Jim Al-Khalili @jimalkhalili Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Jim Al-Khalili

@jimalkhalili

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Followers

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Prof Jim Al-Khalili CBE FRS HonFREng @UniofSurrey Distinguished Chair in theoretical physics, author, broadcaster, humanist. "Affable Egghead" (Sunday Times).

University of Surrey

https://t.co/12TjvlieOK

Joined January 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

3 months

For those academics who follow me (physics, maths, computer science, engineering etc) please spread the word that our new MSc in Applied Quantum Computing, which I am Programme Lead on, is now fully validated and running, with first intake in September: .

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

I tweet about physics, but I can't avoid today's headlines: the neo-fascist, Steve Bannon, advises our future PM, and domestic violence is apparently not an issue that should concern us or get in the way of said future PM's ambitions. What the hell is wrong with people?

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

I’m sad to say that for anyone who has enjoyed my BBC4 tv docs over the years (and loads of other excellent programming) I’m afraid that due to budget cuts BBC4 TV will be no more. The channel is moving entirely online. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Too many people, when they say ‘we have to learn to live with Covid’, seem to think it means we can go back to behaving the way we did before Covid. That’s not what it means.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Credit where it’s due. @BBCr4today had an item on climate change this morning and didn’t feel the need to have a denier on in the name of ‘balance’. Both contributors agreed it was happening and each had something intelligent to say. No conflict required.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

As a patron of @UKMetric I've just been on BBC News arguing against the jingoistic, populist plans by the Gov to bring back Imperial measures. Celebrating the Jubilee should be an opportunity to showcase Britain as a progressive and advanced nation, not one stuck in the past.

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Jim Al-Khalili

9 months

All the while such stupidity persists it has to countered. Toss a coin once and you won’t know if it’ll be heads or tails (weather: will it rain next week?) but after 1000 tosses you know half will be heads (climate: longer range average trend).

@hughosmond

Hugh Osmond

10 months

Matt goes to the heart of it. With current measurement technology and state-of-the-art computers it is still impossible to predict the weather more than a few days ahead. Yet these same people, with the same technology, think they can model long term climate change. They can't.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Earlier today: at Windsor Castle with Julie, to pick up my CBE. A lovely day.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

When I was a student in the 80s, UK politics was polarised bet left & right. Then came two decades of middle-of-the-road politics. Now it seems the whole of the Western World (eg US, UK, Australia, Italy..) is polarised as never before: divided into ‘decent people’ vs ‘fuckwits’.

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Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

It isn’t so much that those entrusted to run our country have demonstrated such dishonesty and morally bankruptcy. Sadly, we’ve known this for some time. No it’s that they are revealed as such dim-witted, incompetent intellectual minnows.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

U.K. newspaper headlines this morning all shouting “Masks are Back” on public transport and in shops. But for many of us nothing has changed! No doubt many will be outraged by this minor inconvenience because “masks don’t work”. Also, Earth is flat and we never went to moon.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Another optical illusion for you. The balls behind the horizontal lines are all the same colour. 🤨

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Jim Al-Khalili

7 years

For @BBCr4today to bring on Lord Lawson 'in the name of balance' on climate change is both ignorant and irresponsible. Shame on you.

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Jim Al-Khalili

7 years

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Via @ThePoke

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

Just spent an enjoyable hour on Twitter watching some good folk (mainly in US) claiming theirs arms are magnetised due to the vaccine, presumably because of the chip. We haven't developed a vaccine against stupid yet.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Why do some people have a problem with the pulling down of the Colston statue? This is not erasing history, it's saying we do not wish to glorify or celebrate its darker side. Surely, that's not hard to understand.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

I wonder if there's a flat-earth explanation for this. 🤪

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Need to update the questions in my first year tutorial class: Q: list a few important discoveries in astronomy in your lifetime One Answ: the 1998 discovery that universe expansion is accelerating Students: but that was before we were born. Bloody hell.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

I’m getting very fed up with this use of students as a political football, being blamed for everything, as though somehow they are all irresponsible – rather than, hmm let me see, those libertarian demonstrators in London yesterday.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

If I were to ask you: what is 6% of 33? How many of you would immediately say: “well, it’s the same as 33% of 6, which is 2 (one third of 6)” ? It’s insane that such an obvious and simple bit of maths is so little known - as in, IT HAD NEVER OCCURRED TO ME, EITHER!

