Mikhail Kats
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mickeykats.bsky.social
Mikhail Kats
@mickeykats.bsky.social
Optics/photonics researcher, applied physicist, and faculty at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Personal account + opinions

Was @mickeykats on Twitter
Brittle starfish and trilobites, Ordovician period, about 450 million years old
November 23, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Just remembered (and looked up) my thoughts on this clip from 2021* and the way in which people over-apply Feynman's point

*I do miss old twitter
November 21, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Just remembered "garfield minus garfield", where Garfield is removed from the comic strips, so it's basically just Jon going insane
November 19, 2025 at 4:15 AM
Very little Waymo expansion across the midwest =( www.understandingai.org/p/waymos-nex...
November 19, 2025 at 12:30 AM
This work was led by Rabeeya Hamid in our group, and is the result of a long collaboration with Dan Congreve's group at Stanford, supported by the DARPA ENVision program advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
November 17, 2025 at 9:56 PM
We demonstrated an optical system that enables upconversion imaging from 750-930 nm into the visible, at incident infrared intensities down to 10^-6 Watt/cm^2 at the input aperture, while preserving high spatial resolution. No external power or pump laser was used to aid the upconversion process.
November 17, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Our paper just out in Advanced Functional Materials: "Photonic engineering enables all-passive upconversion imaging with low-intensity near-infrared light" advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 💡🧪
November 17, 2025 at 9:55 PM
The overall vision of bluesky, of a social network on an open protocol with account portability, is really great, and is the reason I'm here

But my impression is that there is no vision for growth of the network anymore. It's a shame
November 17, 2025 at 1:46 AM
Cool security feature
November 17, 2025 at 12:14 AM
Got it
November 15, 2025 at 11:53 PM
'The term ‘‘affiliation’’ means any affiliation, ...' is really quite the turn of phrase

It could be interpreted to mean almost anything
November 15, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Sure.

Say you have the Sun and Earth, and you surround them with perfect mirrors, such that light from the sun always reaches the Earth.

The Earth can't become hotter than the Sun, because once the Earth heats up, it starts glowing too. The hottest the Earth can get is the temperature of the Sun
November 13, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Working on a letter for the NDSEG fellowship, and this is kind of a bonkers requirement for a letter, no?
November 12, 2025 at 5:01 PM
In the aurora, both reds and greens come from fluorescence from oxygen, mostly the from the 1S excited state (green) and from the 1D excited state (red)

The 1D state has a lifetime of >150 seconds, whereas the 1S state has a lifetime of ~1 second
November 12, 2025 at 5:14 AM
The aurora is off the hook (Madison, WI, under the city lights)
November 12, 2025 at 3:33 AM
Now that's what I'm talking about
November 12, 2025 at 3:26 AM
November 12, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Aurora over the house =)
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Well this is substantial
November 12, 2025 at 1:35 AM
And, of course, now I am lost in Wikipedia links, and just learned that the Great Wave off Kanagawa is probably supposed to be a rogue wave en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_w...
November 11, 2025 at 6:28 AM
Fall delayed, but not canceled
November 9, 2025 at 3:54 PM
We here in Madison do not do a good job celebrating this, but we should:
November 7, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Had to look these up
November 3, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Advanced use of pillows and blankets
November 1, 2025 at 6:33 PM
I'd like to trade schedules with the dog for a few days
October 30, 2025 at 12:48 AM