The First Atom in the Universe (II) is now installed in the Mott Seminar Room at Cavendish Laboratories, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge. This artwork is a tribute to Nobel Laureate Emeritus Professor Brian Josephson, whose work I have long admired and who is one of my heroes.
This artwork is part of a sculpture created through a delightful collaboration between myself and Professor David Tong, a theoretical quantum physicist at Cambridge, titled The History of the Universe. It focuses on the early stages of our universe.
The current sculpture is about the primordial quantum energy fields, which subsequently gave rise to subatomic particles, and then, as if by magic, to the first atom of the universe, namely hydrogen.
Hydrogen has been the building block of our entire material universe. As described in the truly remarkable 1957 B2FH paper by Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle on stellar nucleosynthesis, this process forged the entire periodic table of elements, starting with hydrogen as the building block.
Therefore, I like to think that all life forms are essentially highly complex hydrogen atoms, with some emergent vital force liberally sprinkled in as a function of complexity.
Hydrogen was our mother. This sculpture represents that mother.
