Thesis ID: CBB194032912

Fortress Science: The Spatialities of Radio Astronomy (2021)

unapi

The production of space as an internal condition to the scientific production of knowledge is an under investigated and seldom theorized process within the studies of science, technology, and society (STS), and the spatial disciplines. Through a comparative study of the world’s four leading radio telescopes (the Arecibo Observatory, the Atacama Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, and MeerKAT), I examine the territorial, concentrated, and contingent spatialities of these scientific sites through the multidisciplinary lens of fortress science. Each telescope embodies differing spatial formations as a product of their institutional makeup, scientific goals, and political contexts, but exhibits similar spatial formations with regards to territorial transformations and human material concentrations. We can read these formations through the metaphor of the glacis, an historical fortress technology that acts as an obscuration in which apparent ‘emptiness’ conceals significant influence and connectivity. I draw on this analogy as an embodiment of the conceptual tools underlying the dissertation – that of technology and infrastructure, and landscape and territory – and I use these tools to position fortress science as structuring an analytical fusion of space and science. Spatial process is found to be enmeshed in the structure of scientific research itself, and as a result scientific production is found to alter, structure, and restructure space as an active force.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB194032912/

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Authors & Contributors
Orchiston, Wayne
Wielebinski, Richard
Slee, Bruce
Lequeux, James
Akos Kokai
Brandt, Sierra S.
Concepts
Radio astronomy
Astronomy
Telescopes
Biographies
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
Australia
Germany
France
Great Britain
Sydney (Australia)
Tasmania (Australia)
Institutions
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
National Graphene Institute
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
Observatoire de Paris
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (U.S.)
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