The Edge of Space-Time

Archive

A Call to *All* Scientists from Particles for Palestine

a poster that says particles for palestine support palestine science

Since I last wrote about Why Scientists Must Stand with Palestinians, several thousand Palestinians have been murdered by a violent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. The hospital infrastructure has been completely destroyed, multiple universities appear to be completely destroyed, and there is a water crisis. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers appear to have free range in the West Bank, where IDF has also been involved as a colonial occupier.I CHARGE GENOCIDE!

Particles for Palestine Launches Call to Support Palestine

This week I joined with a multiracial, multiethnic, and multinational group of 15 high energy physicists (particle physicists and quantum gravity physicists) to call for a ceasefire, support and promotion of Palestinian science and scientists, and robust support for academic freedom, including to protest Israeli apartheid. You'll find the document has careful citation, so it's also an opportunity learn more about what is happening.

#33
November 17, 2023
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Why Scientists Must Stand with Palestinians

the rubble of buildings in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal area in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. (source)

“On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die after a long life and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning.” — Unetanneh Tokef (ונתנה תקף)

Every year during the High Holy Days, I join fellow Jews around the world in reciting the Unetanneh Tokef. This piyyut — a Jewish liturgical poem — is an homage to the awesome power of G-d to judge humans and determine the outcomes of our lives. While I do not believe in a supernatural G-d, as a reconstructionist Jew, I find the concept to be a useful framework to think with: that which is greater than ourselves, with wisdom beyond our reach.

For the last two weeks the phrase “who will live and who will die” has been on a loop in my brain and seemingly on my Twitter account too. Because the Untanneh Tokef proclaims that only G-d determines who will live and who will die. This is a decision that is above the pay grade of any humans. And for me that is the context of how to think about what has happened not just over the last few weeks but also the last 75 years, since the State of Israel formed through the Nakba (النكبة), the Palestinian experience of catastrophic dispossession.

#32
October 22, 2023
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Welcome to The Edge of Space-Time

Hi Friends!

You're getting this email from Buttondown because I've migrated away from Substack, who suck, as a company. Since I don't have paid subscriptions, this involves making a move from a (venture capital-backed) free service to one with a monthly cost. I'm glad I can afford this without any concerns. Even so, I am considering whether I will activate some kind of tip jar (maybe later). In the meantime, you can always send a bit my way by shopping for books through my Bookshop affiliate store. This has the added benefit of sharing profits with local, independently-owned bookstores (which you should shop directly, if you have the option). If you'd like to try Buttondown too, use my referral link to sign up.

I don't expect much to change for you, except you'll visit me at buttondown.email by navigating to newsletter.chanda.science or buttondown.email/chanda. My archives have been imported, so you should be able to find old newsletters here.

This is a bit of a relaunch because I'm now working on another book, tentatively titled The Edge of Space-Time, and I thought it was time to give "The Disordered Cosmos" a rest after using it since I started my first blog around 2007.

#31
July 31, 2023
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On Getting Tenure

Dear Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, I am pleased to report that your promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure was approved by the Educational Excellence Committee of the Board of Trustees at the recommendation of President Dean. I would like to offer you my sincere congratulations and to thank you for the contributions you have made to the University of New Hampshire. This appointment is effective at the beginning of your appointment period (July 1, 2023 for FY; August 21, 2023 for AY). Best wishes for continued success. Sincerely, Wayne E. Jones Jr. Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

caption...

Yesterday, the academic excellence committee of the trustees of the University System of New Hampshire approved the President’s recommendation to promote me to Associate Professor with tenure. This brought to an end a journey that I’ve been on since I was 11, when one of Stephen Hawking’s graduate students responded to my e-mailed query about how to become a theoretical physicist. There are many people to thank for their support of me on this journey, including my family, my friends, my committee, the late Karsten Pohl and the late Julie Williams, my other colleagues including the administrative staff at my home institution of UNH as well as MIT (where I am a research affiliate), and the many people who mentored me, wrote letters for me, talked through problems with me, promoted my work, read and shared my book, and collaborated with me, most especially the early career members of my research group. Thanks to this community, I am the first Black woman in North America — and possibly the world — to earn tenure in either particle theory or cosmology theory.

I earned tenure primarily on the basis of a body of work that includes notable contributions at the intersection of theoretical particle physics and astrophysics to our understanding of axion dark matter and how it might shape observable structure formation. Value was almost certainly placed on my ability to bring in almost half a million dollars to fund this research, most of which went to paying the salaries of early career researchers, who I got credit for training. I was also judged on my more minor contributions to research on neutron star structure, an award-winning book for general audiences that is now taught in classrooms around the country, and a well-regarded interdisciplinary body of service and peer-reviewed research that touched on questions relating to race, gender, ethics, justice, and diversity in science — on dreams deferred.

#27
June 23, 2023
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The Edge of Space-Time is coming!

PublishersMarketplace Deal Report Non-fiction: Science/Technology June 1, 2023 LA Times Book Prize-awarded author of THE DISORDERED COSMOS and theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME, a literary tour, drawing on popular culture from hip-hop to Star Trek, through the astonishing mysteries of space-time, from foundational questions in quantum physics to what it means to take Black feminism into space, making a powerful case for the imaginative value of looking at the universe from the margins, to Maria Goldverg and Lisa Lucas at Pantheon, at auction, by Jessica Papin at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret (world). Rights: ssmith@penguinrandomhouse.com

Hello Party People!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a more personal note. A lot has happened as late, including that the owners/creators of Substack continue to be totally fine with hate speech on this platform, Apartheid Clyde has blocked Substack previews on Twitter in retaliation for Substack’s development of Notes, and I really want to find a new platform and am intrigued by but uncertain about the new Wordpress newsletter platform. All of this to say, you may wake up one morning and find out that I have moved this mailing list to a new platform. (Beehiiv is one place I’m thinking about, and Button Down is another.)

