A fascinating new book shines a new light on an old contradiction in physics.

Prescod-Weinstein imagined dedicating herself to pure physics in [a new observatory atop Maunakea⁠ in Hawaii], with “beaches, amazing tans, and an opportunity to start over.” But no physics is pure, no place such an idyll. Astronomers had started building their telescopes on Maunakea during the 1960s against the protests of native Hawaiians, for whom the summit is sacred. Her living wages, she realized, would have underwritten the erasure of another peoples’ cosmology. “I promised myself that I would make more room in my life for my dreams of being a physicist,” she wrote. “But not like this.” She now supports the native Hawaiians who have vowed to protect their unceded lands against the impending construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, which might yet become the world’s largest.⁠

The part of the book review that really jumped out at me was this:

Prescod-Weinstein not only narrates her struggle to become a cosmologist, she advocates for all peoples whom physicists have undervalued. She praises the assistants and janitors, mostly people of color, whose labor permits theorists to ponder the universe daily, because “part of science is emptying the garbage.”

Related: