I study dark matter, cosmology, and particle physics for a living at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. On the weekends I write explainers about surprising places physics shows up in the natural world.
caragiovanetti.com
Cara Giovanetti
*BILLION whoops!
Cara Giovanetti
References:
www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...
ahhh pause all of science because i was too lazy to do code review for claude's prs!!!
Happy pride!
Here is why cosmology is gay š³ļøāš
1/6 āļøš§Ŗ
Letās work backwards from today, as I find that to be the direction of increasing queerness.
Itās estimated that the first stars formed ~13.5 billion years ago. Without this the whopping **54%** of queer American adults who consult astrology would need to look elsewhere for spiritual guidance
2/6
And at some as-yet-unknown temperature, 13.8 million years ago, the universeās āinitial conditionsā were set, during the Big Bang. Iāll leave the details to your imagination, but it was probably full of what my mother would refer to as āgay activityā.
6/6
Thatās as far back as data take us, but theory can push even further! Itās expected that the universe reached an even hotter, denser state, just a miniscule fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The universe was comprised mostly of quarks and gluons, some of which are unfortunately namedā¦
5/6
~300 million years before there were stars, the universe was so hot that electrons couldnāt bind to nuclei. Probably I should liken it to a nightclub but I have never been in one, so instead imagine the electrons are enjoying a rare burst of executive function and are too manic to settle down.
3/6
And about 400,000 years before thatājust minutes after the Big Bangāthe universe was so hot that even protons and neutrons couldnāt stick together inside nuclei. Most of the hydrogen and helium in the universe formed during this era, giving us jokes like these (twitter.com/katyscartoons ):
4/6
