Across the Universe

Contemplating the multiverse is mind-blowing, but if you want a truly earth-shattering controversy in physics, you have to go back 500 years to Copernicus' radical theory.  Dava Sobel tells his story.

What would it be like to walk on Mars?  Nature writer Craig Childs thinks it would be like trekking in some of Earth's most forbidding environments - deserts and Arctic ice fields.

Caltech physicist Sean Carroll thinks big...really big. And not just about quantum physics, the multiverse and the other weird ideas in his field. He also loves philosophy and wonders whether there's any underlying meaning to our lives. In this wide-ranging conversation, Carroll talks with Steve Paulson about science, the universe and what he calls "poetic naturalism."

Lorrie Moore has a new collection of short stories. She tells Steve Paulson that life is filled with absurdity; ghost stories are great fodder for fiction; and North America now owns the short story.