Janna Levin

In her new book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, Levin offers the authoritative story of the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves—the soundtrack to astronomy’s silent movie. But why was this scientific campaign so significant? And what does it mean for the sciences—and humanity—in general?

Over a billion years ago, two black holes collided. In the final second of their life together, they banged out a rhythm like mallets on a drum, creating gravitational waves—waves in the shape of spacetime. 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. One hundred years ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. Over the past five decades, 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 approached just beyond our solar system, billion-dollar instruments known collectively as LIGO underwent an upgrade here on Earth. As the instruments came online—a sophisticated global microphone pointed at the sky—the first gravitational wave sound ever recorded came from the southern sky, struck the instrument in Louisiana, then Washington. And with these new observatories, so much has changed. “If what we witnessed before was a silent movie, Levin says, “gravitational waves turn our universe into a talkie.”

In this absorbing keynote, Levin explains the significance, beauty, and human story at the center of this fifty-year endeavor—bringing originality and lucidity to one of the discoveries of our age.

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 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.

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.

For more than 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.