Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Frank Close the 67 year old British particle physicist, Professor and author has published an article in the Prospect Magazine titled ‘The twin child of the Big Bang’ discussing the first moments of the universe, how we may soon find out why matter overpowered antimatter, its mirror opposite. Close states “…We know how the energy in the heat of the Big Bang created the basic seeds of matter, and how over the eons these particles have formed galaxies of stars, including our own Milky Way and solar system. …Matter is not the Big Bang’s only child. It was born with a long-lost twin: antimatter. Matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality. … When the energy of the Big Bang congealed into the fundamental particles of matter, an imprint in the form of metaphorical holes, their antimatter siblings, was also formed. …Experiments have shown that quarks are the basic seeds of matter as we know it. There are also exotic forms of matter, containing what are known as strange, charm or bottom quarks, which rarely exist independently, except under very special conditions, such as briefly during or just after the Big Bang. They are unstable and their decays produce the stable forms from which our mature universe is made. …tantalising results are beginning to emerge. As data accumulate, the experiments at Cern will reveal sharper images of the processes at work in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. Why the Big Bang happened is likely to remain an enigma. Why the universe managed to survive, and evolve, may soon be answered.”

Inspired by Prospect Magazine ow.ly/ebfN3 image source ow.ly/ebfdR

If we don't find one, maybe we'll go extinct (June 15th 2012)

Charles H. Lineweaver the Australian Astrophysicist and Senior Fellow at the Planetary Science Institute believes finding planets outside the solar system that can sustain life should be made a top priority, and may be crucial for our survival as a species. Lineweaver profiled by Darren Osbourne stated “Determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy, It’s probably one of the biggest, most confusing, and important issues that planetary scientists are going to have to deal with in the next 10 to 20 years. …Over the past few decades our exploration of the Earth has turned up life in all kinds of weird environments where we didn’t think life could be in, and we’re finding all types of extraterrestrial environments that we didn’t know about before, as these two groups expand they start to overlap in big ways, and that’s where habitable planets will be found. …Life, by managing its own environment, makes a planet habitable. It has produced adaptive features as a result of Darwinian evolution to live in colder and warmer environments. …The next step will be to develop a satellite that can look at the atmospheres of these planets, which will be able to give us some information about whether there is life there or not, …and if we don’t find one, maybe we’ll go extinct.”

Inspired by Darren Osborne ow.ly/bs3tA image source Facebook ow.ly/bs1T8