A few updates:
1. The BBC got in touch last week to ask if I'd look at a press release and embargoed preprint on quantum computing to give some expert commentary. The work turned out to be from Microsoft, claiming another breakthrough in their desire to fabricate functional majorana qubits. The preprint shows their "multi-qubit" tetron device, with signals coming from its operation. What was not terribly clear was if they were really claiming that their qubits were functional yet, or if the long lifetime of a mode that the were claiming was a clear signal of a relevant quantum effect. I could do no more than give a general comment about what it would mean if it were all as Microsoft claim, and caution that it might not be. The BBC wrote it up here.
2. I organised an end-of-semester nuclear theory gathering at my house last weekend. The day was dry (unlike today as I write this) and not too hot, unlike some of the days leading up to it. We had a good turnout from group members - academic staff, phd students, visitors and associated family members. Here's a picture of the gathering (minus me, taking the picture). You can click on it to see it in higher resolution, if you like:
3. I made a virtual visit to on MPhys student on placement at the Univesity of Barcelona with our old colleague Arnau Rios. Ben (the student) is working on applying quantum computational methods to solve the nuclear shell model - very much something I am working on too.
4. A sad incident on campus this week made the UK national news - an ex-student shot and seriously injured a campus security team member. Fortunately, it seems that the injured person will fully recover - physically at least. The shooter is a Saudi national, and there have been correspondingly unhelpful comments on social media that play into the febrile atmosphere we have right now where far-right parties stir up hatred against immigrants. In fact, as I write this, listening to 6music on the radio, the news has come on that JD Vance sees fit to make pronouncements that we (white British people, I think he means) should be "righteously angry" about "mass immigration" (see e.g. this). Fortunately no "Farage Riots" have happened in Guildford as they recently did in Southampton.
5. I've ended up agreeing to go to a few meetings coming up, which has me travelling around the world. I have not travelled far outside Europe in the last couple of years (furthest being to the Asian part of Türkiye), but I have an invited talk at Nuclear Structure 2026 in Vancouver next month, and then will go to the Compound Nuclear Reactions (CNR) conference in Fukuoka in October. This week, we had a seminar from Tomoya Naito from Tokyo, who mentioned that I would be invited to a workshop in Japan the week after CNR, and lo and behold an invitation arrived later that day. I accepted, though being away for two weeks is something I used to do more when I was younger, and am a bit less keen on now. Should be a good meeting, though.
6. Planning proceeds steadliy with our Nuclear Data conference taking place in September: UK Nuclear Data 2026, which we loftily subtitle "A Renaissance". There is actually a nuclear physics conference taking place in the UK next week - Clusters '26 - which looks pretty cool, and is not a million miles from some of my activity ... but it's just a conference too far in terms of finding time to do something a bit too niche for me. Nevertheless, I'll be mentioned by collaborators who are speaking there because of work we've done together supervising PhD students.
