WORLD VIEW

10 November 2026

Picking a site for an observatory should be about more than science. Humanities scholars have a crucial role in responsible siting.

By

Jaco de Swart Jaco de Swart is a historian and anthropologist of science at the University of Cambridge, UK.

The TAMBO team assesses suitable observatory sites in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Credit: Jaco de Swart

It is uncommon for a social scientist to have a seat at a meeting about an astronomical observatory, let alone for them to jointly lead one. For one-quarter of attendees to be social-science scholars is almost unprecedented. But that’s exactly what happens at meetings about the Tau Air-shower Mountain-based Observatory (TAMBO), a proposed detector to be built in the Peruvian Andes to look for cosmic particles called tau neutrinos.

Space diplomacy: bridging the operating gaps between myriad missions

Tau neutrinos are elusive fundamental particles that are transmitted through space from black holes and other distant sources.…