul 14

The LIGO Virgo KAGRA study of #GW231123 was posted to the arXiv today, and is free to read

arxiv.org/abs/2507.08219

Data are available from the GW Open Science Center

gwosc.org/eventapi/htm...

#OpenScience #OpenData ☄️

$arXiv preprint GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 M⊙ On 2023 November 23 the two LIGO observatories both detected GW231123, a gravitational-wave signal consistent with the merger of two black holes with masses 137+22−17M⊙ and 103+20−52M⊙ (90\% credible intervals), at luminosity distance 0.7-4.1 Gpc and redshift of 0.39+0.27−0.24, and a network signal-to-noise ratio of ∼22.5. Both black holes exhibit high spins, 0.9+0.10−0.19 and 0.80+0.20−0.51 respectively. A massive black hole remnant is supported by an independent ringdown analysis. Some properties of GW231123 are subject to large systematic uncertainties, as indicated by differences in inferred parameters between signal models. The primary black hole lies within or above the theorized mass gap where black holes between 60-130 M⊙ should be rare due to pair instability mechanisms, while the secondary spans the gap. The observation of GW231123 therefore suggests the formation of black holes from channels beyond standard stellar collapse, and that intermediate-mass black holes of mass ∼200 M⊙ form through gravitational-wave driven mergers.$ Figure 7 of the paper showing the inferred masses. The masses are measured to be high, but the exact values depend significantly depending on the waveform model used. These are the most significant systematic uncertainties we have seen so far. New detections are pushing the boundaries of our calculations.

Figure 7 of the paper showing the inferred masses. The masses are measured to be high, but the exact values depend significantly depending on the waveform model used. These are the most significant systematic uncertainties we have seen so far. New detections are pushing the boundaries of our calculations.

Figure 8 of the paper showing the inferred spins. Results again vary between waveform models, but they consistently show high spin magnitudes with some support for misalignment relative to the orbit of the binaries.

Screenshot of from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center showing spectrograms of the signal (which is short) as well as links to download the raw data.

Reposted by David Neilson

Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · Jul 10

If you did a PhD (in the UK) funded by #EPSRC and are looking for a postdoc position, we (meaning @exeter.ac.uk, not me specifically) have 3 open Postdoctoral Research Fellowships.
All info in the link below.
#AcademicJobs #Physics

jobs.exeter.ac.uk

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · Jun 23

"a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," Sagan

Reposted by David Neilson

David Phillips @photonphillips.bsky.social · May 30

2 postdoctoral researcher positions are available in the Structured Light Group in Exeter (UK). Project focussed on quantum & classical light control through dynamic complex scattering media (see concept picture). Details are below. Drop me an email if you'd like to know more! 🧪💡

David Neilson @dtneilson.bsky.social · May 30

John Von Neumann "with four parameters I can fit an elephant, with five I can make him wiggle his trunk"

Reposted by David Neilson

Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · May 30

#PhysicsFactlet
Wavefront Shaping is a family of techniques used to control light (or, more generally, a wave) propagating through a scattering medium.

A 🧵
1/

🧪⚛️🎢💡

Reposted by David Neilson

Optics & Photonics News @optica-opn.org · Apr 15

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology created a waveguide that can amplify near-infrared light 10 times more than current devices, which could improve #telecommunications and boost medical #imaging.

Read the OPN story: bit.ly/44pXBX5 💡🧪⚛️

Reposted by Robert Price, David Neilson

Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · Apr 5

Put up by Katy Brand today - this is the story over and over again

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