BUT IN MORE EXCITING NEWS … The Edge of Space-Time is coming! I’m writing a another book and will be working with editor Maria Goldverg and publisher Lisa Lucas at Pantheon Books. I am OVER THE MOON about the publishing team, and I think they will help me write a book that feels welcoming and accessible to all people, whether math and science made you anxious as a kid, or you already know that you’re a huge geek.

#26
June 2, 2023
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How This Lawyer Confronts Sexual Assault on Campus

people raising their hands
Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

I first met Olympias Iliana Konidaris at her brother’s wedding, where she gave a great toast that affirmed all of my complaints about him (he, a fellow astrophysicist, is one of my best friends). Obviously, I thought she was great. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that Iliana (as I know her) was also a rising star on the legal scene. Not only had she run her own law firm which specialized in Title IX cases, but now as managing counsel for the New York office of The Fierberg National Law Group, she has been named to 2021 Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in Civil Rights Law. She’s also co-chair of the New York City Bar Association Sex and Law Committee. Anyone who talks to Iliana about her work can tell immediately that addressing gendered discrimination and violence in academic settings is a passion project for her.

Confronting and ending sexual assault on campus is essential: nearly 1 in 5 women will experience an assault while in college, while nearly 1 in 20 college men will experience an assault.1 Research shows that trans and other LGBTQ+ students face unique challenges when it comes to rape culture, but there is insufficient data to capture the full picture.

Over the years, Iliana and I have traded information: me as an academic, her as a lawyer who specializes in academic cases. I wanted to share what I was learning with the world. Below is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation about her work supporting survivors, where she shares her rationale for why people should go to their campus Title IX office, how disability services can help, and why you should consult a lawyer before you tweet “X is a harasser” (reason: so that you can do it in the smartest possible way). As I write in The Disordered Cosmos, I was raped during my first year in grad school. The questions I asked are not mere hypotheticals to me. This is a long read, but even if you can’t do it in one sitting, bookmark it! There’s a lot here, and I hope you find it useful. Please share widely if you do. People need to know! — cpw

#25
March 30, 2023
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Against a Milquetoast Politics of Integration

people marching holding signs that say "no pride in apartheid" "free palestine" and "queers against israeli apartheid"
This is Edmonton Pride in 2011. As a grad student who was finding her queer political footing, I was involved in a similar group in Toronto. source

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. — Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

The thing about chemicals is that sometimes people talk about them in kind of silly ways. Like, “I don’t like to drink stuff with a lot of chemicals in it!” Problem is, water is a chemical, and humans are more water than anything else. As a scientist, it’s easy to get picky about this. But the reality is, intuitively we often understand what people mean: they don’t trust artificial chemicals (and other possible toxins) because there have been so many stories over the years about the government and corporations allowing people to be slowly poisoned by them. This week the big story is about East Palestine, Ohio, where a train derailment lead to a spill and fire involving vinyl chloride, an essential ingredient in PVCs.

We are left with a series of questions: is it safe to go home? What could and should have been done to prevent it? Are the physical ailments people are experiencing a sign of worse to come? Will East Palestine, OH be a cancer cluster in 10, 15, or 20 years? Are the animal deaths residents are reporting a coincidence or related to the strong chlorine smell they’ve also been reporting? I think we mostly don’t know the answer to these questions. It may legitimately be safe to go home; and also, given US history, I understand why people are skeptical of what they’re being told, too.

#24
February 14, 2023
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Signal Boost: *The Movement to #RenameJWST Is About More Than One Person*

A new statement about last week’s NYT fiasco has been released by Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, Dr. Sarah Tuttle, and Dr. Brian Nord. I had no hand in writing this, but felt it was important to share since it adds further context to what was wrong with the NYT piece, including erasing their own roles in the #RenameJWST movement. It begins:

Last week, the NY Times published an article by columnist Michael Powell, titled “How Naming the James Webb Telescope Turned Into a Fight Over Homophobia.” Rather than a work of unbiased journalism, this article was an op-ed intended to attack our colleague and friend, Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Although we have submitted a letter to the editor, the 175-word limit is not enough to tackle the sizable mess the NY Times made by publishing Powell’s error-riddled screed. In the statement that follows, we aim to make several points clear (and further expand on each below):

  • Powell’s “article” is a flimsy, error-riddled opinion piece. In contrast to the movement to #RenameJWST, which is based on a full and thorough review and analysis of information related to the telescope naming decision, and the historical record about both James Webb and anti-LGBT government activity at the time, neither Powell’s published opinion nor the NASA report ask enough questions–or the right ones–to defend the assertions and claims contained within them. Instead, Powell’s piece is part of his attempt to style himself as a culture warrior. The article singles out Professor Prescod-Weinstein by denigrating her leadership in physics research, and by attempting to twist the various facets of her identity into a weapon that makes her vulnerable to attack. The factual errors and poor analysis in Powell’s article are symptoms of the fact he is unqualified to have written it in the first place: Until early 2020, Powell’s beat at the NY Times was sports. In the early months of the pandemic, however, his writing shifted into works on race, free speech, and civil rights– all written from now-familiar soap boxes favored by right-wing talking heads: e.g., that “cancel culture” has run amok, that free speech is under attack, and that critical race theory is inciting fury by discussing how conceptions of race can shape society. The only thing these arguments have in common with sports is that they follow a predictable playbook. 

  • Powell’s article attempts to reframe the debate over whose historical legacies merit a $10 billion monument into a spat between two individuals, Professor Prescod-Weinstein, and Professor Hakeem Oluseyi. However, the movement to #RenameJWST is not a single person. It was spearheaded by four of us (Lucianne Walkowicz, Sarah Tuttle, Brian Nord, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein), but there are also nearly two thousand signatories on the renaming petition, including many leading scientists in the field. 

  • As a Black, Jewish, queer, agender woman, Professor Prescod-Weinstein has been singled out for harassment– for years, but also specifically by Powell’s article– for her steadfast questioning of the decision to name the telescope after James Webb. But she did not act alone, and does not stand alone: we categorically reject the torrent of hatred unleashed upon her, and will continue to speak out with her and in her defense. 

In the following sections, we provide some of the fact-checking that we would otherwise have expected from a major paper like the NY Times. Sources are provided throughout, and we encourage readers to look at those. 

For the rest, check out for the full statement.

The following statement was written by myself, Dr. Sarah Tuttle, and Dr. Brian Nord.  Last week, the NY Times published an article by columnist Michael Powell, titled “How Naming the James Webb Telescope Turned Into a Fight Over Homophobia.” Rather than a work of unbiased journalism, this article was an op-ed intended to attack our colleague and friend, Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Although we have submitted a letter to the editor, the 175-word limit is not enough to tackle the sizable mess the NY Times made by publishing Powell’s error-riddled screed. In the statement that follows, we aim to make several points clear (and further expand on each below):

#23
December 29, 2022
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NYT Exploits Black Physicists for Culture War Clicks

"in the age of information ignorance is a choice" people holding brown wooden signage during daytime

Photo by Alex Motoc on Unsplash

12/20/2022 5:32 PM ET Update: It turns out that this is not the first time a Powell has specifically come after a woman assistant professor. It seems there’s a template.

12/29/2022 4:33 PM ET Update: There are four people behind #RenameJWST, and I am just one of them. The other three have published a statement at that further highlights the factual errors and misrepresentations in the NYT, including baseless accusations about a supposed campaign against Hakeen Oluseyi. To be clear, no one from NYT’s fact checking department ever reached out to me to verify any of the claims being made about me in the piece.

#22
December 20, 2022
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Celebrate 50 Years of PhDs: Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography

a woman kneeling with a girl standing tall next to her. a tree is in the background. both are afro-descended.
Willie Hobbs Moore with her daughter Dorian. source: Ronald E. Mickens Collection on African-American Physicists, AIP Niels Bohr Archives

2022 is the 50th anniversary of the first Black woman to earn a PhD in either physics or astronomy. In 1972, Willie Hobbs Moore became the first Black woman to earn a PhD in physics — nearly 100 years after Edward Bouchet earned a PhD in physics, making him the first African-American to earn a PhD in any subject.

Back in 2019, one of the first items I put on my desk in my brand new faculty office was a photo of Dr. Moore. Since I was beginning the lonely journey as the first Black woman to hold a tenure line position in theoretical cosmology or particle theory, this image was part of an array of ways that I designed my office to remind me, and anyone who came into that space, that not only did I belong there, but I was part of a proud and beautiful tradition of Black folks doing science.

Around the same time, I started thinking about what it would mean to push the mantra of the #CiteBlackWomen Collective in new directions — specifically, what would it mean for physics if physicists pro-actively engaged the work of Black women physicists in their own research? My own feminist philosophy work argues that race and gender are a factor in which science gets pushed forward — who stays in the room, who gets cited. What if we changed whose work we build on? The idea of a bibliography was born.

#21
December 15, 2022
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Taking Responsibility for Historical Homophobia at NASA and Beyond: #RenameJWST

It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom.     In this photo, NASA technicians lifted the telescope using a crane and moved it inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Once launched into space, the Webb telescope’s 18-segmented gold mirror is specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, and will help the telescope peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror Seen in Full Bloom. credit: NASA

The following statement is from me, Dr. Brian Nord, Dr. Sarah Tuttle, and Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, authors of the Scientific American article The James Webb Space Telescope Needs to be Renamed and the petition to #RenameJWST, as well as a previous statement responding to a FOIA cache of NASA emails about our campaign. We are responding to today’s statement from NASA headquarters.

We will be carefully reading the 89 page Dr. Brian C. Odom-authored report attached to NASA’s statement, aware that based on the introduction it seems to be answering the question “Is there definitive physical proof that James Webb knew about Clifford Norton and his case?” That’s a separate question from, “Was James Webb, as administrator, responsible for the activities of the agency he led?”

NASA’s press release utilizes a practice of selective historical reading: because we do not know of a piece of paper that explicitly says, “James Webb knew about this,” they assume it means he did not. In such a scenario, we have to assume he was relatively incompetent as a leader: the administrator of NASA should know if his chief of security is extrajudicially interrogating people. So, if NASA wants to roll with vindicating him from homophobia by suggesting he was incompetent, that’s certainly a choice they can make.

However, all evidence points to the suggestion that Webb continued to be in positions of power specifically because he was highly competent. In context of this, it is highly likely that he knew exactly what was happening with security at his own agency during the height of the Cold War. It is hypocritical of NASA to insist on giving Webb credit for the exciting things that happened under his leadership — activities that were actually conducted by other people — but refuse to accept his culpability for the problems. NASA is engaging in historical cherry picking, which is deeply unscientific in our view.