@Quasilocal

Steve McCormick

4 years

Kids in school: "I don't care about math. When will I ever need to know this?!" 48,800 of those same kids as adults:

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Starting today, as I now have more free time, I'm dedicating an hour each day to answering your physics questions. Whatever age you are, however profound or silly you think the question is, tweet me and I'll try to answer. It may not be immediate as I'll do them in one sitting.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

People of Twitter, try spending less time shouting, arguing and getting digs in at each other and a bit more time being nice. You'll feel happier.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

If you’ve run out of Christmas leftovers, can’t be bothered to cook and fancy getting a pizza takeaway, just remember that one 18” pizza is larger than two 12” ones.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

So, my wife went for her scheduled mammogram and the female radiologist (who turns out to be a big fan of your truly) sees the name: “Al-Khalili…Al-Khalili… oh my God, you’re not Jim Al-Khalili’s daughter are you?” Needless to say, Mrs A-K is friggin’ loving it.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

I feel absolutely delighted and honoured to have been elected a Fellow of the @royalsociety (the pinnacle of my scientific career). And I'm in wonderful company this year with, among others, @elonmusk @demishassabis @ScotSciChief and @CERN DG Fabiola Gianotti. Just wow!!

@royalsociety

The Royal Society

6 years

Announcing our newly elected Fellows - leading scientists from across the world #RSFellows

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

I've spent four decades studying, thinking about and using quantum mechanics, and every day my knowledge and understanding of the subject grow. And yet I am just as confused by it as ever. It's not fair.

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Jim Al-Khalili

9 months

My TV 3-parters like Atom, or on Chemistry and Electricity, or 2-parters like Order & Disorder and Everything &Nothing were all made for BBC4. The BBC no longer commissions such programmes, which are deemed too highbrow, misjudging the intelligence of its audience.

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Andrew Kirby

9 months

@jimalkhalili When will see the like of it again? BBC factual programming seems to have died

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Expelling Alastair Campbell from the Labour Party for voting LibDem in the Euro elections doesn't sound like a very intelligent way to coax back the hundreds of thousands of voters who also defected to LibDems and Greens.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

How delicious that Canadian laser physicist Donna Strickland shares this year's Physics #NobelPrize , just days after those ridiculous misogynistic comments made at a conference at CERN about women in physics.

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Jim Al-Khalili

8 years

Sad and shocked this morning. Presumably as an immigrant I should hand my job back to whoever it is I took it from. A victory for xenophobia

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Today was a proud day. I signed the @royalsociety fellows book – the same one that’s been signed by fellows for over 350 years and contains signatures of Hooke (bottom of page on left) and Newton top half of page on right). Ultimate honour for a scientist.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

My first computer (and I had the 16K RAM attachment. Yeah, baby!)

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Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

I just asked ChatGPT to write me a poem on the two-slit experiment in quantum mechanics in the style of Robert Burns. My work on this earth is done.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Important Twitter announcement: I have a new two-part tv doc coming soon (May) to BBC4. It’s called Secrets of Size: Atoms to Supergalaxies, and is rather good, though I say so myself.

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Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

Someone on Twitter asked me the other day if I could compose a tweet thread explaining the famous quantum measurement problem. Since I am off work for a few days I thought I’d take up the challenge. So, here goes: quantum measurement in 22 tweets… 1/22

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Jim Al-Khalili

7 years

Stop messing with my head.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Ladies and Gentlemen, this image is going to be in all future astronomy textbooks: the first picture ever seen of a real black hole. It's a 'supermassive black hole' at the centre of one of the biggest galaxies in the Universe (Messier 87). Just, wow!

@ehtelescope

Event Horizon 'Scope

5 years

Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” – The Demon-Haunted World Happy birthday Carl Sagan (1934–1996).

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

This is fun. Not only does each block change shape twice a cycle but if you follow the surface facing the centre on one block you’ll see it switch position as it goes round.

@DrGBuckingham

Gavin Buckingham

2 years

Oh this is MELTING MY BRAIN by Niko22966

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

This morning, the Universe really does feel a little lonelier. I’m saddened to my core to hear that Stephen Hawking is no longer with us – a great man who achieve so much and inspired so many.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

That's numberwang.

