How do fish and other marine species find forever homes? How long do they remain drifters?

Adults spawn and release eggs that hatch into larvae that temporarily join the drifting communities of the open ocean, plankton. What happens from there is not easy to study–larvae are tiny; almost invisible, and the ocean is huge. Continue reading “Tales From the Sea: How do Baby Fish and Other Marine Species Find Forever Homes?”

QM2017 Public Lecture in collaboration with C2ST

For the first second of time, long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, our universe was a hot primordial soup of “elementary” particles like quarks.  Encoded in this formless, shapeless quark soup were the imprints of events from an even earlier epoch—the very beginning of the universe.  Continue reading “From Quarks to the Cosmos”

Opening Day may seem far in the distant future, but that doesn’t stop us from counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report for the spring season, and for the official start of spring training.

But there is no better way to celebrate the Cubs’ World Series than taking a closer look at what happens on the ballfield: Why does Jon Lester’s curveball curve? How did David Ross handle all those fastballs? And what’s the quickest way for Dexter Fowler to run around the bases? Continue reading “The Physics of Baseball: What Newton said to the Billygoat”