Amid the day to day minutiae of human experience, the universe is wonderfully reassuring. I saw this clip last week and have thought about it repeatedly since. I love the revelation of math. Levin uses numbers as her medium to paint and understand the vast expanse of outer space. See this BBC video report here: Janna Levin, Black holes and the universe’s secrets.
Chaos, black holes and the early universe. These are the pre-occupations of one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, Janna Levin.
Professor Levin’s study and research have taken her on an academic journey through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge and Oxford Universities and now the faculty of Barnard College at New York’s Columbia University.
In a 2011 TED talk (see it here) she explained why space is not a silent place and how the universe has a soundtrack.
But the pursuit of answers to the unsolved questions of our universe is not Janna Levin’s sole preoccupation. She’s also a critically acclaimed novelist whose work explores the spaces where science and art intersect.
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I love the stars, looking up at the sky puts everything into perspective.
If you haven’t seen this demonstration of the powers of 10 you’ll like it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EToLXqgrX7o
It might be better resolution on the version requiring Java, but I hate agreeing to those idiotic “privacy” disclosures where they say they can collect any info on you they want and disseminate it to anyone they want, so I didn’t download Java, but if you have Java, you can see it here, and you can also download Java if you want to agree that it’s OK for them to spy on you:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/