Smarty Pints! Origins of the Universe and Paths to Discovery

Join us for an evening on how neutrinos and the origins of the universe and on the messy backstories behind scientific discovery!
About this Event

Join us August 17 for stories of the paths to scientific discovery! Meg Wynne will share how the search for the mass of the neutrino could help us understand the origins of the universe. Roberta Kwok will cover the messy side of the science you hear about in the news, with excerpts from her new book. We’ll have Third Place Books here with copies for sale, and a book signing after the talks! See you at 6:30pm at Burke-Gilman Brewing! 🍻

🌌 Meg Wynne
PhD Candidate, UW Physics
“Probing the origins of the universe: neutrino mass measurements”

13.7 billion years ago the universe began with a bang. The Big Bang created almost equal parts of matter and antimatter, but this asymmetry, which allows for our existence, is one of the deepest questions of physics. The early hot primordial soup of the universe also generated the elusive neutrinos - the most abundant massive particle. Could finding the mass of the neutrino help us understand why matter dominates anti matter?

🔎 Roberta Kwok
Freelance science journalist and author
“Lost in Curiosity: Field Notes From Scientists' Adventures into the Unknown”

The real story of science isn’t a triumphant breakthrough. It’s messy, mysterious, and deeply human. In her new book Lost in Curiosity, award-winning journalist Roberta Kwok pulls back the curtain on what scientific discovery actually looks like… Not a Eureka moment, but a fraught, often chaotic pursuit of truth.

Chronicling researchers’ struggles and hopes in the field and lab, Kwok documents it all: fending off relentless snowfall on a remote Greenland glacier, desperately searching for an elusive frog in the rainforests of Borneo, and scrambling to capture fleeting signals of a faraway moon outside our solar system. Through vivid reporting and moments of unexpected emotion, Kwok reveals the inner lives of researchers who care profoundly about understanding our world and saving what’s left of it. From enigmatic fossils and mind-bending physics to the puzzling behavior of wild animals, Lost in Curiosity is a journey through the questions that keep scientists up at night—and the sometimes strange, always illuminating paths they take to answer them.