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Thrilled to contribute an essay to @BulletinAtomic's 75th anniversary issue. I explore the relationship between science & the border, from nuclear weapons to #Xinjiang camps, space programs to #COVID19: how walls pretend our innocence & why they must fall.
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-12/the-edge-of-our-existence-a-particle-physicist-examines-the-architecture-of-society/
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-12/the-edge-of-our-existence-a-particle-physicist-examines-the-architecture-of-society/
The 75th anniversary issue of @BulletinAtomic includes writings from its archive by Einstein, Oppenheimer, Bertrand Russel, Gorbachev & more, as well as contemporary luminaries like Jennifer Doudna & @BeaFihn.
I'm so honored to be part of the issue. Read
https://thebulletin.org/magazine/2020-12/
I'm so honored to be part of the issue. Read
https://thebulletin.org/magazine/2020-12/
Many thanks to @meckdevil for the opportunity, his encouragement & careful edits, & this generous introduction in the editor's letter to the 75th anniversary issue. Congratulations to @BulletinAtomic for this incredible collection that's timely & timeless: https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-12/introduction-an-innovative-and-determined-future-for-the-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists/
4/N: Adding to this 
writings that I learned from & quote in my essay. First, @DavidZegeye: "I am frustrated that many of my peers are comfortable traveling all the way to the South Pole but won’t travel a few blocks to visit the rest of the South Side." https://astrobites.org/2020/06/26/blackinastro-experiences-david-zegeye/
writings that I learned from & quote in my essay. First, @DavidZegeye: "I am frustrated that many of my peers are comfortable traveling all the way to the South Pole but won’t travel a few blocks to visit the rest of the South Side." https://astrobites.org/2020/06/26/blackinastro-experiences-david-zegeye/
5/N: Carolyn Merchant's 1983 book "The Death of Nature" (h/t @zhitzig) & Carol Cohn's 1987 paper "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals": Manhattan Project scientists hoped for "a boy," a working bomb; a girl would have meant a dud.
https://genderandsecurity.org/sites/default/files/carol_cohn_sex_and_death_in_the_world_of_rational_defense_intellectuals.pdf
https://genderandsecurity.org/sites/default/files/carol_cohn_sex_and_death_in_the_world_of_rational_defense_intellectuals.pdf
6/N: "The development of modern astronomy, as many other branches of science, is intertwined with state power and imperial expansion." Read Joseph A. Salazar's PhD thesis (U-Hawaii) on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), & this essay by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada: https://hehiale.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/we-live-in-the-future-come-join-us/
7/N More on TMT & the historical relationship between professional astronomy and colonialism, this paper by @IBJIYONGI @RocketToLulu @niais @iamstarnord & @astrocanuck: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2001/2001.00674.pdf
8/N: Critical research & reporting on the mass internment & cultural genocide in #Xinjiang by intrepid survivors & their families, scholars, journalists, & artists: cannot fit in a single tweet! e.g. The Xinjiang Data Project @ASPI_org (h/t @Nrg8000): https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/
9/N: "Chinese characters for ethnic minorities, traditionally written with signifiers for animals or insects, were changed, so the barbaric other became human." Read about the renaming effort that started in the 1930s in this paper by @Magnus_Fiskesjo:
https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/article-abstract/29/4%20(109)/57/33701/The-Animal-OtherChina-s-Barbarians-and-Their
https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/article-abstract/29/4%20(109)/57/33701/The-Animal-OtherChina-s-Barbarians-and-Their
10/N: "In a 2019 profile in The New Yorker, the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin defended the government’s actions in Xinjiang: It’s good for security and poverty alleviation." Read @JiayangFan gorgeous profile of Liu whose work I've never liked: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds
11/N: "For the same reasons I dislike Liu’s novels, I’ve always maintained a degree of immunity to the popular enthusiasm for space exploration. The plans...are designed by power and for power."
Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey On the Moon":
Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey On the Moon":
12/N "The prison industrial complex is not just a tool for state control; it is also a source of profit. Capital has little regard for borders while workers wither behind walls."
Read this conversation with Angela Davis & Gina Dent on "Prison as a Border":
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/495654?journalCode=signs
Read this conversation with Angela Davis & Gina Dent on "Prison as a Border":
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/495654?journalCode=signs
13/N: My essay concludes w/ quotes from Heavenly Questions by Qu Yuan, the Chu statesman & poet from my ancestral hometown. Translated by the inestimable David Hawkes (h/t @bokane): "Who passed down the story of the far-off, ancient beginning of things..." https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310110/the-songs-of-the-south-by-qu-yuan/
14/N: The concluding anecdote in the essay, when the interviewer asked me "What do you think about when you look up into the night sky?", comes from this podcast with @BayerStrategic over the summer, a conversation I greatly enjoyed: https://whensciencespeaks.com/podcast/exploring-the-origins-of-the-universe-and-art-of-writing-with-particle-physicist-yangyang-cheng-phd/
15/N Finally, this poem by Tracy K. Smith:
"There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance"
I borrowed from it: "the universe has no edges, only curves." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55516/sci-fi
"There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance"
I borrowed from it: "the universe has no edges, only curves." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55516/sci-fi
