A Review of Our Mathematical Universe, by Max Tegmark

Knopf, 2014

432 pages

The book opens with a chiller: “A second later, I died.” What follows is not a murder mystery being narrated by the deceased victim, but a whirlwind explanation of cosmology, quantum physics, and theoretical evidence for the idea of multiple universes. Welcome to the world of Max Tegmark, professor of theoretical physics at MIT, whose brain roams across the entire history of human scientific inquiry into the ultimate question: what is reality?

Our Mathematical Universe is Tegmark’s first book-length project, following his publication of over 200 academic papers, numerous essays for popular science outlets, and appearances in TV and radio documentaries. While a book on such a broad, esoteric topic could easily veer off-track into Ph.D. jargon, Tegmark keeps his expansive, quirky voice focused, transitioning smoothly between topics and helping bring the average Joe impressively close to understanding his world with, ironically, as little reliance on math as possible. Full Review »

I sat in a chair across from the hospital bed, watching each shallow breath shrug its way out, into, and out of my grandfather’s chest. The amount of time between the conclusion of one breath and the start of the next one was just long enough that my eyes constantly flicked up to the monitor to make sure his heart was still beating. A stroke had paralyzed his right side from the shoulder down and severely impaired his ability to speak, and at 96 years old, he was already in less than peak condition. Full Article »

It’s plastered on coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and t-shirts. There is a thirteen-foot statue of it in central Berlin. People rattle it off when trying to sound impressive. It has become synonymous with genius. It is the most well-known physics equation in the world. I’m talking, of course, about E = mc², Albert Einstein’s most lasting contribution to the popular conception of physics. Full Article »

When the largest volcanic eruption in the last 70,000 years spewed giant clouds of ash and debris into the air, millions of tiny microorganisms got caught up in the blast and hitchhiked hundreds of miles to new locations, researchers have found. The first record of microbes being distributed by volcano, these diatoms can help scientists figure out the volcanic source of ancient ash deposits, which offers a new, more reliable way to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s past.

The most common way to identify layers of volcanic material has been carbon-14 dating, which estimates the age of non-living substances using the decay rate of radioactive carbon atoms, but that measurement is notoriously finicky, according to Alexa Van Eaton of the U.S Geological Survey. “It’s much easier to identify a diatom than volcanic matter,” Van Eaton says, adding, that this approach “is something people haven’t thought about before.” Full Article »

Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, your fat may be working against you. Researchers have found that in healthy and moderately overweight people, fat cells can lose their ability to break down and release fat molecules normally.

When this process, called “triglyceride turnover,” is disrupted, triglycerides (the building block molecules of fat) can stay in the body longer — which may contribute to weight gain. While this research does not pin down exactly what causes some people to gain weight while others stay thin, identifying this process gives scientists a new potential target for weight loss research. Full Article »