Richard Gott, Princeton University

Adventures with Bob Across Many Dimensions
Date
Oct 6, 2023, 11:30 am12:00 pm
Location
Friend 006

Speakers

Richard Gott
Princeton University

Details

Event Description

Bob is one of the nicest people I have ever met. It has been a pleasure to work with him on a number of projects. We wrote a book together called Sizing Up the Universe for National Geographic. In it, we compared sizes of things in the universe. We showed Hurricane Katrina next to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. We had a “Powers of 1000” gallery starting with a life-size picture of Buzz Aldrin’s footprint on the Moon. The final picture, at a scale of 1/octillion, was a 2D slice of the entire visible universe, a large copy of which appears at the entrance of Peyton Hall. We made a 2D logarithmic map of the universe showing everything from Earth’s surface to the Microwave background for a 50-foot-long carpet in Peyton Hall. Each step down the corridor takes you a factor of 10 further away from the Earth. We were joined by our colleagues Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michael Strauss in writing the book Welcome to the Universe in 3D. I will be showing some of Bob’s beautiful images. It was a #1 New York Times Young Adult Best Seller. I, Dave Goldberg, and Bob produced the most accurate flat (2D) map of the Earth yet. It is a double-sided map, like a vinyl phonograph record, with the Northern Hemisphere on one side, the Southern Hemisphere on the other side, and the Equator running around the edge. TIME picked it as one of the 100 Best Inventions of 2021.