It’s tough sometimes for a lot of people to grasp what goes on in modern physics. String theory and chaos theory, 10-dimensional spaces and Planck time can leave us feeling dazed.
Yet, it’s not that we don’t want to understand what the Big Bang was like; it’s just that the terminology and concepts are complex and full of hard-to-breach jargon. With what seems like an undergraduate education in hard science as its prerequisite, the project of penetrating these fundamental notions often finds itself left on the shelf next to such winners as cleaning your garbage disposal and donating to the George Bush campaign.
What the layman needs is some sort of hybrid: a book with the key aspects of these important scientific ideas, but that presents them in an easily accessible package. This is where the genre of popular physics comes in.
The bible of this genus of book is most definitely Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” No “Nova”-watching, closet science nerd can wholly live up to her title without having read this book. The book isn’t, however, for everyone and is by no means the only book of its type worth reading. Well, guess what, another one has just hit the bookshelves.
Janna Levin’s “How The Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space” is a delightful and information-packed but approachable and readable addition to everyone’s library. The book really was originally a diary, one that Levin was writing to her mother, and it retains the spontaneity and everyday intimacy one would expect from such a work.
The main topic is Levin’s theory that the universe might by finite, and it presents many mathematical and physical tools to the reader so that she might be able to understand why this at-first-outlandish idea might be true. Mixed in with this, however, is a spattering of what it’s like to live the life of scientist, and this is what sets the book apart and makes it such a cheerful read.
Levin took time out of her cross-country book tour, on which she’ll be stopping at the University Book Store Thursday evening, to do a brief interview. I hope what follows shows how personable and approachable she is and inspires you to go see her and read her book.
The Badger Herald: What made you decide to turn this diary that you were writing to your mother into a book?
Janna Levin: I think that at the time I had been writing a lot of technical articles, and I was so tired of writing in such a formal way, and it felt like I was reaching such a small audience.
And I guess I kind of wanted to bridge a gap and speak to people that I wouldn’t ordinarily speak to about my research and find a different way of describing it and a different voice and a way that was kind of more satisfying of explaining why it was that I was doing what it is that I was doing.
BH: You make allusions throughout your book to an experiment that could either provide strong evidence for your theory or just be inconclusive about it. The final date in your book was Jan. 30, 2001. I was wondering if there were any developments with that?
JL: Yeah, actually there has been a lot of chatter about it since then and I think there was just recently an article in The New York Times and a couple of articles in Nature that were about finite universes, which is the topic of the book and that data. That satellite was launched in 2001, and the data came back in February of this year.
One of the only big surprises in the observation was that it looked as though there were some structures in the sky that we expected to see that were missing; very, very big structures, and I’ll explain that in a minute. It almost looked as though the universe was too small to fit these big features, and maybe the universe was finite.
Everyone just kind of laughed when they saw the data, because it’s well known that that’s a really strong characteristic signature of a finite universe. So we all just kind of had a laugh over it.
There were articles in The New York Times right after the data was announced, and I think there was an article just this week. So, there’s been a lot of chatter over the possibility that we’ve actually seen a finite universe.
Now, I’m skeptical, but it’s a great time. I’m very skeptical, and I won’t be surprised if we find a different explanation, but in the mean time, there’s going to be a lot of debate going back and forth. People saying it is, it isn’t, it is, it isn’t. So we’re really going to get to kind of bash it out.
BH: Is there any advice you have for undergrads and graduate students who are going into academia in the science fields?
JL: I think that I would like to see a generation of students that feels very comfortable looking outside just the academic community. I’d like to see a group of people that thinks in a bigger way and sees the world as a bigger place and recognizes its role as contributing to culture at large and to resisting some of the petty politics that unfortunately are a real problem in academic clans [and] groups.
So, I think that’s very important. Think for yourself, and be true to yourself. Be true to your ideas. Also, be agile and learn to give up when you’ve made a mistake and to follow a new path and to be agile and to not be entrenched in anybody’s ideas, including your own. I think those are really important characteristics of great scientists.
BH: I was wondering if there was any feel of vulnerability that you’ve gotten from divulging all the personal things in your book. How does it feel to have a bunch of people reading about your private life?
JL: I didn’t really realize what I was doing at the time; I plead insanity. I think it’s kind of embarrassing, and it kind of freaks me out. People will call me now and tell me very personal stories about themselves. Their wife left them, or their relationship broke up or they had an affair with their advisor — I mean, I get told the most personal things, because I disclosed something personal.
And so, I think what’s nice about having done that crazy thing is that people feel close to me. It’s really quite interesting. So I guess the intimate character came through, you know, and that’s great, but on the flipside I’m not so sure I would do that again. And I also want to emphasize that I left a lot out, so people shouldn’t think they know me or that they know everything. A little defensive, you know, a little self-protection.