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Jan 6, 2025 | 
press.uchicago.edu | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In
9781684582792
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In
A new edition of a major work of literary and cultural criticism restores C. L. R. James’s reflections about Moby Dick and political persecution. Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist, and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
Philosopher Helen De Cruz, in her new book, Wonderstruck: How wonder and awe shape the way we think, explains that “wonder is a useful emotion, because it points to gaps in what you thought you knew”. I read this line while also working my way through Annie Jacobsen’s book The Pentagon’s Brain: An uncensored history of DARPA, America’s top secret military research agency.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
General relativity teaches us that reality is, in some sense, a matter of perspective. Consider how someone who is “falling” into a black hole sees something completely different to an observer trying to watch that someone cross the event horizon, a black hole’s edge. The person actually making the transition beyond this point of no return won’t see anything unusual, although they will notice gravity is getting stronger and stronger.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
A century ago, it was possible for a physicist to know almost everything there was to know about physics. Now, this is far from the case. It isn’t that the physicists of today are less competent. The problem is that humans simply know so much about the inner workings of the universe that it is impossible for someone to be deeply familiar with all of it. As a result, today’s tendency is to produce specialists.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
msn.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
Continue reading More for You
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
On 23 July 1999, just months before I started university, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia launched with precious cargo on board. Not only was it carrying the first crew to be led by a woman, Eileen Collins, but its primary goal was to launch a new flagship space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
In a recent column, I wrote about black holes. A curious reader sent in a letter asking some interesting follow-up questions about topics that I didn’t really have time to delve into, more specifically about the relationship between matter and a black hole, as well as what happens at the centre of it all. The easy answer to the second part is that we have no idea. End of column! More seriously, part of what makes black holes such interesting phenomena to study is that perspective really matters.
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Jun 26, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
Time is a huge problem. Of course, there is our social and biological sentiment about it: we all want more of it and/or are worried about its passage. As I come up against the deadline for turning in my next book, I’m feeling that strongly. But there is also a deeper physical issue, which is that we don’t know why it always moves forwards. This is true even in the context of relativity, where space and time are unified. You would think that might give the phenomenon some flexibility.
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May 29, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
It is easy to be led astray by the mystery of black holes. As a young person, listening to Stephen Hawking describe what we didn’t understand about them was what convinced me that I needed to become a theoretical physicist. They are so strange. They have this thing called an event horizon and when you cross it, the properties of space and time seem to reverse. Time might lose all meaning. Space becomes one way, in a sense, since the event horizon is a…
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May 9, 2024 | 
muse.jhu.edu | Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein
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