@Otto_English

Otto English

4 years

Reassured that there have been "three hundred thousand, thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand" tests carried out so far. Far less reassured by Priti Patel's grasp of numbers

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Nice animation of a Tusi couple. Invented by a 13th c Persian astronomer who lived in a mountain fortress with the original ‘assassins’ #stuffyoumightfindinteresting

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Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

Met my two final year project students for first time. They discussed coding in Python or Mathematica (which they're familiar with). "Good", said one of them, "as long as it's not that ancient language I can't remember the name of. Has an 'f' and 't' in it I think"

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Did you know that subatomic particles can rearrange themselves within an atomic nucleus in a zeptosecond (a billionth of a trillionth of a sec) and you can fit more zeptoseconds into the blink of an eye than you can blinks of an eye within the age of the universe. Nice, eh?

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Truss argues that redistribution stifles economic growth. Even if that can be argued on some economic theory grounds, to suggest that it’s ‘fair’ is utterly wrong on moral grounds at a time when so many in society are struggling. I find this view abhorrent.

@AvaSantina

Ava-Santina

2 years

Liz Truss says “it’s fair” that the richest people will benefit the most from her tax cuts. “To look at everything through the lens of redistribution, I believe is wrong.”

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

I could tell you my neutron star joke, but I don’t want to sound too dense.

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

I WON THE NOBEL PRIZES FOR PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY AND MEDICINE.

@GaryLineker

Gary Lineker

3 years

I WON THE WORLD CUP.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Episode 1 of my new BBC4 doc (Secrets of Size: Atoms to Supergalaxies) is scheduled for 9pm on 16th May.

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

When stupid people think they're being clever on Twitter.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

As a 'renowned world expert' on quantum biology, quantum entanglement and relativistic time dilation, I can say, categorically, that if you spend £339 on a 5GBioShield then you're an utter numpty.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

The Daily Mail still rather quaintly gives its weather forecast temperatures in Fahrenheit. Bless their little cotton socks.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Walking into work, listening to news on R4, reminded that the world is still full of aresholes. Turned off. Listened to ABBA on Spotify instead.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Isn't it just a little bit satisfying that the mass of the Sun is M~10^30 kg, while the mass of an electron is m~10^–30 (or 1/M) kg? (roughly).

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

1/6 A quick look at Twitter this morning and I see the conspiracy theorists are getting shoutier. So I wanted to share a few thoughts. I know it's pointless to argue against a conspiracy theorist, but consider this:

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Got an email from someone claiming to have psychic abilities and who wants to meet me to discuss it ‘scientifically’. Mrs A-K suggested I agree to meet him provided he send me details of time and place telepathically only. She is wise woman.

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

A friend in Southampton had a leaflet through the door from an insidious group called Lockdown Sceptics. She showed it to me. A classic mix of disinformation, conspiracy theory, confirmation bias, warped ideology and Dunning-Kruger effect. These people are nasty and dangerous.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

This sort of scene can renew one's faith in humanity. In a civilized country with a decent, grown-up leader (rare these days), they march in support of people they've never met on the other side of planet.

@JoshuaPHilll

Read Let This Radicalize You

4 years

This is so crazy it’s morning now in New Zealand and they’re marching for #BlackLivesMatter

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

My very helpful GP sent me this latest scientific research.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

To those who say I live in an echo chamber I say mine is the entire visible universe (90 billion light years across) and those who disagree with me live in bubbles enclosed within event horizons from which no intelligence can ever escape. Yeah, physicists can dish it out too. 😊

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Jim Al-Khalili

7 years

Life in Mosul, 1967. My kindergarten. I’m standing on right-hand swing. I wonder how many of the other children are still alive today.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

On faith schools, well done, Swedish Schools Minister, Anna Ekström.

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Jim Al-Khalili

8 months

Gorgeous footage! And fascinating that there are people convinced it’s fake, four centuries after the invention of the telescope.

@redditSpaceView

Space

@redditSpaceView

8 months

Incredible footage of Saturn rising from behind the Moon

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Jim Al-Khalili

9 months

Outside of science, acknowledging mistakes and changing one’s mind is often regarded as weakness when it’s really a strength. Nowadays, acknowledging that many issues are complex with both sides of a debate having a point is called sitting on the fence and also seen as weakness.

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

What a shameful and frankly stupid and divisive statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury. How dare he claim that in ‘schools that are not of a religious character, confidence in any personal sense of ultimate values has diminished’? Makes me very cross, it does.

@Humanists_UK

Humanists UK

6 years

ICYMI: This morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury attacked the values of non-religious people and suggested that only church schools could promote genuine moral values. He said this immediately after telling a lie.

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Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

Twitter isn't usually the forum for nuanced arguments. We know this. But every now and then a tweet states something so blatently obvious that it's hard to imagine any comeback.

@nazirafzal

nazir afzal

1 year

“Northern Ireland has the privileged access to both the U.K. and the EU….nobody else has that” Well, the whole U.K. had that!!

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Jim Al-Khalili

9 months

Finding it difficult to hold it together while choosing a song for daughter to walk down the aisle to. Goodness knows how I'm going to cope when I walk her down for real next month. I'll try to solve some equation in my head or I'll be reduced to a blubbering fool.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

The job is especially tough when dangerous, powerful fools don't even understand the difference between weather and climate – something even schoolchildren know.

@realDonaldTrump

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

5 years

Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Chat with cab driver just now ends in the usual way: “oh, you must know that Brian Cox chap”. My usual response is “yeah, he may look like a decent guy on telly but if you knew him..”

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 months

This is quite remarkable. And yet Andromeda, our near neighbour galaxy, is so far away that what we see in the sky is light that left it 2.5 million years ago - long before human existence.

@Rainmaker1973

Massimo

5 months

The Andromeda galaxy is 6 times bigger in the sky than the full Moon: it's just too dim to clearly see it with the naked eye. This composite image shows what it would look like at night if it was just brighter. [📸 Tom Buckley-Houston]

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

With record temperatures and other extreme weather events becoming evermore common globally, are there still those who would deny anthropogenic climate change? Sadly, ideology can be so powerful it trumps evidence, however compelling. Cognitive dissonance is an insidious trait.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Meanwhile, the vast majority of students - particularly thousands of 18 year-olds away from home for the first time - are increasingly stressed and fed-up with being scapegoated and blamed, when they ARE wearing masks, social distancing and doing their best to cope.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

1 month

Our latest paper on quantum biology published today.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Today's guest on the Life Scientific left school at 16. A decade later, as a single mum in a women's refuge with 3 young children, she returned to education. Now she's a prof of computer science and one of the most inspiring women in STEM. Meet @Dr_Black

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BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Sue Black on women in tech

Sue Black tells Jim Al-Khalili how she became a software engineer.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

With all the news of Twitter’s potential implosion - and #RIPTwitter trending worldwide - I guess I should say my goodbyes just in case. I have more important stuff this weekend anyway (son getting married!) so in case I don’t get the chance: be excellent to each other. ❤️🙏

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Bad enough that people think they're defending their rights and freedom by not wearing masks, but this level of ignorance is astounding:

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

I didn’t think it possible to love Dolly more. I was wrong.

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Covid-19: Dolly Parton marks vaccination with Jolene rewrite

Singing to the tune of her hit song Jolene, the country star, 75, promotes coronavirus vaccinations.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

Sitting in the garden with a glass of red wine and one of Iain M Banks' Culture series books and felt had to share this genius phrase I just read: the most effusive 'thank you': "My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it". Must use this sometime.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

1 year

And how about this for an inspirational role model in STEM for young girls? How brilliant.

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Space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock given Barbie honour

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is named a Barbie Role Model for work promoting science careers to girls.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

You know how when you see shite on Twitter and checkout the profile of the tweeter you get recommendations for similar accounts to follow? This one suggested Uri Geller, GBNews, Katie Hopkins and Julia Hartley-Brewer. It’s like there’s a club for nutters.

@TalkTV

Talk

2 years

Physicist Brian Catt says people "do not need to panic" over man made climate change. "What is happening now is almost totally normal." @ticerichard | @catandman

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Although I’ve written about measurement of earth’s circumference (by Eratosthenes, Biruni and others) in more detail than this, Sagan’s sheer explanatory brilliance is a joy.

@openculture

Open Culture

6 years

Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Reason and Math, Figured Out the Earth Isn’t Flat, Over 2,000 Years Ago

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Fascism is still on the rise, the leader of the free world is a joke, the UK has its most incompetent gov in living memory and far too many people seem to lack basic decency and humanity. And Twitter is just as shouty and unpleasant as ever. Happy 2019 everyone.