Moreover, we are deeply concerned by the implication that managers are not responsible for homophobia or other forms of discrimination that happens on their watch. This is an explicitly anti-equity, diversity and inclusion stance that places responsibility on the most marginalized people to fend for ourselves, and it is in conflict with legal norms in many US jurisdictions.

Ultimately, Webb has at best a complicated legacy, including his participation in the promotion of psychological warfare. His activities did not earn him a $10 billion monument. As we wrote in Scientific American, "The time for lionizing leaders who acquiesced in a history of harm is over. We should name telescopes out of love for those who came before us and led the way to freedom—and out of love for those who are coming up after.” We will keep fighting for a future that includes us all.

#RenameJWST

Thanks for reading my newsletter. Feel free to subscribe — it’s always free99:

#20
November 18, 2022
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About your diversity and inclusion requirement

garbage on a beach

Photo by vianet ramos on Unsplash

On repetition

I almost feel silly writing this piece because I have written some version of it so many times. I wrote Diversity is a Dangerous Set-Up and the Rules of the Diversity and Inclusion Racket. I also wrote long ago about the problems with the broader impacts criterion leading to students of color being treated like diversity props and minoritized scholars shouldn’t be forced to serve diversity.

#19
September 29, 2022
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Orders of Magnitude: Intuiting how rich these f*ckers actually are

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of New Zealand, in the Blue Room of Buckingham Palace. She is wearing: a diamond fern brooch given to her in 1953 by the women of Auckland, Queen Mary's Fringe Tiara, the City of London Fringe Necklace, the insignia of the Sovereign of the Order of New Zealand, the badge of the Queen's Service Order, and the sash and star of the New Zealand Order of Merit. One of Queen Mary's Chain-Link Bracelets is on her right wrist. Official portrait taken in 2011 and released on 7 February 2012 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Note: I tried to place this in a pub, the editors rejected it as too political, so I’m placing it here because why not? (Shout out to my dad who said, “Nice try!” when I told him what happened.) I may have added a few choice words that shift the tone and emphasis, since it’s now just going up on a blog. And of course, these arguments could apply to many other rich heirs, including people here in the US. It’s all blood money.

In my day-to-day life as a theoretical physicist, I often need to estimate whether a certain quantity is large enough to have a significant impact on my calculations. For example, when astrophysicists want to calculate how dark matter will behave on galactic scales, some people ignore something called the “self-interaction,” a particle phenomenon that can potentially enhance the effects of gravity. The argument they use to for this choice is that it is numerically very small compared to more important effects like gravity, so it’s not reasonable to consider it. A lot of my work in the community has been challenging this perspective, and all of my recent publications indication that I’m right about this.

Even so, it’s typically true that differences in scale can make a huge difference in how we understand numbers. I personally doubt that I would realize the difference between two numbers that are big on the scale of day-to-day life if I hadn’t studied physics and astronomy. But you don’t need special training to start to get a sense of what these differences do and do not mean, for example using money.

#18
September 21, 2022
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The Whole Thing is Unsafe

spray paint on a white wall: "NO ONE IS ILLEGAL" with a five point star underneath and a leafless tree on the right
Photo by Miko Guziuk on Unsplash

The United States is not a safe place. Everywhere in the US is unsafe for someone. Some (white) folks are new to the idea that there are jurisdictions that are unsafe for them because they are LGBTQIA+ or because they are pregnant or could become pregnant. But other people have had to live with that fact for centuries, from the beginning, from before national conception, as it were. Those folks, Indigenous and then Black people, have known the whole time that “safety” in America is at best a precarious concept. Our Asian- and Middle Eastern-descent fam have learned this too, in waves that follow distinct immigration patterns. 

Some of us Black and Indigenous folk “forget” this reality in the sense that we are so used to it that it just exists in the background. We forget that the police are a fundamental risk to us — all the time. We think our birth place and bonafide land ties will shield us from ICE. Or at least we don’t think about it in the same terms that we think of threats to abortion and the right to exist as a queer person because those threats are bigger in the white imagination and the rhetoric about them is therefore turned up several notches higher.

Some of us forget because we’ve got money, and we think that will shield us. Some of us have green cards and think being “legal” is a synonym for being “safe” from state and vigilante violence. And some of us are lighter skinned and while that’s not a guarantee, it can feel and look to others like one. 

#17
August 12, 2022
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More Disordered Cosmos in Paperback + Events + New Pubs

Now available in paperback: also available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Science and Technology. Images of the hardcover and paperback versions of the book, both silhouettes filled with an image of the cosmos. Also a list of accolades the book has received.

Dear Reader,

First off. I wrote this whole newsletter and then realized I didn’t say FUCK YEAH I WON A 2021 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE!!!!! Details. Text of speech. Video of speech.

Anyway, do you want a signed copy of The Disordered Cosmos? Because Loyalty Books is Black, queer, and not going anywhere. And all of their copies are signed. I’m about to make the case for why you should buy the paperback, but I will be honest and say that the hardcover is prettier and may actually be better? You decide. Anyway, an outline of what’s below:

#16
May 9, 2022
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Astronomy and Colonial Poison in Hawaiʻi

red hil tanks about 80 years old
Reporting from Hawaii News Now on the Red Hill Crisis

Oʻahu’s water supply is in crisis due to negligence from the colonial U.S. military. And it might not seem obvious to everyone that astronomers are implicated in the question of what happens next, but we very much are. Readers of my book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (details) will be familiar with the kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) struggle around Maunakea and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Without going into each little detail, the gist of it is that because Hawaiʻi was colonized by the United States, astronomers were given free rein to build telescopes on Mauna a Wākea, a volcano on the island of Hawaiʻi with excellent seeing. This is to say, it’s a great place to put a telescope, from the perspective of people who are focused on the best place to observe the night sky with a telescope.

In the decades since the first facility was built, 13 observatories have gone up on the Mauna, which in the view of kanaka cultural knowledge holders is not just sovereign kanaka land that has been colonized, but also a sacred place. Today, there is a proposal to build a 14th facility (and others will be decommissioned), the Thirty Meter Telescope, which is set to be the largest in the world. Construction on the facility was set to begin in 2014, but kiaʻi, Maunakea’s protectors, have successfully impeded its construction, often at great personal cost including criminalization by the colonial state.

In The Disordered Cosmos, I write about how the fight for the Mauna was life altering for me and has shifted my view on what science was and what science needs to be. Often framed as anti-science spiritualists, the kiaʻi are not just fighting to protect the Mauna from further desecration but also to transition from a colonial scientific practice to an ethical science, as Keolu Fox and I argued in The Nation. I think the piece that first really opened my mind about this was Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada’s “We Live in the Future. Come Join us.” where he writes:

#15
December 9, 2021
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Is physics supposed to have a content warning?

a little orange snake in a little top hat!

Dear readers,

I apologize. I haven’t sent anything since May. Many things have happened since May! Like, the pandemic got worse. The Afghanistan War ended the way a bunch of us said it would end back in September 2001. SCOTUS seems to have struck down Roe v. Wade last night. All the tenure track faculty at the University of New Hampshire are working without a contract while doing in person teaching during a pandemic, which means effectively we’ve received a pay cut and an increased workload. It’s … a lot of awful.

I do want to get on with talking about the subject line, but first . . .

#14
September 1, 2021
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Is "white supremacy culture" a thing?

one part of the sun and a solar flare and the earth to scale with the words "earth shown for size comparison"

Dear Reader,

I saw a really great talk last week about space weather by Dr. Chigomezyo Ngwira, and you can read my tweets about it here. His talk convinced me that space weather is a pretty exciting field of research, with really important social implications. He also reminded me that the sun is ENORMOUS. (See figure above; the earth is so tiny compared to a solar flare!)

In today’s update, I just want to share some news about The Disordered Cosmos and also answer the question: is there such a thing as white supremacy culture?

#13
May 3, 2021
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Confronting Colorism (in Science)

image of me eating a cupcake with the words The Disordered Cosmos
Before the book got its cover, this was my own personally designed logo. I can’t wait until the pandemic is over and I can try to get whole cupcakes in my mouth in one shot again.

Dear Reader,

As The Disordered Cosmos makes its way into the world, part of the work I hope it is doing is prompting conversations about how majestic the subatomic realm is, and how horrid our social conditions for studying it can be. That does not mean the book says everything that needs to be said on either subject, but I do hope it sends people searching. Today, in addition to reminding you of ways to support the book, I want to briefly take up a subject that the book touches on but could never do full justice to by itself: colorism. The tl;dr is I have some intro remarks just to situate readers and then I suggest some substantive reading.

Before I get to that, I just want to quickly mention that I know people are having a hard time getting their hands on the book because it’s sold out so many places, including indies. First, several of the stores where I did initial events still have copies. Also Barnes and Noble has copies, and they are discounted by 11%! Also, at the end of this email, I list upcoming events, including my UK launch, which is this Thursday at 7 PM BST/2 PM EDT.

#12
April 12, 2021
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#DisorderedCosmos is out in the wild and what is Substack doing?

order your copy today available in hardcover, ebook, and audio the disordered cosmos a journey into dark matter spacetime and dreams deferred

Dear Party People,

Thanks to all of you who have bought The Disordered Cosmos, gifted it, attended an event, clicked on an interview or an excerpt. The response has been so incredible that the book is backordered at Bookshop.org and Bold Type Books is printing more copies of the book. (Yes, a second printing!) I’m writing because the excitement is not over yet and also to make suggestions of how you can help. I also want to make a statement about what’s happening at Substack and why I may need to move platforms.

Also, want a free copy? Vanguard STEM is giving a copy of The Disordered Cosmos away every single week this month! Keep your eyes peeled on social media for other possible giveaways

#11
March 15, 2021
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The Disordered Cosmos book tour, playlist and more!

order your copy today, available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. cover of The Disordered Cosmos and the title

Dear Party People,

A few items in this update: book tour dates, A BOOK PLAYLIST, a book giveaway and news about other writing items.

Book Tour!

#10
March 2, 2021
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"Can I understand your book?"

image with The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams deferred cover, title, and "preorder your copy today. available in hardcover, ebook, and audio."

Dear readers,

Usually I send out updates about how things are going with the book or other writing items. Today I want to do something a little different: I want to answer some questions I’ve been getting a lot. But first things first. I can’t believe this but The Disordered Cosmos has three starred reviews: Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist. Also, there’s a trailer for the book which you can watch (with close captions!) on YouTube.

And, my virtual book tour dates have been announced (for North America). I hope you’ll come listen to my roving talk show!

#9
February 17, 2021
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End of 2020! UK Release Date! Nature 10!

illustration of me with red lipstick, light brown skin, and hoop earrings. images of Black lives matter protesters in the background.
(illustration by Michelle Urra, for Vice)

Hello Party People!

