Welcome to the Not Old Better Show Smithsonian Associates Inside Science interview series on radio and podcast today's episode is part of our Inside Science series and I'm Paul Volgelsang.

Our guest today is Smithsonian Associate Dr. Michael Dine.

Do very much to our guest today Dr. Michael Dine.

We know a great deal about the universe its history and its composition.

We will be talking to Dr. Michael Dine today about how we were able to get to this point in our universe's history.

Michael Dine, distinguished professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, explores that question as he cautions that there are still great mysteries driving much current research in theoretical and experimental physics and astrophysics.

This is just a fascinating interview with Dr. Michael Dine.

You will enjoy Dr. Michael Dine is author of the new book this way to the universe.

Very approachable, very fascinating book and Dr. Dine will be presenting at Smithsonian Associates coming up.

You'll find links in our show notes today or check out this Smithsonian Associates site also linked in our show notes today.

Advancing the study of the detailed history of the universe is the mission of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope by NASA.

And while we may know much about the current makeup of the universe, 95% of the energy is in forms we can roughly describe but can't precisely identified called the dark matter and the dark energy.

Our guest today, Dr. Michael Dine will help us understand all of this surveying the universe during this extraordinary moment in time.

Surveying the universe, it seems to be an extraordinary moment. On the one hand we face daunting challenges, climate change, global pandemics, the threat of nuclear war.

On the other hand, as a species, we have knowledge of the world and the universe around us beyond anything humans might have imagined even a century ago.

No matter what happens, we have an unprecedented understanding of the natural world of which our daily experiences sample only a tiny corner.

Our lives play out on scales of centimeters, meters, kilometers, perhaps thousands of kilometers.

But we know about nature on smaller scales, far far smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus. We also know about the universe out to unimaginably large distances.

Even more amazing is what we know, really know, about events billions of years ago. And we can make statements with near certainty about what will happen to the universe for the next few tens of billions of years, an extraordinary moment indeed.

Most of us have heard about far away stars and galaxies have some inkling that the universe emerged from the big bang billions of years ago.

But precisely how large and how old is the universe? Where did it come from? What is its ultimate fate?

How do we find answers to these questions? We are aware of atoms and maybe somewhat aware of things smaller than atoms.

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