Will Thomas

@williamthomas.bsky.social

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Director of Research in History, Policy, and Culture - American Institute of Physics

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Will Thomas

OK, I am officially kicking off DOOMSDAY MACHINES, my new blog dedicated to the post-apocalyptic imagination: doomsdaymachines.net/p/welcome-to...

Welcome to DOOMSDAY MACHINESdoomsdaymachines.net Post-apocalyptic Road Trips, End of the World-building, and Interesting Times.

Early-career scholars in the history of the physical sciences: the next AIP conference is taking place in Salvador, Brazil in August 2025. AIP will be providing travel assistance. Call for Papers at the link below!

CfP: Celebrating Physical Sciences & Embracing Diversity: 6th AIP Early-Career Conference for Historians of Physical Sciences, August 4–9, 2025— Salvador, Brazil Submit by Nov 15, 2024. All historiographical perspectives, incl technical, welcome. Qs to [email protected] #philsci #histsci ⚛️

AIPECC25 | Linktreelinktr.ee Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences AIP-UFBA-IUCHPP

Nine-year delay in initial operations, four year delay in full D-T operations (the real goal), €5B-ish in cost increases. Ouch. Tough times for ITER, but the news could have been worse: physicsworld.com/a/iter-fusio...

ITER fusion reactor hit by massive decade-long delay and €5bn price hike – Physics Worldphysicsworld.com Full operation with deuterium and tritium is not expected until 2039

As a historian of RAND, I'll add this is a tough question. The authors feel it had to do with RAND's shift to doing non-defense work and being more exposed to political sensitivities. Maybe, but I'd also say RAND found itself in a rich confluence of developments, and that just never lasts forever.

"RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science and American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think tank?" asteriskmag.com/issues/06/wh...

When RAND Made Magic in Santa Monica—Asteriskasteriskmag.com RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science and American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think ...

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New Fermi problem just dropped.

This belongs in the 🧪 and 🔭 feeds, for the astrophysicist trying to bang out their own model for calculating damages in an antitrust trial.

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Happy 200th William Thomson...the seafarer! A piece on his beautiful tide-predicting machine (a device w/ multi simultaneous independent discoveries) "Because of the complexity of the math involved [in tide prediction], many of these old brass machines remained in use into the 1950" #AnalogComputer

"The leading idea for the design of every machine ought to be the work to be done by it." -Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (b. #OnThisDay in 1824) in an article describing his tide predicter. More via @ieeespectrum.bsky.social: spectrum.ieee.org/tide-predict... #histSTM #Kelvin200 #physics 🗃️📜

Lord Kelvin and His Analog Computerspectrum.ieee.org William Thomson—aka Lord Kelvin—is best known for defining the value of absolute zero. But he loved the sea and made many important contributions to maritime science and technology, including the firs...

Regulatory work has long been a litigational morass. Overturning Chevron deference would take it to a whole new level. Chevron has long been a target of Justice Gorsuch (who, of course, is the son of Reagan's EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch) www.afslaw.com/perspectives...

We're going to be hearing a lot about the SCOTUS case on the Chevron defense soon. This is important. And it's one more reason the Supreme Court theocrats are dangerous. www.scientificamerican.com/article/supr...

Supreme Court’s ‘Chevron Deference’ Decision Could Make Science-Based Regulation Harderwww.scientificamerican.com The Supreme Court is considering the fate of Chevron deference, a 40-year legal principle that has shaped the role of government agencies. The outcome could affect medication approval, pollution regul...

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“Nancy Grace Roman & Early Space Telescopes” is a great link rich tour of fascinating items in the Nancy Grace Roman papers. Particularly fun to see the picture of Roman exploring her own papers in the Niels Bohr Library & Archives reading room. www.aip.org/history-prog...

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired this month. There are proposals to renew it, but they are bogged amid disagreements about their reach. Meanwhile, it is no longer possible to apply for compensation for harms related to nuclear testing and uranium mining ww2.aip.org/fyi/radiatio...

Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Expires Amid Debate Over Eligibility Expansionww2.aip.org Congress is struggling to reach consensus on whether to expand a law that compensates victims of exposures related to the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

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The Spring-Summer issue of the AIP History Newsletter is posted! The cover story, "Last Collider Standing" (by me), collates reflections on the cancellation of the Isabelle collider, the rise of the ill-fated Superconducting Super Collider, and the origins of RHIC... www.aip.org/sites/defaul...

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What a better time to launch a series of 10 posts on the history of the formula economists use to model to future (based on a paper with Pedro Garcia Duarte)? #econsky theundercoverhistorian.substack.com/p/how-econom...

How economists model the future, Season 1, Episode 1theundercoverhistorian.substack.com The uncertain origins of the Ramsey Formula for discounting

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How do LIGO physicists identify sources of anomalous noise originating from the environments of Livingston, LA, and Hanford, WA? This is the focus of my article, “Hidden in Plain Sight” appearing in @hsnatsci.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/hsns... #gravitationalwaves #physics #blackholes #histstm

Hidden in Plain Sight: Discerning Signal from Noise in the Expanded Laboratory Environmentdoi.org What happens when disturbances in precision measurement instruments are indecipherable to physicists despite extensive review of the instruments and their outputs? How do physicists parse instrument o...