What a terrible year it has been, and thus what a strange year to be reporting good news. Yet here I am, in your inbox, with good news.

Public Recognition

#8
December 21, 2020
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October Update: I won an award!

Dear readers,

Here are some updates from the “road” of doing writing and science! First of all, I responded to the copyedits of my book this past Monday, which means basically I completely finished the book (which, I’ll remind you, is available for preorder pretty much everywhere). The next stage is just looking at the proofs and catching wayward typos. It’s been quite the journey. I don’t know how to explain it. I really want some cake with buttercream, though. I’m actually going to ask the spouse for a cake when I’m done writing this.

Some writing updates

I’ve signed on as a contributing columnist at Physics World, and my first piece will be in the November 2020 issue. I believe (but need to check) that it will be available online without a paywall, one way or another. Also, I will be publishing a second essay simultaneously in Physics World and Physics Today on October 30 as part of #BlackInPhysics week. That will be publicly available, and my pay will be donated to African American Women in Physics (scroll to the bottom if you’d like to donate too).

Today I have a new piece out at Counterpunch with culture writer and philosopher Lawrence Ware, on Ava DuVernay, social media, politics, and loving the culture.

My most recently New Scientist Field Notes from Spacetime are:
Climate Change and big tech are jeopardising the future of astronomy (October)
Could we jump into a wormhole to save us from the world at present? (September)
Why dark matter should be called something else (August)
Elements from the universe’s earliest stars gave birth to our sun (July)

And some science updates

My first scientific paper with a graduate student that I am co-supervising was recently accepted for publication in Physical Review D. The published version will be slightly modified from what’s currently available at the arXiv.

AND I WON AN AWARD!

I found out a couple of weeks ago that I am the American Physical Society’s 2021 Edward A. Bouchet Award winner. From the website: “This award promotes the participation of underrepresented minorities in physics by identifying and recognizing a distinguished minority physicist who has made significant contributions to physics research and the advancement of underrepresented minority scientists.” In other words, this award recognizes the dual achievement of overcoming barriers in physics to make significant technical contributions to the field while also facilitating the advancement of underrepresented minorities in the field.

I was nominated by Alan Guth, with supporting letters from Geraldine Cochran, Tracy Slatyer, Tim Tait, and the late Ann Nelson. That nomination itself was an award. It feels like a huge achievement to have them submit the following citation:

For contributions to theoretical cosmology and particle physics, ranging from axion physics to models of inflation to alternative models of dark energy, for tireless efforts in increasing inclusivity in physics, and for co-creating the Particles for Justice movement.

I am the second Black woman to win the award. The first was last year, Nadya Mason.

The world is shit, but at least I’m succeeding occasionally and also there is Rooted Woman nail polish.

Oh and about that Liquid Chanda

The incredible Tanaïs is relaunching her makeup brand (formerly Hi Wildflower) with new face highlighters (or as I call them, LIP SHIMMERS), and she named one of them Liquid Chanda! Ahhhhh so cool!!! But actually even cooler is that all proceeds from sales will go to mutual aid in Brooklyn, where I have roots on both sides of my family. If you have to choose between my book and Liquid Chanda, buy some Liquid Chanda now and come back for The Disordered Cosmos later.

Thanks for reading this far down!

Dr. Chanda

#7
October 9, 2020
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Particle physics in the wake of slavery & settler colonialism

note: I prepared these remarks and delivered them to the July 2020 meeting of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), which is the governing body of U.S. particle physics. You can listen to the remarks at the 4:25:38 mark here. My slides are here — but it’s just a summary of what I say at the end.

I’d like to thank Dr. Hewett for inviting me to speak at this event.

We all live and work in the wake of chattel slavery and settler colonialism [1]. Therefore, our responses to questions about equity in particle physics need to be underpinned by a persistent engagement with this context – and what it indicates to us about the material conditions under which the lives of traditionally marginalized people are lived.

Less than 100 years after the end of chattel slavery (but not prison slavery, which continues today), in the famed 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the majority argued that separate can never be equal.

#6
July 13, 2020
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The Disordered Cosmos Pre-Orders Are Under Way!

Preorders for my book have begun! The book itself doesn’t come out until March 9, 2021, but the way the industry works is preorders start early and how those are going can really impact how a book does when it hits market.

If you’re in the US or willing to pay international shipping fees to outside North America, you can pick a store here:
https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/chanda-prescod-weinstein/the-disordered-cosmos/9781541724709/

Here are some Black-owned Indie bookstores you can support:
https://bookshop.org/shop/thelitbar
https://bookshop.org/shop/harriettsbookshop
https://www.esowonbookstore.com/book/9781541724709

You can also buy from Barnes and Noble, which is often the only bookstore in many communities:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-disordered-cosmos-chanda-prescod-weinstein/1137302897

If you’re in Canada, you can order from Wordsworth Books or your local indie bookstore or Indigo (it may take Indigo a couple of days before it becomes available):
https://www.bookmanager.com/1318225/?q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&qsb=keyword&qse=FUkcZsH8Mlj2rdMe-2X3jw

It is also available in ebook stores in Kobo, Nook, and Kindle formats.

For those who want to order locally in the UK: rights for the UK edition have not been sold yet, but we are planning to make a UK pub happen. I’m also hopeful there will be some translations, but let’s see how things will go.

Thanks for reading this far down and for your support and of course please tell your friends to each order 15 copies. Keep your eyes peeled next week for my column in New Scientist where I talk about something pretty strange, the Sun!

