@tomrivlin.com
Vienna-based former Londoner. Quantum postdoc in TU Wien's @quitphysics.info group. (Running their bsky account!) Previously Weizmann, UCL, Imperial. Science writer for SciShow, bylines with PBS Space Time, New Scientist. H/h
This is actually the first project I worked on in Vienna, starting in 2023 (it took a while to get fully published), and it directly follows on from the ideas I spoke about in my New Scientist article in 2024 (any excuse to re-post that!) www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...
New paper in PRA! Continuing our long-running study of quantum measurements as dynamical processes and the emergence of classicality, here we study observables that best encode measurement outcomes under equilibration-on-average dynamics and quantum Darwinism
journals.aps.org/pra/abstract...
Marty Supreme was very fun. It was the most movie I've ever seen in a movie. You really get your money's worth with a ticket.
Happy 200th birthday to UCL! Last time I visited I made sure to snap a photo with my boy JB. I used to pass by him all the time on my way to lunch haha
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
As of January 1st 2026, John and I are **no longer** the owners of Complexly (the educational media company we started 15 years ago that makes Crash Course, Eons, SciShow, Study Hall, and a bunch of other shows.)
We have been the sole owners for all that time...
Just wrote a summary of the various resarch groups in our theory department. I actually work across ~3 of these groups on various projects!
Eliza was kind enough to allow me to contribute to this already-mostly-finished project and I had a lot of fun working on it. If you ever wanted to learn or refresh yourself on the basics of quantum optics, I can for sure endorse this wonderful guide
Spending today doing the things I love most: fussing over DNS settings for a domain name change and also separately fussing over LaTeX packages to upload something to arXiv 🙃🙃🙃
But yes, say hello to QuOI!
Had this experience today. Once you start to notice this pattern you really do see it everywhere
Whenever I'm on the London Underground and the announcer says "please make use of all available doors" I always imagine they want me to pass through every aperture simultaneously like a quantum particle
New SciShow by me! With tricks from biology and physics, lots of things in nature are very good at efficiently getting from A to B, and one way people love to test this is using mazes. So from slime molds to lasers, here's 5 surprisingly good maze solvers! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKYd...
Our Research Unit had a pretty amazing year in 2025. In total:
-3️⃣7️⃣ preprints were released
-5️⃣ of those were also fully published
-1️⃣9️⃣ more preprints from previous years were fully published
Congrats, everyone! ❤️ Here's to a fun year of research in 2026
www.quitphysics.info/publications
This was fun to organise and host! Lots of good discussions. Not mentioned in the official post: we also had the "Ig Journies" -- the Worst Paper Of The Year award. I won't mention who won that 👀
Control was one of my fave games of all time. So so cool, the vibes were amazing. Very excited for a sequel youtu.be/e1_eZyFM5-4?...
It's finally out! Much of my work in Vienna has been on follow-ups to this paper, but it took a long time to go through peer review. It's a really cool idea that I hope gets a lot more attention now
Recently discovered the joy of being on the other side of the interaction from this classic post
Last year @mariaviolaris.bsky.social did quick interviews of me and a few other Vienna quantum people at a conference in town. Now the video of that is out and it came out well!
youtu.be/9jlORrdO5E0?...
New @scishow.bsky.social episode I worked on! They actually pitched to ME to write an episode about quantum random number generators using Dungeons and Dragons as a framing device. I think it's fair to say I was the right person for the job. Check it out, it came out well!
youtu.be/gLDHs3195u4?...
Another banger SciShow episode that I wish I could take credit for but sadly had nothing to do with. (Though stay tuned for an upcoming one of mine on a similar topic!)
youtu.be/-gp7AbYD9NI?...
Anyway yes Hades II good
Nice article on this from New Scientist with some interesting updates on the research that's happened since my video on it came out www.newscientist.com/article/2498...
Congrats to the three new physics Nobel laureates, who helped lay the groundwork for superconducting quantum computing. As always, nobelprize.org has a great technical summary of the results that won the prize and the wider research context
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...
I watched a video on YouTube called something like "Top 10 beginner tips for playing Hades II" and the next day the YT algorithm started showing me videos with tumbnails and titles containing end-game spoilers 🤷
66 hours and 100% completion later... yeah it's damn good. For sure sometimes too hard in frustrating silly not-fun ways, but overall yeah I had a blast
Basically every style guide I've ever read says the first one, but I just can't stop myself using the second one. The first one simply feels wrong somehow (even though I think it looks nicer!)
The plot of Silksong can be a bit confusing for newcomers, but I think I've cracked what it's about:
🧵Thread
Does our Research Unit endorse the view expressed by our employee here that "so much quantum tech is way over-hyped"? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
New from me at @scishow.bsky.social! In news stories, why do quantum computers look like a 'steampunk chandelier'? Well, turns out: that's not the computer!
(But that's all just setup for my rant at the end about how so much quantum tech is way over-hyped 👀👀👀)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhou...
Looks like the Literature prize this year went to "The late Dr. William B. Bean, for persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years." Which, okay, that's pretty fun, too
improbable.com/ig/winners/#...
This year at the Ig Nobels it's affirming to see empirical confirmation of a personal research project: that alcohol demonstrably improves my ability to speak a foreign language.
The sample size is a bit small but I'd volunteer for anyone's replication attempt: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...