In the Dark

It’s an Open Day here on campus, and there’s quite a crowd of potential students and parents gathering in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences here at the University of Sussex to find out a bit more about the School in advance of making decisions about where to apply next year.

I noticed the other day that quite a few of these have appeared on campus over the last few days:

Apparently they’re information points manned by various helpers to help visitors find their way around the place. When I first saw this one, I thought it was a Punch and Judy box, so assumed that there was some sort of conference of Punch and Judy performers going on. That wouldn’t be inappropriate for a University campus, actually, because the traditional name for a Punch & Judy puppeteer is a “Professor”. Not a lot of people know that.

Anyway, none of that is really relevant to what I wanted to post today. I stumbled across this video featuring Winfried Hensinger (one of my colleagues from the Department of Physics & Astronomy within the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences). I thought it would be fun to share it here, just to give an idea of some of the work that’s going on here outside my own speciality of astrophysics. I hope this will complement the real open day with a mini virtual open day on the blog.

Winfried is Reader in Quantum, Atomic and Optical Physics at the University of Sussex and he works in the group we generally call “AMO” (Atomic, Molecular and Optical). In this TEDX lecture he talks about the future of quantum computers and the role the team he is part of, at Sussex University, plays as they develop large scale quantum computers using ions cooled to extremely low temperatures using lasers. Enjoy!