Janna Levin

A billion years ago, somewhere in the observable universe, two black holes have collided. In the final seconds of their long life together, the black holes banged out a rhythm like mallets on a drum, creating waves in the shape of spacetime. That song reverberated outward at the speed of light and is on its way here. Over the billion years since, we evolved and pointed telescopes at the sky, discovered a universe in which we are not central, squabbled, and warred, and have nearly driven ourselves to extinction. In the past decade or so, a few experimentalists, disconnected from mainstream concerns, struggled to devise observatories to do the improbable if not outright impossible: record Lilliputian waves in the shape of space. As the echo of those black holes lies just beyond our solar system, billion dollar instruments are being upgraded for Earth and planned for space. As the instruments come online--a sophisticated global microphone pointed at the sky--it will get here, faintly captured beneath experimental static, the swan song of a black hole pair. And not just black holes, but exploding stars, colliding galaxies, even the origin of the universe contribute to the universe in audio. In the next few years, the sounds from space will be recorded for the first time in human history, thereby turning up the volume on the soundtrack to the Universe.

In this talk, Janna Levin illuminates the mysteries of the universe, taking audiences on a witty, intriguing, and epic tour through new discoveries in modern cosmology. From some of humankind’s basic questions—What else is out there? How did the universe begin?—to this decade’s big scientific breakthroughs to a preview of what’s next, Levin, a cosmologist and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, makes clear sense of a fascinating but often befuddling topic. How has our understanding of the cosmos changed from when we first set out to look at the stars? What does this new knowledge mean for us? With storytelling panache, Levin (who is also a novelist!) takes us to literally the highest reaches of science, but grounds her talk in a relatable tale about humanity and discovery.

For over half a century, there has been a chasm between the arts and the sciences--creating a gulf that has hindered the growth of both sides. Janna Levin's work as an award-winning author of literary fiction, a Fellow at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing in Oxford, and a professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College, Columbia University exemplifies a growing movement deemed "The Third Culture." In this talk, Levin discusses the crossover between the arts and the sciences, sharing stunning examples--such as a Brooklyn collective of artists, designers, roboticists, engineers, and biologists--of a new intellectual culture being born.

Insurmountable limits can beget exhilarating outbursts of creativity. There is a fundamental limit in the speed of light. Constrained by this limit, Einstein discovered the relativity of space/time and launched the discovery of black holes and the big bang. There is a fundamental limit to Mathematics--there are facts even among numbers that we will never know are true or false. Constrained by this limit, the brilliant code breaker Alan Turing invented the computer and dreamed of artificial intelligence. There is a fundamental limit to certainty in any measurement. Constrained by this limit, Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein and others discovered quantum mechanics and posed a challenge to conventional ideas of reality. Limits can be worthy adversaries that bring out our best, most inventive, most agile natures. Surrendering to constraints can inspire great gestures of creativity and moments of discovery that change us forever.