Sean Carroll Talks About His New Book, The biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Nature of Science, History of Science

Ed Hessler

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll who holds a joint appointment between physics and philosophy at the University of Maryland, has a new book: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion (Dutton). He talks about the book in a long conversation (1h 12m 57s) with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Closer to Truth. This series refers to these conversations/interviews as "Chats."

Kuhn's background is worth checking out and I think it is this background as well as his curiosity which makes him a good interviewer.

If you'd like to know more about the book - the discussion proceeds chapter by chapter - without reading it, this is a fitting overview. In addition, Carroll other topics, e.g., the importance of equations in popular science writing, the nature of time, gravity, and black holes.

And if you've not heard Carroll, he communicates complex scientific ideas very well. The discussion assumes interest and a willingness to tangle with some complex ideas. One of the things I liked about the interview is that the concepts were of personal interest to Carroll on his way to becoming a physicist.