#FollowFriday: Dr. Ben Tippett (@bnprime)

Ben is a kind gentleman.
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It’s Friday! You know what that means: binge-watching old Pete and Pete reruns and passing out in front of the TV. No? Just us? Well, for the rest of you, it’s also #FollowFriday! That’s where we try to convince you to follow great people on Twitter, and this week that great person is TARDIS-theorizing physicist Dr. Ben Tippett.

Who he is:

Way back in November, we heard about a pair of physicists who wrote a paper about the physics of “Traversable Achronal Retrograde Domains in Spacetime,” and one of them was Dr. Tippett. Yeah, they wrote about spacetime bubbles you can ride inside of and skillfully arranged an acronym for them to read “TARDIS,” because what else would you do as a physicist?

Dr. Tippett is a theoretical physicist and mathematician who earned his PhD at the University of New Brunsick. When he’s not busy delighting nerds by writing papers about Doctor Who, zombies, superhero physics, or Cthulhu, Dr. Tippett does his fair share of podcasting, tweeting, and black hole research. You know—the usual hobbies.

Why you should follow:

Dr. Tippett is one of the great unsung heroes of the Internet, which is what #FollowFriday is really all about. His podcast, The Titanium Physicists Podcast goes over all kinds of scientific subjects with a whole bunch of really smart people, analogies, and humor, and it’s generally a delight—despite the infrequency of its episodes.

(Maybe if everyone follows him on Twitter and starts listening to the podcast, the episodes will become more regular. Only one way to find out.)

His tweets, on the other hand, tend to center more around geek entertainment like a lot of his papers do, which is really fun to see in your feed. Basically, the world could use more Dr. Ben Tippett, and following his geeky musings on Twitter is a great way to start.

Great tweets:

This just in: a physicist says Muppets exist. That’s the correct reading of this, right?

This is probably the strangest (and saddest) diversity statistic we’ve ever seen.

Keep in mind: your professor may be trying his hardest to emulate a Harry Potter character while you are doggedly trying to learn things, because there is no such thing as a grownup.

(via Dr. Ben Tippett @bnprime on Twitter)

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Dan Van Winkle
Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.