Janna Levin
SCIENCE = CULTURE
“If we imagine the universe is born and it is not infinite, or it is infinite, and we ask, is nature trying every possibility? As it happens mathematically, there are an infinite number of ways for the universe to be finite, but there are very few ways for the universe to be infinite. So, where are we? Where do we live?”
StarTalk Radio · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Levin, a cosmologist, is talking with Neil deGrasse Tyson about the shape of the universe: whether space could be finite and "folded up" like origami. She points out that the mathematics leaves many more ways to be finite than to be infinite.
Transcript
you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You still got some skills?
I can do like five things.
Yeah. Well, the universe has countable ways it can be folded up. So if the universe is really three-dimensional, we know all of the possible ways it can be wrapped up into a kind of origami. And there's way more complicated. All bets are off. But even with just three dimensions, if we imagine the universe is born and it is not infinite, or it is infinite, and we ask, is nature trying every possibility? As it happens mathematically, factually. There are an infinite number of ways for the universe to be finite, but there are very few number of ways for the universe to be infinite. So, where are we? Where do we live?
Can I even repeat that? Okay. There's an infinite number of ways a finite universe can be configured topologically.
Yeah, glued up into origami. All the unique ways it can be folded together. But
there's only a finite number of ways.
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