Expanding the Astrophysics Laboratory: Environment, Ecosystem, and Experiment

​This talk focuses on moments when physicists leave their laboratory spaces, equipped with mediating devices, and enter an epistemic space, which I call the expanded laboratory, to identify and understand the output signals produced by experimental instrumentation—here laser interferometers.  I define the expanded laboratory as the ecosystem surrounding the laboratory buildings and structures that becomes embedded in the output signals of the instruments therein.  I am interested in those instances when outside activities pass through the boundary walls of the laboratory and become embedded in the signals and data of the instruments, leading to evolutions or reconfigurations in the lab’s scientific and social activities, along with the material culture of experimental instrumentation.  Such a move expands prior inquiries into the epistemologies of laboratory spaces and experiments by bringing into view the histories and practices of site assessment and selection, how scientists understand and perceive the expanded laboratory and modify their instruments in attempts to tame this space, and how those landscapes can have profound influences on their experiments.

Zoom Registration Link:  https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMsfu-gqzkoHNDZoBX3rVCz65WT9EBMyejb