
The Universe in a Box
Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos
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Narrated by:
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Andrew Pontzen
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By:
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Andrew Pontzen
About this listen
Scientists are using simulations to recreate the universe, revealing the hidden nature of reality.
Cosmology is a tricky science—no one can make their own stars, planets, or galaxies to test its theories. But over the last few decades a new kind of physics has emerged to fill the gap between theory and experimentation. Harnessing the power of modern supercomputers, cosmologists have built simulations that offer profound insights into the deep history of our universe, allowing centuries-old ideas to be tested for the first time. Today, physicists are translating their ideas and equations into code, finding that there is just as much to be learned from computers as experiments in laboratories.
In The Universe in a Box, cosmologist Andrew Pontzen explains how physicists model the universe’s most exotic phenomena, from black holes and colliding galaxies to dark matter and quantum entanglement, enabling them to study the evolution of virtual worlds and to shed new light on our reality.
But simulations don’t just allow experimentation with the cosmos; they are also essential to myriad disciplines like weather forecasting, epidemiology, neuroscience, financial planning, airplane design, and special effects for summer blockbusters. Crafting these simulations involves tough compromises and expert knowledge. Simulation is itself a whole new branch of science, one that we are only just beginning to appreciate and understand. The story of simulations is the thrilling history of how we arrived at our current knowledge of the world around us, and it provides a sneak peek at what we may discover next.
©2023 Andrew Pontzen (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Compelling. . . . This book is a testament to the amazing potential of simulations to reveal new truths about the world around us and our place within it. An enthralling analysis of simulation, a formidable technology that may usher in a new era of cosmology.”—Kirkus
“Pontzen excels at translating quantum physics and other difficult concepts into lay-friendly terms. . . . this look at the cutting edge of astronomy fascinates.”—Publishers Weekly
“A truly excellent exposition of a fascinating, little understood, and very important scientific activity. I was enlightened, amazed, and profoundly impressed. I’ve seldom seen a book so clear, so vivid, and so full of—well, interesting things.”—Philip Pullman, author of the trilogy His Dark Materials
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Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
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What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
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Sing Like Fish
- How Sound Rules Life Under Water
- By: Amorina Kingdon
- Narrated by: Angelina Rocca
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, humans ignored sound in the “silent world” of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn’t perceive, didn’t exist. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems.
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Good solid science mixed with storytelling.
- By Hawaiian 54 on 10-04-24
By: Amorina Kingdon
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To Boldly Grow
- Finding Joy, Adventure, and Dinner in Your Own Backyard
- By: Tamar Haspel
- Narrated by: Tamar Haspel
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist and self-proclaimed “crappy gardener” Tamar Haspel is on a mission: to show us that raising or gathering our own food is not as hard as it’s often made out to be. When she and her husband move from Manhattan to two acres on Cape Cod, they decide to adopt a more active approach to their diet: raising chickens, growing tomatoes, even foraging for mushrooms and hunting their own meat. They have more ambition than practical know-how, but that’s not about to stop them from trying…even if sometimes their reach exceeds their (often muddy) grasp.
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Funny, Smart, and Growth Encouraging
- By CLF on 03-28-23
By: Tamar Haspel
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Reality Is Not What It Seems
- The Journey to Quantum Gravity
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Simon Carnell - translator, Erica Segre - translator
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the Universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the Universe today.
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Most compelling physics book in at least 10 years!
- By Kyle on 02-03-17
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
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"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself"
- The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945
- By: Florian Huber
- Narrated by: Sam Peter Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was underway. As the Red Army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but disgrace and despair. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death - for themselves and for their children.
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This book should be required reading for anyone that seeks to understand how ordinary people could be transformed into monsters.
- By Anonymous User on 05-08-20
By: Florian Huber
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Some Assembly Required
- Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
- By: Neil Shubin
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
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Interesting but thin. ANNOYING narration
- By MSB on 04-10-20
By: Neil Shubin
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The World in a Grain
- The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
- By: Vince Beiser
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other - even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it - and sometimes, even kill for it.
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History given is only reason it gets 2 stars.
- By Dennis on 07-23-19
By: Vince Beiser
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Power Metal
- The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future
- By: Vince Beiser
- Narrated by: Vince Beiser
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of “green power” and digital technology–that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet. Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage.
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Misleading title
- By O. D. S on 11-21-24
By: Vince Beiser
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Masala Lab
- The Science of Indian Cooking
- By: Krish Ashok
- Narrated by: Ashish Bhandari
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd's exploration of Indian cooking with the ultimate aim of making the listener a better cook and turning the kitchen into a joyful, creative playground for culinary experimentation. Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a sub-optimal way of learning how to cook.
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Learned a lot!
- By Sharon S. Dorondo on 12-21-22
By: Krish Ashok
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Mirrors in the Earth
- Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World
- By: Asia Suler
- Narrated by: Asia Suler
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A nature therapy session for the soul—encounter the benevolence of the living world through 12 essays on the Earth-healing powers of self-compassion and empathy.
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amazing feel good book!
- By April on 04-01-25
By: Asia Suler
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Where the Water Goes
- Life and Death Along the Colorado River
- By: David Owen
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes listeners on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the US-Mexico border where the river runs dry.
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Water issues are never about only water.
- By Bonny on 08-20-17
By: David Owen
1) simulations, such as weather prediction
2) galaxy formation and the cosmic web; this is the topic of Pontzen’s own simulations. Super fascinating, with the best lay explanation of dark matter and energy I’ve encountered
3) the “simulation hypothesis” that we’re living in a sim, and explains why it is not interesting or provable.
Great overview of the power of simulations
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makes me wanna specialize in weak emergence and simulations
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