You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Once upon a time, there was a universe.

We are not sure about how it started or whether there is a reason.

We don't know, for example, if space time is ordered or disordered at the smallest scales,

which are dominated by the weirdness of quantum mechanics.

Then again, we are not super sure about this either.

For some reason, particles formed more matter than antimatter.

That process, which formed a particle type called barions, is called bariogenesis.

Chanda Prescott Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and author of the new book, The Disordered Cosmos,

a journey into dark matter, space time, and dreams deferred.

From there, those barions started to form structures and from those structures stars formed.

Then the stars got old and some of them died in super epic, rather fabulous fashion.

They exploded into supernovae, making heavy elements like carbon and oxygen in the process.

Those elements went on to be the basis for all life on Earth.

It's her job to ask deep questions about how we and the rest of the universe got to where it is today.

Eventually, a smaller type of structure that we call life-formed on Earth.

Some of the life forms that evolved were relatively hairless apes that use a variety of methods of communication.

She asks big questions in a all-humankind type of way.

And also in an individual, I am a queer black, age-under-woman, marginalized in a field, historically,

and currently dominated by white men.

And that difference is important and actively shapes our science type of way.

Some of the ones with less e-melonin have for a long time now being cruel to the ones with more,

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