Janna Levin Instagram – “I did not always want to be a scientist. Even in college, I had very violent opinions about physics and what it was. I thought physicists memorized equations and built bombs, and that they were uncreative people, that it was not a creative field. It wasn’t until I was halfway through college that I discovered this subject that I knew nothing about. But once I got into physics, wow.
“Before then, I had been a philosophy major. The idea that we would sit here and argue about ‘what Kant meant’ drove me out of my mind. We were discussing Kant’s mother and his town and I thought, How could this be true if it has to do with his mother? It drove me bananas. There was something about the power of understanding that when Einstein taught us E=mc2, nobody’s going, ‘What was his relationship with his mother?’ He taught it to us, and then it was ours. It belongs to absolutely anybody who wants to learn E=mc2. It is yours. It’s transcendent, and presumably it’s true in another galaxy, for an alien life form. You don’t have to even know it was Einstein who said it. Something about that cut me to the quick.”
—— Astrophysicist and author of Black Hole Blues @jannalevin on, well, black holes—plus, the end of the universe, and what she sees when she looks at the sky in our recent Conversation. It’s also featured in Gossamer Volume Eight: the Space issue, which is on newsstands and available to order now. As told to @bykatedwyer and photographed by @langstonpalmer in Brooklyn. | Posted on 11/Jan/2023 08:51:15