#5
July 9, 2020
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The Disordered Cosmos is coming! Preorder July 8!

Some of you are getting this because you signed up for a reminder to order on July 8 and further updates about the books. Welcome! I also update folks on my writing!

Here are links to my recent New Scientist columns (behind a paywall, but it’s a fun publication):
Astronomical time vs. COVID lockdown time
One about how blue jays have no blue pigment
Also, neutrinos are weird

Plus I co-organized and coordinated the #Strike4BlackLives, in partnership with #ShutDownSTEM. See my note about what I was hoping for here.

#4
June 26, 2020
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What I wanted when I called for a Strike for Black Lives

A personal view on #Strike4BlackLives/#StrikeforBlackLives and #ShutdownSTEM

note: This is my perspective on this, and it should not be interpreted as speaking on behalf of any other author whose name appears on the Particles for Justice website. If you haven’t heard about this action that took place last Wednesday, please see our press page.

I haven’t sat down and read a book all the way through in a while. During the first month and a half of the pandemic, I was actually doing pretty well at keeping up with my scholarship, both in physics and feminist science, technology and society studies. Then the re-opening announcements, including from the University of New Hampshire, came. By then the stories of excessive, unnecessary Black deaths from COVID-19 were everywhere. I saw a quantification somewhere, that without structural racism something on the order of ten thousand Black people would still be alive. Of course, the wide spread of COVID-19 wasn’t a given, but a political decision. And when you decide to let people die in America, that means Black people will be among those hit the hardest, along with our non-Black Indigenous kin.

Back in February when I unfortunately correctly used my “Fermi problem” solving skills to accurately guess the order of magnitude of people who would die, I worried over how to protest the Trump administration’s murderous policies. Folks needed to go out into the streets, but also going out into the streets was exactly what I didn’t want people doing while a highly contagious plague that we have no cure for spread like wildfire among the population. Activists were creative in the face of this, organizing small protests from their cars.

But eventually the people were forced into the streets. A protest for Black lives is always a matter of risking your life because of how police and vigilantes are known to respond, but never in my lifetime has it been so dangerous. Yet it remains painfully necessary. The protests have made some of our dead household names: Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Regis Korchinksi-Paquet. Regis, who was both Black and Indigenous, was murdered next door to the building where I lived some of my happiest moments in grad school. That High Park apartment is where I also once had a traumatizing interaction with what I will politely describe as two extremely cruel Toronto police officers who were the only respondents sent to what was ostensibly a medical emergency. Regis could have been me 11 years ago.

On Monday June 1, 2020 when I first began formulating the Strike for Black Lives idea with fellow Black physicist Brian Nord, what I had in mind was a combination of things. I had heard from Brittany Kamai about her #ShutdownSTEM idea, and I was discussing with Brian an idea he had of his own. I come from a labor family. I am the granddaughter of Selma James, founder of the Global Women’s Strike (GWS), which was launched by the International Wages for Housework Campaign on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2000 and has happened annually around parts of the US, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and Asia since then. My mother, Margaret Prescod, is one of the two US coordinators of the GWS.

March 8 is not a day of rest for the women and others who participate. Just like the union strikes that my father helped organize when I was a child, the GWS involves a lot of work. A lack of work is not what distinguishes that day. Rather what makes the day different is that it is a refusal to do business as usual.

Brian and I had this discussion not privately between the two of us but in a space that we share with colleagues in Particles for Justice. And that was purposeful — I was thinking out loud in a community that I would want to join me in whatever work I was thinking about doing. And I was thinking it was time for the particle physics community to be dragged into the 21st century. While we may be on the leading edge of asking and answering questions about fundamental physics, the particle physics community remains intensely white and male, not just demographically but also culturally. I mean that unstated expectations of how we will behave — the ways we are expected to act and speak — conform to whiteness. I mean that aggressive, masculinist behavior in discussions is rewarded, particularly among theoretical physicists.

I also mean that there are things that people expect you to be passionate about if you are a particle physicist, and there are a range of hobbies that people typically have. Many of them are nerdy and/or physical activities. Like hiking, that seems to be a big one. As a disabled person, I often feel left behind during workshops at the Aspen Center for Physics because there’s nothing else to do in Aspen but hike, ski, and drink. But I digress. The point is that I learned early as a graduate student that caring about social justice is something that is alright, as long as people don’t see you devoting a lot of time to it. Also, it’s discussed like a hobby, like going rock climbing.

Importantly the movement for Black lives isn’t a hobby. It’s a movement to save my life, my mom’s life, my cousins’ lives, the lives of beloved friends and chosen kin, and the lives of all Black people, including all Black scientists and Black science students. It is not something that people should feel morally justified in opting out of. The movement for Black lives is a human rights movement, and it is a movement against genocidal structures and tactics.

This is what I was thinking when I named the Strike for Black Lives. I was thinking that business as usual in America means death, mass incarceration, and living, constantly, under totally fearful conditions — if you’re Black. If you’re not Black it means choosing whether to care about the fact that we, Black people in America, live under these terrorizing conditions. I was thinking that business as usual needs to stop, so that we can reconfigure the material conditions under which Black lives are lived. And I was thinking, my beloved community of warriors and survivors needs a break. A long, long vacation.

Practically speaking a one day Strike/Shutdown will not achieve these goals. But I knew that realistically I couldn’t call for an indefinite permanent strike and have many people, much less physicists who tend to be conservative about taking social action, heed the call. And I also knew that something is better than nothing. A day where white people and non-Black people of color took up the work of anti-racist action meant that the playing field might be slightly more level for a day and Black people could feel more comfortable taking the day off from being productive or trying to be productive. And if even 5% of the people who take up that work stick with it, then I will feel like we have advanced the cause, which would be a small but real victory, and I will take my victories as I can get them.

