How the Universe Got Its Spots

Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space

Janna Levin

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780691232270
  9780691096575
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691232287
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Astronomy & Astrophysics

Is the universe infinite, or is it just really big? Does nature abhor infinity? In startling and beautiful prose, Janna Levin's diary of unsent letters to her mother describes what we know about the shape and extent of the universe, about its beginning and its end. She grants the uninitiated access to the astounding findings of contemporary theoretical physics and makes tangible the contours of space and time—those very real curves along which apples fall and planets orbit.

Levin guides the reader through the observations and thought-experiments that have enabled physicists to begin charting the universe. She introduces the cosmic archaeology that makes sense of the pattern of hot spots left over from the big bang, a pursuit on the verge of discovering the shape of space itself. And she explains the topology and the geometry of the universe now coming into focus—a strange map of space full of black holes, chaotic flows, time warps, and invisible strings. Levin advances the controversial idea that this map is edgeless but finite—that the universe is huge but not unending—a radical revelation that would provide the ultimate twist to the Copernican revolution by locating our precise position in the cosmos.

As she recounts our increasingly rewarding attempt to know the universe, Levin tells her personal story as a scientist isolated by her growing knowledge. This book is her remarkable effort to reach across the distance of that knowledge and share what she knows with family and friends—and with us. Highly personal and utterly original, this physicist's diary is a breathtaking contemplation of our deep connection with the universe and our aspirations to comprehend it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the 2023 Edition
• 1. Is the universe infinite or is it just really big?
• 2. Infinity
• 3. Newton, 300 years and Einstein
• 4. Special relativity
• 5. General relativity
• 6. Quantum chance and choice
• 7. Death and black holes
• 8. Life and the big bang
• 9. Beyond Einstein
• 10. Adventures in Flatland and hyperspace
• 11. Topology: links, locks, loops
• 12. Through the looking glass
• 13. Wonderland in 3D
• 14. Mirrors in the sky
• 15. How the universe got its spots
• 16. The ultimate prediction
• 17. Scars of creation
• 18. The shape of things to come
• Epilogue
• Index