The Importance of Understanding Magnetic Field Lines

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Black holes have no hair, meaning they cannot support complicated things like magnetic field lines. If I disconnect a light bulb out of a lamp and I hold it in my hand, in principle, absolute basic electricity magnetism, no relativity, no black holes, nothing fancy. So if I wave a magnet around strongly enough, I will light up that light bulb. And the earth has such a magnetic field neutron stars, a very big magnetic field, black holes. Exactly. The formally proved cannot support the hair of magnetic fields, meaning they just can't have them. It's one of these things that I learned as a student, but always never understood.

It's a big universe out there, full of an astonishing variety of questions and puzzles. Today's guest, Janna Levin, is a physicist who has delved into some of the trippiest aspects of cosmology and gravitation: the topology of the universe, extra dimensions of space, and the appearance of chaos in orbits around black holes. At the same time, she has been a pioneer in talking about science in interesting and innovative ways: a personal memoir, a novelized narrative of famous scientific lives, and a journalistic exploration of one of the most important experiments of our time. We talk about how one shapes an unusual scientific career, and how the practice of science relates to more traditionally humanistic concerns. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Janna Levin received a Ph.D. in physics from MIT, and is now the Tow Professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. She is the author of How the Universe Got Its Spots, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, and Black Hole Blues. Her awards include the PEN/Bingham Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is also the director of sciences at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY. Web site Columbia web page Publications on INSPIRE TED talk on gravitational waves Amazon author page Pioneer Works Wikipedia page Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.