We wanted action, not another book club.

All of the people who put their name to the Strike call contributed to the document somehow. Yes, I played a big role in writing it — I’m both the only critical race studies scholar in the group and the only one with a book deal. That doesn’t mean I was the sole mastermind. This was a truly collective effort. I point this out because I want to make a comment about how our strike call, which went live with about 120 pledges from colleagues on June 5, ended:

Importantly, we are not calling for more diversity and inclusion talks and seminars. We are not asking people to sit through another training about implicit bias. We are calling for every member of the community to commit to taking actions that will change the material circumstances of how Black lives are lived — to work toward ending the white supremacy that not only snuffs out Black physicist dreams but destroys whole Black lives. In calling for a strike, we call on people who are not Black to spend a day undertaking discussion and action that furthers this work, while providing Black scientists with a day of rest. Every single institution around the world can and should get involved in this work, and the strike marks an opportunity to recommit to the humanist values which should underpin academic work, including the belief that Black Lives Matter.

In my view, we were articulating a two-pronged desire: a day of rest for Black folks and again, a day where everyone else went on strike from business as usual. What we didn’t want was for everyone else to do what academics always do when talking about racism: hire some professional diversity experts to give some talks, read some books, say they’ll treat Black students better, and call it a day.

We tried to hit this home in our Strike Details where we said:

The strike is not a “day off” for non-Black scientists, but a day to engage in academia’s core mission to build a better society for everyone; see below for suggested actions that participants can take on strike day to educate themselves and advocate for change in their communities. Those of us who are Black academics should take the day to do whatever nourishes their hearts, whether that’s protesting, organizing, or watching “Astronomy Club” . . . Our usual academic responsibilities will be replaced by actions that center Black lives and agitate for change in our communities.

After that last sentence, we listed some examples, and it was purposeful that the first action we proposed was this, “Participate in a protest. If there are none local to you, organize one. Any number of people can form a protest together.” As an intellectual, of course I believe that reading and studying is important. But as a physicist, I know that my own problem-solving activity, “research,” only moves forward when I take action. It is not enough to passively read the textbook, we tell our students. You must work through the equations line by line and then solve problems. A paper does not write itself. First calculations are done, experiments run.

Ultimately what I wanted people to do on the Strike day was show competency in active problem solving and develop a long term commitment to sticking with the problem until it is solved. And for me, it was not just about Black physicists. Yes, we need better learning and working conditions. The bias and loneliness we face is extensive and heavy. I have only been the only Black professor in my department for 18 months, and I am already over it — and I like my department a lot, actually. That’s when we’re allowed through the door and still the barriers to entry are enormous and often totally unyielding.

But my ability to derive the non-linear Schrödinger equation from a minimally coupled action for a scalar field will not protect me from the police. The fact that I might become a person who could learn such a skill did not stop Los Angeles county from allowing a battery factory to poison the ground water that my mother bathed in and likely drank while she was pregnant with me. I found out recently that I, like all kids who were gestated in my neighborhood of east Los Angeles, were exposed to lead in utero. My future as a theoretical physicist didn’t stop my fourth grade teacher from telling all the Black students in the class, when our school reopened after the 1992 uprising, “if you don’t like it here, go back to Africa.” As if my family left Africa voluntarily.

And importantly, my future as a physicist shouldn’t protect me. What should protect me is my humanity, my human rights. No one should have to earn their human rights, but often that is what Black people feel forced to do.

I want Black children to grow up free, knowing the night sky, knowing that it belongs to them too. I want Black people to live good long lives, free of fear of police and vigilante violence. We cannot do this until we confront and end white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

When I called for the strike what I wanted was for particle physicists and academics at large to understand that and to take action in response to it. I understand that this will require spending some time learning. It will also involve making mistakes and having to hear about how you made a mistake. It’s not that different from being a physicist, really. Except in this case, lives depend on your willingness to make the effort.

So if on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 you and colleagues and friends spent the day in meetings, discussions, and listening to speakers — make sure that this is translating into material action that is long term and sustained. Make the effort like Black lives matter, because they do.

#3
June 14, 2020
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I just turned in my second draft!

Well, the subject line was the whole announcement: draft #2 of The Disordered Cosmos is off to my editor.

I promised that “The Disordered Cosmos” would be a mechanism for getting updates to my writing, so let me start by sharing that I’ve had a few things come out in the first two months of 2020:

  1. For my January New Scientist column, I wrote about whether dark energy and dark matter are related. (paywall)

  2. I reviewed Anthony Aguirre’s wonderful popular science book Cosmological Koans for Physics World. (no paywall)

  3. I led the writing of a white paper that hopefully will influence the Astro2020 Decadal. You can read Reframing astronomical research through an anticolonial lens -- for TMT and beyond at the arXiv. (no paywall)

  4. For my February New Scientist column, I wrote about how the atmosphere shapes the practice of astronomy. (paywall)

Anyway, here’s a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Sombrero Galaxy and its environment. This new data provides insight into the galaxy’s formation history, which apparently involves a lot of mergers and acquisitions. More details here.

#2
March 8, 2020
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Dr. Chanda's Disordered Cosmos

Welcome to The Disordered Cosmos by me, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Theoretical Physicist. Feminist Humanist. Writer.

Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.

#1
January 13, 2020
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