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Honored to have a chapter (co-written w/ Tom Turnbull) in the volume Big Science in the 21st Century edited by a team headed by Pano Charitos & Theo Arabatzis. Despite the title, there's a long historical section incl. an impressive line-up of authors... iopscience.iop.org/book/edit/97...

Big Science in the 21st Century - Book - IOPscienceopens in new tabiopscience.iop.org

Did you miss our Trimble event with NASA's John Mather and Mark Clampin last week? You can view it whenever you like on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGte...

Lyne Starling Trimble Lecture Serieswww.youtube.com “The Next Great Space Telescope: Lessons for Success in the Search for Life Outside the Solar System” John Mather (NASA Goddard) and Mark Clampin (NASA HQ) June 5, 2024 5:45 p.m. EDT - Reception 6:30 p.m. EDT - Lecture American Center for Physics - DC 555 12th St. NW, Suite 250 Washington, DC 20004

New at Nautilus: Bob Crease, "How Schrödinger’s Cat Got Famous" --I had no idea about LeGuin's role here

How Schrödinger’s Cat Got Famousnautil.us Fifty years ago, science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin popularized physics’ most enigmatic feline.

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Historians of Science: you may know a resource online, built by the Royal Society of London archivists, Science in the Making. Today, the archivists have unveiled a great addition: the 15,000 letters and other manuscripts of John Herschel (1792-1871). makingscience.royalsociety.org/items/hs/cor...

makingscience.royalsociety.org

This is a great speech, not least since, if you're wondering, "What was the job of the head of astronomy at NASA like on a typical week in the early 1960s?" -- she tells you directly!

The AIP library & archives team shared a great display of items from the Nancy Grace Roman papers at the Trimble Lecture on Wednesday. I love being able to see these hand edits on a draft of her talk “An Astronomer’s Path to Space.” For more on her papers see-> history.aip.org/ead/20000089...

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Tonight, 6:30pm Eastern! Nobel Prize-winner John Mather and NASA Astrophysics Division Director Mark Clampin, "The Next Great Space Telescope: Lessons for Success in the Search for Life Outside the Solar System." Access the livestream here: www.aip.org/history-prog...

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The Historiography of “Hitler’s Atomic Bomb” #openaccess

The Historiography of “Hitler’s Atomic Bomb” - Physics in Perspectivedoi.org This essay analyzes the historiography of the German attempts during the Second World War to develop and harness the economic and military applications of uranium fission as well as the postwar “polit...

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Got the treat of researching in our archive this week, and found a copy of Nancy Roman's 1959 AAS talk, "Planets of Other Suns" speculating on how to image exoplanets. This month, NASA unboxed the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, which will enable just that. #histsci www.nasa.gov/missions/rom...

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Behold THE LAST ISSUE of Isis under @mttlvn.bsky.social & my's editorship. It's been a tremendous ride. We're forever grateful to our editors, editorial assistants, UCP, reviewers, & authors. The best part, of course, has been the friends & enemies we made along the way. #histsci #histtech #histSTM

Isis | Vol 115, No 2www.journals.uchicago.edu

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(This is a May 16 post!) Astronomer Nancy Grace Roman was born #OTD in 1925. After early work in spectral classification and galactic evolution, she became NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy. She did foundational work planning and overseeing the development of the Hubble Space Telescope. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

Join us in DC on June 5: Nobel Prize-winner John Mather and NASA Astrophysics head Mark Clampin discuss: "The Next Great Space Telescope: Lessons for Success in the Search for Life Outside the Solar System.” Not in town? You can watch online, too. #scipol #histsci www.aip.org/history-prog...

We learn by doing! Apologies to anyone who tried to watch via livestream and couldn't. We're happy to make the video of Elly's #histsci lecture available here for the next week: www.youtube.com/watch?v=boEA...

Coming up at 6:30pm Eastern! Elly Truitt, "A Thirteenth-Century Perspective on Optical Science and Experiment: The Case of Roger Bacon" #histsci Livestream here: www.aip.org/history-prog...

Lyne Starling Trimble Lecture Serieswww.youtube.com A Thirteenth-Century Perspective on Optical Science and Experiment: The Case of Roger Bacon”Elly TruittUniversity of PennsylvaniaMay 8, 20246:30 pm EDT555 12...

Coming up at 6:30pm Eastern! Elly Truitt, "A Thirteenth-Century Perspective on Optical Science and Experiment: The Case of Roger Bacon" #histsci Livestream here: www.aip.org/history-prog...

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My fourth book, After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory is now out from University of Michigan Press. If you are curious about it, you can check out this Q&A I did with the press press.umich.edu/Blog/2024/05...

Q&A with After Disruption Author Trevor Owenspress.umich.edu