Cosmic Soup

Astronomy blows our minds and beguiles our eyes with exploding stars, extrasolar planets and supermassive black holes. But as it turns out our familiar surroundings are also full of profound astronomical connections and everything from the water in your taps to the iron in your blood, your holiday suntan to the vagaries of the British weather, all have their origins far out in space. As Marek explains, to properly understand our own world, high art and popular culture we need to explore the wider universe of which it is an integral part.

Physics dominates life at microscopic scales. Brownian motion in particular is both a help and a hindrance: thermal energy is required for cells to manufacture the parts they need, assemble them and reproduce. Conversely, the random jostling that cells get from water molecules makes navigating in microscopic environments a real challenge. We will focus on swimming cells and look at the physical survival strategies that allow microorganisms to thrive in a variety of places from salt lakes to the human body.