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Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

The abstract concepts and complex equations found in the study of physics can feel as esoteric as they do intimidating. But today’s guest believes that physics can actually be deeply poetic, philosophical and even political.

Theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s new book, The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, weaves together cosmology, quantum mechanics, history, queer theory and pop culture—from Star Trek to Missy Elliott—to bring readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe. By exploring the edges of what we know about spacetime, she argues, we can gain a new perspective on the limitless possibilities of our own existence.

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Chanda recently came by the office to chat with SciAm associate books editor Bri Kane. Here’s their conversation.

Bri Kane: I am so excited to talk to you about all of my biggest and weirdest physics questions today [Laughs], but I wanted to start off with the poetry that you talk about in this book. You say that when physics is at its best, it’s very poetic. How is physics poetic to you?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: I mean, I think the universe is poetic. There’s something really beautiful and elegant, particularly for me, as a theoretical physicist, how all the pieces come together. There’s a poetry to that. There’s a rhythm to it and—rhythm and patterns, right? So I think what we do in physics is look for patterns and try and establish patterns. And poetry is often very pattern-based, whether you’re talking about meter or the structure of the poem on the page. So I see a lot of links.

Kane: Yeah, I mean, this book really connects a lot of different subjects in science and then brings them all to the center in physics. But one that I thought was really interesting is there’s a lot of history in this book and a lot of history that I didn’t know about. [Laughs.] There’s a lot of people that you talk about as being the first in their field or newly realized as the first in their field. And so I wanted to ask you about Mozi from the Zhou kingdom.

Prescod-Weinstein: So I should start by saying I didn’t come into the book thinking, “I’m gonna write about Zhou kingdom philosophers from, you know, before China was established,” and so even figuring out, “How do I talk about this?” because the reference point is going to be—this is stuff that’s written in ancient Chinese.

And as I was writing about Newton’s laws and trying to figure out, “How do I make Newton’s laws interesting to me?” ’cause I actually hated frosh physics. I did not enjoy it. It wasn’t my jam. I was someone who was, like, really hype about quantum mechanics, quantum physics, general relativity, that kind of thing. And in doing some research, I saw a little note somewhere that actually this philosopher from the Zhou kingdom, Mozi, had come up with one of Newton’s laws, like, a millennium before Newton had.

And so I chased this down, and it was a real moment of synergy of understanding how much we in the sciences depend on the humanities because someone had taken the time to do the translation. And it just opened this whole world to me of people asking these questions about “How do I explain the difference between extent in space and duration in time?” and the different ways that these people who lived very close to the land and in a different way were trying to have these conversations with themselves about the difference between space and time, or maybe the lack of difference between space and time.

Kane: Yeah, I mean, as you say in the book, we have been looking to the stars since there were stars, since we were able to look at them. I mean, it’s something that has always inspired us and also helped us reflect on ourselves, which I thought was really interesting ’cause physics can be kind of intimidating to people as a field, but it’s also very philosophical and poetic, as you’re saying, and it can be really exciting. It can also be pretty funny. I mean, I laughed out loud at a few lines in this book, and, and physics does not normally

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