Jennifer Rittenhouse West, PhD
LightNews LightNews
banner
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Jennifer Rittenhouse West, PhD
@rittenhousewest.bsky.social
500 followers 200 following 670 posts
Theoretical particle physicist running around this world. She/her. Anti-fascist. Will you be pulling up?

Me: https://rittenhousewest.github.io
Also me: https://sites.google.com/view/rittenhousewest
Posts Replies Media Videos
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
No translations of the Adventures of Little Onion tonight BUT here is Cipollino himself, from p.11, right about where we are in the text. Gianni Rodari 💜 Illustrated by Manuela Santini 💝 He has a hanky on a stick!!! Just how I feel so often. Also note my nails, kinda e^ i pi =0, to cheer me up 💘
A photo of an illustration in an Italian children's book by Gianni Rodari, the book is Le Avventure Di Cipollino, and the illustration is of a little onion boy with a hanky full of things tied to a stick, it is resting on his shoulder and he is walking through a nice garden/forest/some kind of nature path, clouds in the sky behind him. He has pink pants on and a pink and brown striped shirt. His head looks like an onion, it is an onion. He is smiling. There is a big hand holding the book, you can see 4 fingers holding down the page to be photographed. The fingernails have been painted, no colors but just an "e" and a pi and an i and a 0. It is cute, in my opinion (it is my hand).
November 12, 2025 at 1:21 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Rolling through Tuscany, to a workshop for Italian theorists, dirty train windows but so beautiful & peaceful...on my way home from Como 2 days ago a giant rock fell onto the train tracks in front of the train prior to mine, no one hurt, took ages to get home...my talk on Friday, must write it 💜
Bright green Italian countryside as seen through blurry and smudged train window - blue skies above a bright bright green vineyard, a white pebbled path cuts across the photo horizontally near the bottom...green grass above and below the pebble path....farmhouse blurry but visible to the left, scattered dark green trees around...somewhere in Tuscany, taken from Trenitalia train from Firenze to Cortona...
September 30, 2025 at 8:55 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Thinking thinking thinking. On the shores of Lake Como for a set of memorial concerts, such good darling interesting people here & grey blue rainy skies with the steel blue lake, I can't believe it...deep breaths and just for some moments feeling that it is so good and incredible just to be alive 💜
Stone wall with stone railing on the shore of Lake Como...a ferry boat in the middle distance on the lake, the far shore goes up in hills and clouds sit on top of the hills...all is bright and clear but it is a rainy misty day too, so the few green trees on the left really pop out as do the little pieces of red on the ferry, maybe they are life vests but I cannot see what they are exactly...the rest is ivory grey black stone with steely grey blue water and dark grey far shores...gorgeous....
September 26, 2025 at 11:55 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Oh boy, September here we come. Turin in August, being adorable & captivating, as ever, plus a bottle of 1979 wine that two little old shopkeepers told me was 115 euros then asked me how much I had in my pocket to spend, I pulled out a 20 laughing and they swapped!! Deep breath, onward & upward....
A brightly lit after-sunset piazza, Piazza Carlo Emanuele II as a matter of fact, in Torino near the center of the city...a big tree plus some other trees in the center of the photo, buildings ring the piazza on 3 sides (actually on 4 sides but the photographer has to stand somewhere, if she is not a drone, and she is not a drone) - sky is bright dark blue, you can see tiny people at tiny tables beyond the trees, sitting outside at the cafes and restaurants, plus a few cars on the right and a row of scooters parked on the left. A hand is holding a bottle of 1979 Barbera D'Asti wine, even back then they had bio-organic etc. wines, apparently, because the label seems to indicate it is one of the natural type wines (I should translate the Italian but I haven't done that yet). Behind the old bottle, in the blurry background, is a stovetop looking like it is in the middle of dinner prep, a saucepan on the left has bright green things simmering, a pasta pot on the right is not yet boiling...it is a nice cosy photo I think
August 29, 2025 at 4:50 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
CERN theory: Senior man tells me I cannot visit for reasons. The next day he accepts an identical request from my colleague (a man). My colleague asks if he can invite a collaborator (me), is told it is no problem by the senior man. My experience since then doesn't indicate the 1980s is in the past.
