How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin

Levin believes it is finite but that view may be an unprovable proposition because it may be finite but too big for us to ever see the end of it. Is the universe stable, like a normal triangle drawn on a flat surface? Or is it expanding, symbolized by a bulging triangle drawn on a sphere? Or is it a collapsing universe, symbolized by a triangle drawn on a saddle where the sides of the triangle bow inwards? The geometry also relates to whether or not the universe is finite or infinite. The book is written with feeling and humor.įundamentally the work focuses on the state of the universe using an analogy of triangles. You don't want to live in the apartment next door to them. (She's at Columbia now.) Her love life is: crazy math/physics chick meets totally unstable male musician. She is constantly shifting residences as she migrates between cities in California and England. The book is structured as a series of letters to the author’s mother and the author intersperses personal details of her friends and love life. The author is a master of making a complex subject easy to understand with analogies and simple diagrams. There is some geometry but almost no formulas the reading level is like Scientific American. What a beautiful sound.This book is pretty easy to read. “Thanks to TED I just listened to the sound of Space. Listen to a Q&A with another TED speaker, Krista Tippett - where they talk math and faith and truth and more. Just before returning to New York, she was the first scientist-in-residence at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing at Oxford with an award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and Arts ( NESTA).

She has worked at the Center for Particle Astrophysics (CfPA) at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to the UK where she worked at Cambridge University in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). She holds a BA in Physics and Astronomy from Barnard College with a concentration in Philosophy, and a PhD from MIT in Physics. Her second book – a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines – won the PEN/Bingham Fellowship for Writers and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award for 'a distinguished book of first fiction.' She is the author of the popular science book, How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space. Her scientific research concerns the early universe, chaos and black holes. Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University.

How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin