Is the Universe Built on Math?
16:50 minutes
In his book The Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, physicist Max Tegmark argues that the universe is completely mathematical—and if it isn’t, physics is doomed. But does the universe need math to exist? Or is mathematics simply a convenient language to describe the cosmos?
Max Tegmark is a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Read an excerpt from The Mathematical Universe.
Christopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer. He once served as a prop in an optical illusion and speaks passable Ira Flatowese.