Lewis MacKenzie
@lemackz
Upconversion nanoparticles, optical biosensors, chiral spectroscopy, scicomm, blood oxygen | bass player | uranium glass collector Group website: www.mackenzie-lab.org he/him | Glasgow | Expect typos
Viking Ship museum is neat, but in a pinch you can just look at a 100 kroner note
Today in science diagrams that go hard - this paper on where they fire an air gun at a mechanoluminescent material!
This may be in my latest seminar talk, specifically relating to quantum superfluorescence
One of the best first contact stories I've ever read is 'Dawn' by Octavia Butler. A novel about truly alien aliens, bodily autonomy motherhood, amongst other things. It's deeply unsettling and highly recommended.
I'd like to eschew the well known examples and draw attention to "First Contact" by Galactaron. Where a band of aliens come to earth and communicate via music. It's Ghibli meets The Gorillaz and I adore the art and the music. The song "First Contact" in particular 💚 youtu.be/Vb1bwxKHX70?...
New #preprint from my group - using a different polymer molecular weight made our #upconversion nanoparticles ~5X brighter, but the trade-off is FRET efficiency! A nice showcase of our new spectrometer capabilities & a big thanks to excellent collaborators! chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.... #Chemsky
Reminds me of the episode of Doctor Who where a primordial form of Satan is imprisoned on a planet orbiting a black hole so that he can't escape!
The Christophers is an excellent movie and I recommend you go see it!
Picked up a copy of Focus magazine. The article on #mirrorlife is good. The 2 page editorial spread did give me a chuckle though! Our mirror life detection preprint is still making it's way through the peer review system... hope it'll get some press attention when it does!
The Davidson glass works in England really took fluorescence to the next level #uraniumglass
Not mythology per-say, but there was a delightful 1990s BBC TV show called 'Aquila' where a couple of young boys stumble upon a roman-era spaceship and have to figure out numerals etc in order to fly it! Looks like there was also a book at the same time
Another interesting #upconversion paper - latest developments for transparent volumetric RGB displays using sophisticated UCNPs. #nanotech #photonics #chemsky
Updated #preprint on how CPL could be used as an assay for #mirrorlife biohazards chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....
#MirrorLife has made it to the Doomsday Clock 2026! Here's my pre-print discussing how we could detect it before it becomes a big problem, and to underpin future biosecurity legislation! chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.... #chemrxiv #chemsky #bioscience
Super anti-stoked to be at #UPCON 2026 in Brno, Czechia! An entire week of upconversion at the interface of physics, chemistry, and biology! #ucnps #Upconversion #nanotech
For creepy sci-fi puppets, I have to mention - "Stookie Bill" - the real-life puppet who was the subject of the first ever television image by John Logie Baird. Stookie Bill co-starred in a 2023 episode of Doctor Who called "The Giggle", alongside Neil Patrick Harris.
The beach ball alien from Dark Star really is something. There's a direct line of descent from it to Geiger's Xenomorph!
More new additions to my #uraniumglass collection - a beautiful set of candlesticks
A uranium glass shoe ornament - really rare to find one in the UK! #fluoresencefriday
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
What's 2026 like? Do you still use clipart? No, powerpoint now has hundreds of tiny people expressing all sorts of various emotions in high resolution
'Inversions' by Iain M. Banks. I cannot say any more without spoilers, but it is best read as part of the loose tapestry of The Culture series.