Tessera

Will Thomas @williamthomas.bsky.social · 5d ago

The Seventh AIP Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences will take place in Toronto, Canada, June 21-25, 2027. Supplementary travel funding provided. The call for submissions is now open and closes November 15. Details here: www.aip.org/history/earl...

Q&A: Peter Galison on his film Shattering Stars

AIP History Weekly Edition: July 31, 2026

aip.org

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 6d ago

Vera Rubin Observatory xkcd.com/3278/

Comic. Vera Rubin Observatory Discoveries: Bingo Card. [5 x 5 bingo card: black hole tidally disrupting a star; Planet Nine; remnants of a former Milky Way companion galaxy, 10,000 new trans-Neptunian objects, object on interstellar trajectory, star being eclipsed by weird object, secret military satellite, Kuiper Belt object that’s a surprising color; Mars-sized TNO, local group supernova, spurious signal from observatory kitchen, glitch in alert system spams all astronomers, space (free), Earth-sized TNO, defunct spacecraft, surprising number of small galaxies, neutron star merger, new supernova constraints on dark energy, new dwarf plane bigger than Pluto/Eris, lost historical comet, 5 million asteroids and comets, 50,000 near-Earth asteroids, object likely to impact Earth, Vera Rubin herself (faked death, stole spaceship), many very small dots.

Will Thomas @williamthomas.bsky.social · 6d ago

A comparative study in cartographic quality

A screenshot of a pair of adjacent Bluesky posts. The first is from Robert McNees, showing Marie Tharp's exquisite maps of the seafloor; the bottom is Josh Marshall quote-posting Eric Geller showing a US government presentation showing a map of Africa with completely mislabeled countries.

AIP's Anna Doel has been reconstructing the networks of institutions and people involved in efforts to broaden participation in the sciences over the last 50+ years. Her latest posted interview is with Shirley Malcom, who led the famous '75 AAAS Double Bind report. repository.aip.org/node/151669

Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · last wk.

As a historian of Jodrell Bank, I agree! And the reason it is important is that it has been made to mean different things to different people at different times. Who's up for a mega thread on how and why? (I'm off for lunch now, but I'll do it after. I'll need the energy...)

Cover of my book Science and Spectacle: the Work of Jodrell Bank in Post-war British Culture

John Grindrod@grindrod.bsky.social · last wk.

Really one of the most important postwar sites in Britain

Jon Agar@jonagar.bsky.social · last wk.

Jon's got his hands on an amazing, newly released file out at Kew today.

Here is a poignant one: it is his Certificate of Naturalization, with an Oath of Allegiance signed by Fuchs in 1942, cancelled in 1950 after the atom spy was caught and convicted

Certificate of Naturalization for Fuchs, stamped CANCELLED in purple ink

Dan Vergano@danvergano.bsky.social · last wk.

Finding someone who's great at both journalism and science policy is tough to do, and Dan's that. I'm so happy about this, for FYI, for Physics Today, and for AIP as a whole.

Some business news: Pleased to announce today was my first day as Director, Science Policy News, at the American Institute of Physics. We're best known for FYI: Science Policy News www.aip.org/fyi the long-running weekly newsletter and news platform for science insiders. More TK.

Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · last wk.

The new Fuchs files are a substantial collection of primary sources on the atom spy. It’s actually a compilation of files to do with his time in prison and afterwards. Some documents of great interest …

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

bbc.co.uk

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 3w ago

“What will the Lovell Telescope discover/enable 20 yrs from now? I can’t tell you, and that’s the point. It will either be something extraordinary that none of us can yet predict, or we will defund it and leave Cheshire with a rusting monument to unfulfilled potential and discoveries never made.” 🔭🧪

Josef Aschbacher @josefaschbacher.esa.int · 2w ago

Based on current information, the Cebreros station appears to have remained unharmed. My deepest thanks go to the Spanish emergency services whose efforts helped protect the site as wildfires approached. Left: 24 July 19:57, Right: 25 July 07:54

Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social · 2w ago

I think Kahn might be making an implicit reference here to the survey that Marxist crystallographer J. D. Bernal and zoologist Solly Zuckerman did of morale in Birmingham and Hull after the Blitz. Their report featured in British debates over area bombing. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

War on fear: Solly Zuckerman and civilian nerve in the Second World War

This article examines the processes through which civilian fear was turned into a practicable investigative object in the inter-war period and the opening stages of the Second World War, and how it wa...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Herman Kahn is fun to read but man, does he make some rather large assumptions about human psychology. Here's a passage from On Thermonuclear War (1960) on how he thinks people would react in New York City if lions started running loose, and what he thinks that tells us about strategic bombing...

"Both the French and the British air power experts talked often and convincingly of the 'knock out blow'' in which the side with the superior air force would win the war in a few days or weeks. We know now that the capability for strategic bombing as it existed then had been exaggerated, but it took three or four years of war to show this convincingly. The British had learned during World War I that a small bombing attack could come close to paralyzing a city. They assumed that in some sense a linear relationship must hold between the size of the attack and the disorganization produced; that if the size of the attack was increased by a factor of a hundred or so, the resulting havoc, destruction, and disorganization would also be increased by a hundred or so. Well, it is not like that. To give a homely example, if we put one lion on the streets of New York City, one might find every other mother paralyzed with fright. She just would not allow her children out on the streets. However, even if one increased the number of lions by five or ten and kept them on the streets permanently, people would soon learn that lions do not eat ..."

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social looks at a new article by Gabriela Rădulescu that draws links between Iosif Shklovsky's ideas about an evolutionary cosmos and support in the USSR for work on interstellar communication.