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@jimalkhalili

Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Climate change is real and we must not give credibility to those who deny it. When there’s a round-the-world yacht race we don’t hear flat-earthers given airtime warning of the dangers of sailing off the edge. | Letters

Climate change is not a matter for debate. We must not offer credibility to those who deny it |...

Letters: If ‘balance’ means giving voice to those who deny the reality of human-triggered climate change, we will not take part in the debate, say Jonathon Porritt, Caroline Lucas, Clive Lewis and 57...

www.theguardian.com

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

It's hard to keep positive when bleak news keeps coming, and it's understandable that fear and frustration translate into blame and recrimination. But as a scientist and a humanist I still have faith in humanity's ability, ingenuity and spirit to get through these dark times.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

This morning’s news is grim everywhere I look: virus mutations, climate crisis, migrant crisis… Off to hide myself in some physics equations.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

Kuenssberg: do you think the Chancellor should have had champagne reception for hedge fund managers on budget day? PM: the war in Ukraine… [sigh]

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Some may try to appeal to population distribution differences or 'what about Italy' arguments, but the fact is the UK has roughly 1% of the world's population, but ten times that fraction (10%) of the world's Covid-19 fatalities. Shocking and tragic.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

A perusal of my Twitter stream confirms that social media is divided into angry shouters so full of self-righteous certainty that their views are correct they don't hesitate to pile in, and those too scared to express any serious opinion at all so keep their posts light & neutral

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

Saturday science fact: 600 million years ago, a day was just 21 hours long.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Saturday #Shelfie .

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

As if we didn't have enough problems to deal with. This is an utterly pointless distraction. What's next? A decree that we must greet each other with "Blessed be the fruit"?

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

Hope I’m not the only one puzzled and frustrated that mainstream media didn’t cover yesterday’s big NHS rally. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then that’s my point. #FundOurNHS

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Jim Al-Khalili

9 months

Presumably the right wing conspiracists will either call this leftie scaremongering or celebrate it as positive because it’s nicer for swimming.

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Ocean heat record broken, with grim implications for the planet

The oceans are a vital regulator for the climate and our weather but are rapidly heating up.

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Jim Al-Khalili

2 years

For 30 years I’ve given a popular science schools talk about the possibility of time travel, lightheartedly joking that maybe there are no travellers from the future because no one wants to come back to visit this time. I’d like to live in a time when I don’t need to say that.

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Ah, memories of when my research was done with pen and paper, books and a blackboard. No computer on the desk. This was the very same office at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen where Heisenberg hatched his famous uncertainty principle in 1927. Also, I had very hairy arms.

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Jim Al-Khalili

3 years

This galaxy is so far away that it’s light has been travelling to us for 13.4 billion years. We’re setting it as it was just 400 million years after Big Bang. But because of expansion of space it is actually now 32 billion light years away!

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Jim Al-Khalili

5 years

Been through my office phone’s 27 messages (it’s set to go automatically to voicemail). Here’s why I do this: 26 of the messages are from one guy who is accusing me of building a dark matter bomb AND promoting the wrong theory of cosmology. Sounds harmless if a little disturbed.

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Jim Al-Khalili

4 years

Thought for the Day (feel free to apply where appropriate): "NEVER ATTRIBUTE TO MALICE THAT WHICH IS ADEQUATELY EXPLAINED BY STUPIDITY." (known as Hanlon's razor)

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Jim Al-Khalili

10 months

Well, that’s me convinced. And if he tells me his granny smoked 40 a day from the age of 11 and lived to be 100 I’d be back on the Marlboro Reds in a flash. It must be quite embarrassing for climate change sceptics to have such a dimwitted cheerleader.

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Laurence Fox

10 months

🚨Breaking🚨 Have finally made contact with my 84 year old dad in Greece. He made it from his room to the sea at approximately 11 am. He proceeded to have a short dip and then read a book on a sun lounger for a while. He did mention something about a light breeze. One hopes this…

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Jim Al-Khalili

6 years

My passion for science comes from the thrill of learning something new about the world, far more than the smugness of already knowing. I hope I never get to the point where I feel I know all I need to know.

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Jim Al-Khalili

7 years

"Anyone who is not shocked by #covfefe has not understood it" – Niels Bohr

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