Sent on a mission of good will to represent Earth on an alien world, Alice isn’t quite sure what she’ll find. With her pet cat Meowhugs, an obnoxious parrot named Mara, and a ship named Joe as her only companions, Alice finds herself trapped on the time-dilating rim of a black hole, escaping just in time to watch the sun devour our solar system. Victor Flambaum is professor at the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He is one of the very few cases of a physicist who is still able to master all of physics in its breadth and its depth and has published in diverse fields of research such as nuclear physics, particle physics and cosmology, solid state physics and statistical physics. Victor Flambaum and his son Andrew authored How to Make a Big Bang: A Cosmic Journey.

Photo courtesy of Victor Flambaum

Image courtesy of interviewee