
Philosopher turned astro-physicist Janna Levin thinks a lot about the origins of the universe. She’s written a non-fiction book, How the Universe Got Its Spots, in which she contemplates whether or not the universe is finite or infinite, or if indeed our universe is one in a multiverse.
Janna Levin, mother of two young children, is a contemporary Renaissance woman. She can draw, she can write, and she can teach advanced mathematics that decode quantum physics, which she does at Barnard College of Columbia University.
In a recent TED talk Levin demonstrates, among other cosmic sounds, what we might hear when two black holes collide … moments before being crushed. Not to give her whole talk away, but according to her sophisticated mathematical models, black holes don’t have much in the way of a melody, but they do have a distinctive rhythmic beat.