Rebecca Charbonneau

Special issue spotlight: Shaping a multi-messenger universe AIP History Weekly Edition: January 30, 2026

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social looks at a new issue of Centaurus examining what is and is not distinctive about the new era of "multi-messenger" astronomy.

📷IceCube Laboratory and South Pole Telescope, Moreno Baricevic, IceCube / NSF.

I’m excited to share this opportunity for an early-career social scientist on the @aip.bsky.social research team. Please share with anyone interested in putting social science research skills to work to empower positive change in the physical sciences. workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

Summer Student Research Assistantships

NRAO has summer research opportunities for undergrads!

science.nrao.edu/opportunitie...

Good to know! I think we are about to get some crazy snow here in the DMV this weekend. Going to spend it locked in and finding some aliens 🫡

My husband got me it for Christmas! Can’t wait to try it out!

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practice The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practice, Wright, Jason T

My textbook on SETI is published!

I hope you like it!

Please see if your libraries offer a free download—mine does!

iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/97...

🧪🔭

I love her biography! Great read.

History and the governance of the Royal Observatory AIP History Weekly Edition: January 9, 2026

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, we look at recent articles by @rhiggitt.bsky.social and Yuto Ishibashi, which show how record-keeping, history, and institutional governance intertwined during the centuries-long evolution of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

Oh my goodness I have been wondering the same thing!!

NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts

tragic news for historians of astronomy...

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...

A New Year’s open-access smorgasbord AIP History Weekly Edition: January 2, 2026

It can sometimes feel like the history of the physical sciences is on its back foot. The AIP History Weekly Edition set out to show that, globally, there's so much going on that you can talk about it weekly and not get to everything. Here's some of what we couldn't get to in 2025. #histsci

Article Spotlight: Peter Pesic on Einstein’s socks AIP History Weekly Update: December 26, 2025

Before the holiday break, @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social queued up a spotlight on Peter Pesic's @physicspip.bsky.social article on Einstein's sockless ways. It addresses not only Einstein's motivations, but also the cultural reasons behind why it was a topic of fascination www.aip.org/history/pete...

A diagram of Carl Kocher's apparatus to test photon correlation, which John Clauser and Stuart Freedman later adapted for their test of Bell's theorem.

The semiannual AIP History Newsletter is out! The feature article highlights a surge in scholarship around experiments on quantum entanglement. The topic is most associated with tests of Bell's theorem but the history predates and is broader than those efforts.
aip.brightspotcdn.com/83/0f/cc825f...

Article spotlight: The “violent universe” and modern astrophysics AIP History Weekly Edition: December 5, 2025

Luisa Bonolis and Stefano Furlan have a pair of articles in European Physical Journal H on the emergence of scientists' understanding of the universe as awash in physically extreme phenomena. @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social looks at how this shift in perspective transformed the culture of astronomy.

Come work with us at Penn State!

The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is hiring postdocs, and welcomes applicants who can make connections with its sibling centers like @pseticenter.bsky.social doing SETI, Astrobiology, and Planetary Systems Science:

aas.org/jobregister/...

We've squeezed in one last AIP Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event for 2025. Come to our DC location at 6pm on Wednesday, December 10 to catch David DeVorkin's lecture, "The Quiet Genius of George Carruthers."

RSVP here:
www.aip.org/history/davi...

🔭

Rebecca Charbonneau discusses Project Ozma at HSS 2025

Hello again, #HSS2025! Despite the Sheraton's weird elevator system, I've made it to the Oak Alley Room for a panel on Astronomical Futures during the #ColdWar.

Our 1st speaker, @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social, is discussing the history of #SETI, including Project Ozma.

www.seti.org/research/set...

Selection of new books on display in the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Library. Eleven volumes arranged on a stand. Featured titles include: Looking at Women Looking at War - Victoria Amelina, The Last Days of Budapest - Adam LeBor, The Last Peasant War - Jakub Benes, Contemporary Russia - Edwin Bacon, Narratives of the Russo-Ukrainian War - Oleksandr Pankieiev, Putin's Digital Front and the Truth Behind - Steven Broschart, Mixed Signals: Alien Communication across the Iron Curtain - Rebecca Charbonneau, Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, Literary Consumption, Memory and Identity, Their Faraway Home: The Story of Croats in New Zealand through publications, Kino Polonia, A Voice from the Lost Town of Trochenbrod.

Hope everyone had a good break over Easter. We're back to our regular opening hours from today: Monday-Friday 09:00-21:00, Saturday 10:00-17:00. Don't forget to check out our #NewBooks display if you are in the Library! 📚📚😊

In memoriam: Margaret Walsh Rossiter, pathbreaker in “writing women into science” AIP History Weekly Edition: October 24, 2025

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, guest contributor Don Opitz looks at the multitudinous scholarly and professional contributions of the late Margaret Rossiter in creating a historiography of women in science. #HPS

🚀 We’re hiring a 3-year Postdoctoral Fellow in history of science/STS to join my team at the American Institute of Physics! If you're looking for a fellowship opportunity in the history of the physical sciences post-1850, please see our ad for more details: workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

Policy primer: A new $100,000 fee on H-1B Visas President Trump has issued a proclamation requiring a $100,000 payment for each new H-1B petition. We examine what it does and does not do, how it is being justified, and what developments to look out...

At AIP we've launched a new policy research program to go deep on current questions and pull together more comprehensive pictures. Leading this work, Lindsay Milliken has produced her first public product, a primer on the new $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions.

Physical Science Careers Disrupted Documenting the Impact of Federal Funding & Policy Changes

📣 AIP's Niels Bohr Library and Archives is collecting personal stories from scientists, engineers, students & others in the physical sciences whose careers have been impacted by recent U.S. policy & funding changes. Learn more about how to get involved here ->
www.aip.org/library/ex-l...

August 2025 AIP History August Update

The August edition of the AIP History Monthly is out—and it’s packed with exciting updates, new resources, and ways to get involved in preserving and interpreting the history of the physical sciences. -> www.aip.org/history/aip-...

The successes and challenges of US–Soviet scientific communication Research exchanges between US and Soviet scientists during the second half of the 20th century may be instructive for navigating today’s debates on scientific collaboration.

Despite working in a time of tense diplomatic relations, proxy wars, and budget cuts, many US and Soviet scientists collaborated productively during the 1970s and 1980s, writes Anna Doel. Prior exchanges help better understand the challenges to scientific cooperation today.

https://bit.ly/4neNFWQ

Huge thank you to AIP (@aip.bsky.social) History and Rebecca Charbonneau (@rebeccacharbon.bsky.social) for spotlighting my latest article! 🤩 #ligo #physics #history #histstem

YouTube video by AIP History Tiffany Nichols : An Eclectic Array of Expertise:The Federal-Level Site Selection History of LIGO

For the fuller story of how NSF took over site selection and decided to place the detectors at Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, check out Tiffany's lecture here at AIP this past spring

From radio with love: A Cold War astronomical collaboration To construct an interferometer with a baseline spanning the planet, US radio astronomers reached out to their Soviet counterparts.

AIP historian @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social has a new article out in @physicstoday.bsky.social looking at a US-Soviet collaboration in the 1960s to combine observations of radio telescopes across the globe, a powerful early initiative in very long baseline interferometry.

Article spotlight: When LIGO might have been in Maine AIP History Weekly Edition: August 22, 2025

In this week's history newsletter from AIP, @rebeccacharbon.bsky.social spotlights the new article by @tiffanynichols.bsky.social in Isis, digging into the rise and fall of an early proposal to site a @ligo.org detector in Maine's Blueberry Barrens.

From radio with love: A Cold War astronomical collaboration To construct an interferometer with a baseline spanning the planet, US radio astronomers reached out to their Soviet counterparts.

I wrote a short article on my research in the history of VLBI for Physics Today this week :-) pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...