Suzie Sheehy

I'd just been asked by four particle physics professors... my PhD interview was conducted over an unstable internet connection... "what do you find fascinating about particle physics?" ...I told them of my wonder at the way physics seemed to be able to describe everything: from the smallest s to the atoms that make up our bodies, up to the largest scales of the Universe, and how all of this was connected.

Particle physics, I said, was the foundation of it all.

Five years earlier... [a]s my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the true wonder of this designated "dark sky site" revealed itself. ...The stars and planets weren't up there and I wasn't down here: it was all part of one enormous physical system called the Universe. I was a part of it too. ...I'd never really felt my place in it until that moment.

[A]s I studied more physics the question... at the core... was: "What is matter, and how does it interact to create everything around us—including ourselves?"