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You are here: Home / Books / For A Good Time In Cambridge…Next Week!

For A Good Time In Cambridge…Next Week!

by Tom Levenson|  October 27, 20154:59 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: Books, Open Threads, Science & Technology, Shameless self promotion

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Hey all,

 

Shameless self promotion coming up.  Leave now if you want…

A reminder: I’ll be talking Vulcan, gravity, Einstein, and General Relativity at 100 with my quite wonderful colleague, David Kaiser, one week from today.

The_Copernican_or_solar_system_(12325996445)

It will all happen on Tuesday, November 3, starting at 6 p.m. at the MIT Museum.  Free and open to the public of course.  We’ll be done by 7:30, and, yes, there will be books to buy (and have signed)>

The occasion, as you may have guessed, is the publication of my new book, The Hunt for Vulcan.  Early reviews have been kind.  Here’s Kirkus, and here are the results from the Amazon Vine program — new to me — in which prolific Amazon reviewers get a pre-publication crack at the book.

Shortest form, David and I will talk both about the story of the planet Vulcan, which really should have existed; how Einstein disposed of it when he invented his truly radical new conception of gravity; and what Vulcan’s repeated discovery tells us about the difference between how we think science works, and how it really does in the hands of the human beings who do the labor.  It should be fun.

If you want a little more background on the Einstein part, by the way, you can take a look at a piece I published in The Boston Globe on Sunday.  A taste:

Einstein’s gift for mental imagery showed itself when he tried to explain to his son how mere geometry could produce what we feel as the tug of gravity. Imagine, he said (at least so the story goes) a blind beetle. When it “crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved.”

Or imagine living on a vast, seemingly featureless plain, so flat that you know only two dimensions, length and width. Out for a walk one day, you find that your steps are coming harder. You begin to puff and labor. You sense that you’re being pulled by something — a force you could call gravity. It tugs you back as you walk along what you’re sure is a straight line. To anyone able to perceive three dimensions, not two, there is a simpler explanation — or as Einstein told his son, “I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice.”

I can promise you that the evening will beat rearranging your sock drawer.  By what margin?  Only time will tell.

PS:  If you’re interested by conflicted next week, I’ll be doing an event at Brookline Booksmith at 7 p.m. on November 12.  Much the same stuff to be discussed.  And support for a good local bookstore thrown in!

Image:  Benjamin Cole, The Copernican or Solar System, 1759

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Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    October 27, 2015 at 5:23 pm

    @Tom Levenson:

    “Interested but conflicted” in your P.S.

  2. 2.

    Tom Levenson

    October 27, 2015 at 5:26 pm

    @Steeplejack (phone): well, yes. But I’m away from my desk and can’t easily fix. The book was properly copy-edited tho. I’m

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    October 27, 2015 at 5:26 pm

    Congratulations on your book! It sounds fascinating.

  4. 4.

    D58826

    October 27, 2015 at 5:35 pm

    OT but Goper CHaffetz and 18 other GOP congress critters want to impeach the head of the IRS over the alleged targeting of conservatives. They claim he hasn’t supplied them the the wood and matches that they need to burn him at the stake.

  5. 5.

    goblue72

    October 27, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Congrats! And does this mean that the Star Trek reboot is now canon?

  6. 6.

    ruemara

    October 27, 2015 at 6:39 pm

    Will there be a stream? Because it looks interesting.

  7. 7.

    AdamK

    October 27, 2015 at 7:13 pm

    @goblue72: It’s a sequel to “The Search for Spock”.

  8. 8.

    Dave Empey

    October 27, 2015 at 7:18 pm

    I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of this book!

  9. 9.

    Malaclypse

    October 27, 2015 at 7:23 pm

    @goblue72:

    There was no Star Trek reboot.

  10. 10.

    Goblue72

    October 27, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    @AdamK: Ha!

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 27, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    I have schedule conflicts on both dates, both of them those culture-in-the-cinema things I have become so addicted to. Next Tuesday I’m seeing a live-to-theatres production of The Importance of Being Earnest with David Suchet (!) as Lady Bracknell. And on the 12th, it’s Ballet Hispanico from Lincoln Center.

    Otherwise, I would be there for both of your events.

    Well, I would if I didn’t live 1,100 miles away.

    But for real, I’m buying The Hunt for Vulcan. And I’ll let my Boston-area friends know. Will look forward to your after-the-fact updates.

  12. 12.

    Goblue72

    October 27, 2015 at 7:38 pm

    @Malaclypse: Fine whatever the Trekkies/Trekkers/Treknerds want to call the JJ Abrams movie.

  13. 13.

    WaterGirl

    October 27, 2015 at 8:07 pm

    @ Tom Levinson

    Thanks, Tom!

    Just ordered 2 copies on Amazon for gifts – one for my best friend who is a nuclear physicist and the other for a friend who is not a scientist but will gobble this up like it’s crack.

    Of course, I will sneak a peak at the book (very carefully) before giving it to my friends :-) so it’s possible that I might end up getting a copy for myself. Will this be available on iBooks?

  14. 14.

    Malaclypse

    October 27, 2015 at 8:23 pm

    @Goblue72:

    I categorically refuse to believe that JJ Abrams has ever made movies set in the Star Trek universe. This belief serves me well, and I see no reason to question it.

  15. 15.

    Joy in FL

    October 27, 2015 at 9:00 pm

    I just read the article– so interesting. Thank you for sharing it. Pretty sure I’ll be on Amazon soon to buy the book.
    I love the world of Balloon Juice– so varied and rich : )

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 27, 2015 at 9:15 pm

    The title essay in Isaac Asimov’s classic nonfiction collection The Planet That Wasn’t is on the same subject. Though there is only so much detail one can go into in a short article.

  17. 17.

    celticdragonchick

    October 27, 2015 at 9:18 pm

    Putting this in my Christmas list.

  18. 18.

    Sandia Blanca

    October 27, 2015 at 10:15 pm

    Shared with my physicist hubby–sounds like a great book!

  19. 19.

    Tom Levenson

    October 27, 2015 at 10:20 pm

    Many thanks to all for the kind words. See you next week, in spirit if not in the flesh.

    T

  20. 20.

    Cervantes

    October 28, 2015 at 9:05 am

    @Tom Levenson:

    Good luck with the marketing campaign — and have fun at the readings!

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