The Lab
The personal laboratory, 2021–today: experiments nobody commissioned. Some became systems, some remain questions. All of them are real.
Decoding "A Sign In Space"
In 2023 ESA transmitted a simulated extraterrestrial message from the ExoMars TGO probe, challenging anyone to decode it. My attack: bit-plane visualization of the 256×256 message and an unconventional hypothesis — the message as a program for a single-instruction FlipJump machine, implemented and run on the real data, with the memory evolution animated.
A neural network vs RSA
Can a neural network learn to factor semiprimes? A serious experiment on an impertinent question: multi-input architecture (product bits + square root), outputs over both prime factors, and a custom loss weighted by bit significance. (Spoiler: RSA is safe — but the why is instructive.)
Animated quantum mechanics
A complete sub-lab: time-independent Schrödinger solvers, the Numerov method, Hartree methods for the structure of matter, and the time evolution of interacting identical particles rendered as videos.
Rigid bodies from first principles
A 6DOF simulator written from scratch: Euler equations in the body frame, quaternion attitude integration, constraints implemented from a published derivation — validated on free-fall, pendulum and unstable-axis spin test cases.
Economics emerging from agents
Agent-based models: wealth inequality emerging from simple exchanges, seller-shop markets, and early experiments with orchestrated LLM agents — dated March 2024, before it became fashionable.
A GPT from scratch, in Italian
A GPT-style LLM trained from scratch on an Italian corpus: custom BPE tokenizer, hand-written PyTorch training loop, optimization experiments. Understanding transformers by building one.
Many of these experiments live in private repositories; the code is gladly shown on request.