Customer Reviews

How the Universe Got Its Spots

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The author states that her concept for the book is a series of essays written to her mom, mostly about her work and the science. It is an interesting collection of essays that sums up the essence of cosmological topology (what shape is the universe, what shape did it have in earlier stages) for a layman audience. It lacks the complex mathematics behind the ideas and the proofs and spends a fair bit of time with her own tribulations in a shakey marriage and the processes of academic science, so if you want just the meat this isn't your book. I found it entertaining, interesting and an easy read.

How the Leopard Changed Its Spots : The Evolution of Complexity
The book seems to have a very personal diary entry quality.
I'm not buying that. The author has changed her spots.
Levin talks about four major models:
1) her first model the E8 soccer ball model ( 12 o)
2) Week's model: minimal manifold model ( near A4 by vertice number at 22 or 23 : can also fit my elliptical E8)
3) Thurston's model ( SO(6) or SU(4) or A3) broken Weeks's Model ?
4) Levin's second model as hexagonal prism D6 model ( again 12 vertices): a broken E8 model?

She uses a standing wave like elliptical projection method for her "spots spheres".
She's probably our generation's Sophie Germaine.
It seems like she tends to "use" men and
thinks more like a man than a woman at times.
They say only once a century does a woman come along
who has the abilities of a kind that are comparable to the top men.
But it appears she is still pretty young and self centered.
She has sowed it up in a book
when she should have been studying
to get as much knowledge as she needed first?
It is at least good to know that people like her are around who
have some fractal background
although she seem to have ignored that in her book.
She seems somewhat mathematically naive in terms of :
1) group theory/ Lie algebras
2) theory of surfaces/ standing waves
3) discrete mathematics
I really can't fault her much as it has taken me many years to develop a knowledge in these areas.
From the picture "Map" result I got was D=Sqrt[3] on the elliptical projection: that would be
D=Sqrt[3]+1 =~2.73 which is a number associated with SU(3) or A2 in the curvature Lie Algebra approach.
I would need to do a box counting dimension analysis
of the different models in the Levin projections to get an idea which is the best in fractal terms.
There is no indication that she or the people she is working with have taken that step.
My indication is that the Week's model is more likely
using my own E8 elliptical invariant Klein-Gordon,
but neither of them had that when they did their work.
I think that the author should read Joao Magueijo's book
as well.
Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation