Physicist's new book links space-time study to democracy
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- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has published "The Edge of Space-Time" (Canongate Books), the September selection for the New Scientist Book Club, which explores questions about the material nature of space, a quantum theory of time, and whether space-time is a real entity or just a useful mathematical construct.
- Prescod-Weinstein, a tenured professor of physics at a major US research institution, says she abandoned work on quantum gravity because of racism she experienced as a PhD student and poor job prospects in that subfield.
- During a five-year stint in US science policy that began in 2023, Prescod-Weinstein concluded that particle physics and cosmology were losing political support because politicians no longer saw fundamental research as serving the capitalist economy or the military.
- She warns that UK and US science funding cuts are driving researchers out of the field permanently, taking irreplaceable knowledge with them, because the sciences transmit expertise through apprenticeship and cannot recover from even a single year without senior instructors.
- The book argues that engaging with strange phenomena like black holes and event horizons sharpens the critical thinking needed to address political crises including climate change, genocides and attacks on transgender people.
- Prescod-Weinstein says much of her professional life is bureaucratic — emailing about grant policy changes — and that the kind of research Hawking did on the nature of time is financially out of reach for most physicists.
Why it matters: Prescod-Weinstein argues UK and US science funding cuts cause permanent, not temporary, damage: even one year of funding gaps drives out researchers, and because scientific knowledge passes through apprenticeship rather than textbooks, that expertise cannot be rebuilt once lost. The book recasts fundamental physics as a democratic necessity rather than a luxury, landing as both governments slash basic science budgets.
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