I’m excited to work with people who can combine imaginative play with technical excellence, and love to solve difficult problems. The questions below are an informal means of probing those qualities. If you’d like to work with me on a project (either from Rebel Labs or something else), answering one or two of these questions will help give me a sense of β€œresearch compatibility”.

Please send answers to 7@heptar.ch.

  1. You have a pile of warm metal shavings in the shape of a cone. Discuss.
  2. How can a two-level quantum system be used as a gyroscope?
  3. In the sewer beneath the Prague Orloj is a locked box. What’s inside?
  4. Intelligent life evolves from topologically robust quantum matter. Describe its social structure and language.
  5. You control a Dyson sphere around a Kerr black hole. A cat falls in. Can you learn its mass, angle and time of infall from gravitational waves hitting the sphere? How?
  6. What is time? What has it got to do with thermodynamics? Why is it one-dimensional?
  7. George Box said β€œAll models are wrong, but some are useful.” Is this a model?