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In the beginning…there was Francisco Diego, luminary speaker on the origins of the universe. In the beginning, the Apaches believed, nothing existed, but as Francisco Diego explained to Year 11, there is always something. Weaving and ducking under his white rope time-line, (1mm represents 2 million years), Francisco pegged his sequenced photos, demonstrating perfectly the expansion of the universe from simple pure energy in a single dot through to the complexity of the human brain. He explained quarks and electrons, the fundamental particles and building blocks of the universe. We were starry-eyed until we hit the Dark Ages, about 400 million years in. But with extinction comes recovery. In case we were getting complacent, Francisco pointed out that dinosaurs were the top of the tree and that humans are mere pipsqueaks in comparison. Our evolution is a tiny moment on the time-line, but how much have we achieved! We know to thank our lucky stars for enjoying chemistry, physics and biology. “Take the torch of Einstein further,” he exhorted us. “Seek proper explanations for the origins of the universe, for gravity, and more…” We left the talk, humbled and thrilled by the prospect.
11 November 2011
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