Email from senior physicist at CERN explaining why it isn't possible for a visit to occur - request was sent by a woman particle theory PhD student. The next day the same request was granted to a male postdoc, who requested that an anonymous PhD student (gender not defined) be allowed to visit, that request was granted right away. Only afterward did the senior physicist find out it was a woman.
August 1, 2025 at 6:35 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Sardines & Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca" in Croatia, back home by Tuesday...quiet little grandma studio flat near Old Town, visiting one of my young nephews who asked me to come see him (first trip to Europe & solo)..walked for ages, did physics in the flat, all gorgeous, combination of grand & humble 💜
Cathedral of Saint Domnius towering above, built in 340 AD, ahead a brightly lit ancient building with opera singers on a stage, they are singing arias from Puccini's "Tosca" - it is night time and the square in front of the stage is full of people, gorgeous pale stone buildings ring the square... Golden light in a pale stone corridor entrance to a restaurant in Split, Croatia....a black sign says (in English) FRESH GRILLED SARDINES and they were amazing and delicious, I ordered a plate of them....
July 30, 2025 at 10:15 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
From North Carolina, with love and solidarity (we the people!! of the people, by the people, for the people!!)
Red orange fireworks in a blue gray sky above the Atlantic Ocean on the left and marshy sand dunes on the right... Red fireworks against a black sky with bright green smaller fireworks dotted inside the red streaks...
July 5, 2025 at 4:44 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Beautiful periodic chart of the elements, created by Prof. Jennifer Johnson, funded by ESA, NASA 🛟, AASNova (that is the European Space Agency and the US space agency ❤️)...so many good things come from collective dedication to learning and curiosity...also this thing is educational for me, I love it
An image of the periodic table of elements with the title "The Origin of the Solar System Elements" created by astrophysicist Jennifer Johnson, with her credit and image credits at the bottom. The image credits are ESA/NASA/AASNova and I assume that means the funding for these discoveries and Prof. Johnson and publicizing this chart came at least partially from all three. The legend shows "big bang fusion," "merging neutron stars," "dying low mass stars," "cosmic ray fission," "exploding massive stars," "exploding white dwarfs" and each element is color coded to the labels, with many elements have multiple colors, for example Lithium, which has pink for "cosmic ray fission" but just a bit of pink, maybe 10 percent, and yellow for "dying low mass stars," over 50 percent, and blue for "big bang fusion" which looks to be about 20 percent.
May 19, 2025 at 3:18 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Turin in the spring...every day this little city lifts my spirits 💛
Photo of a billboard advertising a play called "Guerre e Paci" in big yellow letters, the billboard is glass and it reflects the city buildings in front of it plus the physicist who is taking the photo, she looks kind of happy, plus a tree dangling its branches along the top and left corner in the reflection...all sunset yellows and oranges, warm red brick buildings...
April 30, 2025 at 10:47 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Strange days indeed. Usually I take a scooter or bus at least part of the way home from my office, it takes a solid hour to walk it. But recently I do walk home, sometimes I trudge ❤️ Yesterday I turned around to look back along the Po, towards the university...birds flying and the jaggy Alps 🥹
View of the River Po just after sunset, the river is glassy orange and is a wide stripe through the middle of the image...we are looking south along the Po and the beautiful dark shadowy trees run along both sides of the river, city lights and dark buildings are visible in the distance, the river is very broad but curves away to the left of the image...in the furthest distance, roughly three horizontal lines of mountains - the Alps - are visible, they are light light blue/grey with a touch of orange, as you look further, each mountain row becomes lighter and paler, with the mountaintops in the last row jagged against the bright soft orange pink sky. Turin in the spring.
