I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I love talking to scientists even if I only understand a fraction of what's said.

One of my more memorable conversations occurred over a decade ago with a particle physicist

who previously worked at the Fermi Lab outside of Chicago.

Alongside a group of astrophysicists, she sent atoms flying in a four mile accelerator,

hoping to reproduce the effects of the big bang to recreate the instant when matter formed

in our universe.

The conversation blew my mind.

I claimed no special interest in quantum mechanics, but like anyone who, as a kid, consumed massive

amounts of comics and movies, naturally I was curious about this seemingly fantastical

science.

I went all in, asking questions about protons, string theory, and wormholes.

Most of the conversation, well, exceeded my high school physics class, but just as much

as I had struggled then to make sense of theoretical equations and thought experiments involving

cats and boxes, my mind still sparked like flashes of lightning and a cloud.

I could fill my brain churning to grasp large abstract ideas associated with an event that

occurred 13.8 billion years ago.

All manner of images and language ignited to accompany notions of expanding universes,

the god particle, and spacetime continuums.

I embraced what was elusive and latched onto the puzzle pieces that revealed themselves

most to me.

And short, I was thinking like a poet.

...