Article spotlight: Gabriela Rădulescu on Soviet SETI

AIP History Weekly Edition: July 24, 2026

aip.org

Cole Donovan@colesci.bsky.social · 2w ago

I love this very niche topic: the oft-invoked "linear model" strawman was an invention of the 1980s, as @davidedgerton.bsky.social helpfully documented back in 2004. Some insist it is not so, but I agree with David that nobody has ever believed in it. data.isiscb.org/isis/citatio...

Ok, I've seen enough. Like big ideas like "the linear model of innovation no longer holds." Like, no shit. John Holdren was talking about innovation as a complicated series of feedbacks and non-linear more than a decade ago, and I was writing that stuff into speeches at the start of my career.

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ahead of a hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee tomorrow, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released a 120-pg report, "Science: A New Golden Age" www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u... Here's the summary from the press release:

The report organizes its recommendations to government, industry, academia, and philanthropy around four key pillars:

1. Revitalize America’s Science and Technology Enterprise
The R&D enterprise should refocus support on individual scientists rather than legacy institutions, diversify funding mechanisms beyond slow consensus peer review, create agile new research organizations such as X-Labs and expanded ARPA-like entities, and establish metascience units to institutionalize continuous improvement.

2. Secure U.S. Dominance in Critical and Emerging Technologies
Federal R&D should prioritize national mission-driven scientific initiatives that unite government, industry, academia, and philanthropy around ambitious goals. These include the Genesis Mission to double the productivity of American research through AI; the Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science (QC-ADDS); commercial fusion power demonstration by the mid-2030s; crewed lunar return and lunar base development; and next-generation semiconductor technologies.

3. Launch a New Golden Age Powered by AI for Science
The Federal government should fully fund and scale the Genesis Mission as the flagship national AI-for-science initiative to dramatically accelerate discovery; develop domain-specific scientific foundation models and high-value datasets, invest in AI-enabled verification infrastructure and autonomous laboratories; and begin transitioning toward AI-native scientific institutions better suited to an era of machine-augmented research.

4. Ensure That Science and Technology Better the Lives of All Americans
Federal agencies should integrate hands-on technical training and apprenticeships into STEM education, open scientific careers to skilled craftspeople and practitioners, build dense regional innovation clusters that link research with advanced manufacturing, and ensure that the economic returns of discovery reach every region and community in the country.

Kieron Flanagan@kieronflanagan.bsky.social · 2w ago

To me, the fun thing about doing comparative US-UK science policy is how the British insist on reorganizing their science bureaucracy every few years, and the Americans basically have a "coherent organization? whatevs" attitude toward the whole thing.

Is the demise of the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology really the disaster that some commentators are suggesting? The nice people at @resprofnews.bsky.social gave me the space to explain why it really isn’t: www.researchprofessional.com/news-article... #scipolicy

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, we look at a new book by Sveinn Jóhannesson that documents how the US adopted a French model of officer training after the War of 1812. Grounded in mathematical science, it had far-reaching influence on engineering and military policy in the antebellum period.

Book spotlight: Sveinn Jóhannesson on the West Point Enlightenment

AIP History Weekly Edition: July 17, 2026

aip.org

Ben Gross@bhgross144.bsky.social · 3w ago

Weaver's one of my favorite figures to research. You can pick up hints of his Carroll fascination in his writing.

The opening to Weaver's end of World War II report, "Comments on a General Theory of Air Warfare": From the first, it must be clearly emphasized that it is not the purpose of this chapter to present a general theory of air warfare; but rather to give some tentative, and very incomplete and preliminary, ideas of what such a theory could and should comprise; to give some of the arguments for and against attempting to construct and use such a theory; and to indicate how certain activities of the Applied Mathematics Panel and of other agencies relate to a scheme for a broader and more inclusive approach to the problems of air warfare (and of warfare in general).

Warren Weaver, the mathematician & administrator who coined the term "molecular biology," was born #OnThisDay in 1894. Weaver was also a #LewisCarroll fan & owned many translations of the #Alice books. Today researchers can consult his collection @ransomcenter.bsky.social. #booksky #histSTM 📚📜🗃️

Lewis Caroll and L Simon. ʻAlisah be-erets ha-niflaʼot / L. Ḳarol ; ʻIvrit bi-yede L. Siman (Tel Aviv: Omanut, 1952). Harry Ransom Center. Lewis Carroll Collection of Warren Weaver. PR 4611 A7155 1952 WEA.

edith@edithcharles.bsky.social · 3w ago

Josh Safdie's Apology

Chris Nolan has just made The Odyssey, but what other classical works should be made into films, and who should direct them? Greta Gerwig’s Antigone The Coen Brothers’ Metamorphoses Alfonso Cuarón’s Iliad

Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein.bsky.social · 3w ago

Book spotlight: Sveinn Jóhannesson on the West Point Enlightenment

AIP History Weekly Edition: July 17, 2026

aip.org

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asked me to write about 13 films that I thought were essential to understanding the nuclear age… and so I did! And now I am ready for everyone to tell me how wrong I am to have missed their favorite film, which is understandable. thebulletin.org/premium/2026...

Thirteen films that are essential to understanding the nuclear age

A chronological list of the best nuclear Doomsday films shows how the nuclear perspective unfolded from the earliest days to the present.

thebulletin.org

Aaron Bateman @aaronbateman.bsky.social · 3w ago

The declassified 1962 memo for the UK prime minister informing him (in shakespearean prose) that the US accidentally fried Britain's Ariel satellite with its Starfish Prime nuclear test.

Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 3w ago

In addition to the ALLEA statement on the OMB Rule, along comes @royalsociety.org. It’s bad if allied countries’ science academies are freaked out, right?

Response to the consultation on the “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” proposed by the US Office of Management and Budget | Royal Society

Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, responds to the “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” proposed by the US Office of Management and Budget.

royalsociety.org