April 9, 2025 at 1:01 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Democracy threatened, our tools are COURAGE, THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD & THE CONSTITUTION.

By Carl Sagan, speaking to the Illinois state chapter of the ACLU. He would be thanking @booker.senate.gov & @chrismurphyct.bsky.social too!!
Fragment of a speech by Carl Sagan to the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, most strengthening: "Despite our best efforts, some things we believe are probably wrong. We certainly are very keen on recognizing the errors of past times and other nations. Why should our nation, why should our time, be different? If there are things that we believe, if there are institutions in our society that are in error, imperfectly conceived or executed, these are potential impediments to our survival. How do we find the errors? How do we correct them? I maintain: with courage, the scientific method, and the Constitution. Sooner or later, every abuse of power must confront the Constitution. The only question is how much damage has been done in the interim. Now, it’s no good to have such rights if they’re not used: a right of free speech when no one challenges the government; a right of assembly when there are no protests; universal suffrage when much less than half the eligible electorate votes, and so on. It is not enough merely to have these rights in principle; we must exercise them in practice."
April 1, 2025 at 12:39 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Walking to the physics department along the River Po 🩵 beautiful days...
View of the river Po in the sunshine...a stone bridge stretches across the river, very pretty stone arches underneath with the river passing through....looking to the south and east, across from Piazza Vittorio Veneto I think....
March 28, 2025 at 10:17 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Room with a view, so beautiful with my moody tree. Gorgeous nights and mornings in Torino 💙
Early just about pre-sunrise view out a giant window - in the foreground a giant dark tree with lots of branches, lots of small tight leaves like some kind of mutant evergreen (I never saw trees like this at home) and then the pale grey shadow blue sky behind it...an opening through the branches shows a small pale ivory yellow crescent moon...the bottom of the photo is all black, buildings in the dark dawn...
March 26, 2025 at 1:18 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Up you go! 💚
Cross walk sign in Turin, Italy, either a green person striding along - the person is not aligned perpendicular to the earth, as one would be if actually crossing the street, but is tilted such that it appears to stride towards the sky...very adorable!
March 16, 2025 at 4:23 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Turin the past few days, walking in rain and sun ❤️ often very peaceful and I really love the street crossing signs, some were installed crooked so the green walker seems to ascend towards the sky (or descend to Moria) and the red stopped walker is being shot into space - deeply pleases me ✨
La Mole in Torino, lit up bright burgundy red , night all around, street lamps shine on the street in front of her... Night time street scene in Turin, Italy. A street light is visible with the red "do not cross" symbol for pedestrians, here it is a bright red person standing still - but the light was installed such that the person is not standing vertically, like an actual person, but is tilted as if being shot from a rocket. It is quite darling. Neon cafe lights and the promenade in front of Martini cafe in Turin. Warm pinks and reds illuminate the slightly dim rainy day scene.
March 16, 2025 at 4:19 AM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
#TakeDownTheTen these Democrats must go, period.
Arya Stark from Game of Thrones, the TV show, played by Maise Williams....she has her sword Needle in her hand and a dark grey fighting blouse on....she is basically what I am becoming now
March 14, 2025 at 9:42 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Boboli Garden in Florence....absolutely restorative. Misty Saturday walking and thinking 🕊️
A view of one area of the Garden of Boboli in Florence, Italy. Dark green trees rise up super tall and there is a clearing in the center, diffuse sun on the grass in the center makes it bright light green...a bit misty...both regal and very inviting tree lined path in Boboli Gardens....the trees meet at the top so it is effectively a covered path... tall lush green hedges line a path in Boboli Gardens...in the distance, at the end of the path, an ancient marble bust, quite big and quite weathered, is seen. You are presented with two paths in Boboli Gardens, Firenze, Italia. The one on the left is wide and has hoops of greenery covering it, but not thickly. The light still comes in. The one on the left is narrow and not so straight, it ambles up a small hill with no covering
February 22, 2025 at 11:24 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Florence with the river Arno and Ponte Vecchio in the distance...this is from a bus stop on a hill, I had to drag myself to a grocery store for food and water but there were upsides...I can't wait to actually walk on that bridge..also I want to see Galileo's house 🕯️
View of the Ponte Vecchio across the Arno river in Florence, from a small hill nearby...misty pastel daytime colors, muted but very pretty...
February 21, 2025 at 7:13 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Walking from the train station to the hotel near the Galileo Galilei Institute (GGI ❤️), got the flu but I was sick in Florence and had to get back to Turin for legal stuff for 1 day, could not miss it no matter what...but in the end, peaceful. More physics here next week, when my mind is stronger ✨
View of the river Arno in Florence, Italy, at night, water dark blue grey black in foreground and warm yellow lighted buildings along the river banks to the left and right...in the distance we see the Ponte Vecchio, this version of the bridge from about 1340, the only bridge in Florence not destroyed in World War II (by the departing Germans in August 1944)....
February 21, 2025 at 7:07 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
The poetry window in the new flat…pyjamas over a plastic chair and QCD textbook on the table…this place is damn expensive and has noise insulation that is complete shite but there is a mood to it that really suits me, either despite or partially because it is so small (one room only ❤️)
View out of a tall window of a beautiful big tree, hard to see what kind of tree it might be as it is clearly evening, but the way it fills the whole window frame is quite beautiful, tons of dark green branches and leaves against ambient night lights in an apartment complex
February 1, 2025 at 8:29 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Walking walking walking in Turin…passed one of my favorite book shops, I love this city. Rainy today after a long move yesterday into a new teeny tiny flat - this big moody tree outside one window, the flat overall is quite dim and yet….and yet 🌦️🌈
Photo of the cover of an Italian book in a store window in Torino, Italia - the cover shows a darling guy with full beard pointing what looks to be a rose directly at the camera, but the way he is pointing it and his fierce gaze makes you think of a gun, not a rose, but it is a flower…the title of the book is WE ARE THE REVOLUTION and the subtitle is Art in Italy 1967-1977
February 1, 2025 at 8:21 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Walking to work today ❤️ Deep breath. Was using fortran code today, FORTRAN, & me an analytical physicist with a numerical…not crutch, but cross check. But I love the project and awesome collaborators so it is fun. I need to do something for other people on the 20th. Or just pick up trash? Anything.
A long stone wall along the river Po in Turin, Italy, with graffiti and other beautiful bright art work painted on it. Near the physics department in San Salvario.
January 16, 2025 at 10:55 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
Cagliari, Sardinia right before the holiday break - was invited to talk about entangled quarks - the best questions at my talk (did I already write about this? I'm getting déjà vu ✨)
Notice for a high energy physics colloquium by Jennifer Rittenhouse West (ie me!) at the University of Cagliari - the title is "Entangled Quarks Across Distance Scales: Diquark Formation and Hidden-Color State Effects from Colliders to the Cosmos" and then an abstract follows, with emails for the organizers and the speaker...
December 28, 2024 at 10:49 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
my shadow as I look out over Lake Como, late December evening, 2024 (near Varenna)…
clear lake with gorgeous stones visible in the foreground shallow water, evening photo looking over Lake Como, Italy
December 28, 2024 at 8:19 PM
rittenhousewest.bsky.social
The most beautiful adventure up to Lecco and Corenno…emotionally not at at all easy but the beauty around Lago di Como is just incredible and incredibly soothing…will go back alone and breathe 💜
Corenno a town along the coast of Lago di Como, a beautiful tiny harbor with dark blue water in the foreground and a short stone cliff and houses on the right…late afternoon light with the slope of a small mountain in the distance across the lake Corenno sunset, a boat on the sand and mountains in the distance across the lake Corenno at sunset steep stairs going up in a narrow stone street in Corenno, Italy, a coastal town right on Lake Como
December 28, 2024 at 8:17 PM