Hope you can join us at the Revue Cinema in Toronto
Saturday June 20th at 4pm followed by Q&A with
the filmmakers and Particle Physicist Prof. Scott Menary.
Tickets may be purchased at the door. $10

UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union have recently launched the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. There are 136 countries participating in various forms of outreach designed to inspire us to connect with the day and night sky - “The Universe, Yours to Discover”. How can you get involved? Read more here.

We have updated our website to include our new poster/dvd artwork. You can see the full image on the www.matterofeverything.com main page, the dvd page, and a variation on the header of the home page. The dvd authoring and printing is now underway.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario has appointed Stephen Hawking its first Distinguished Research Chair. In a statement Hawking said, “The institute’s twin focus, on quantum theory and gravity, is very close to my heart and central to explaining the origin of the universe…I look forward to building a growing partnership between PI and our Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, at Cambridge. Our research endeavour is global, and by combining forces I believe we will reap rich rewards.” Hawking will visit the PI several times beginning this coming summer. The PI conducts research in the fields of cosmology, particle physics, quantum gravity and information, and superstring theory. Read more here.

For the first time ever astronomers have actual pictures of planets orbiting a star outside our solar system. The Gemini Team that includes three Canadians has released the historic image of not one, but three planets orbiting a normal star 130 million light years away. Bruce Macintosh (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories) explains, “Until now, when astronomers discover new planets around a star, all we see are wiggly lines on a graph of the star’s velocity or brightness. Now we have an actual picture showing the planets themselves, and that makes things very interesting.” Read more here.

The Hubble Telescope has also taken its first visible light picture of a planet orbiting the bright southern star Fomalhaut 25 light-years away. Read more here.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is set to take flight aboard the space shuttle on Nov 14 reaching its home on the International Space Station. This marks the 60th anniversary of the UDHR’s creation. The Declaration will live symbolically over the earth representing humanity, our universal ideals. Soon there will be six international astronauts “living and working in space in the interests of research and for the benefit of humanity as a whole”. Read more about the launch here.

A tool for hunting dark matter uncovered in Sudbury Ontario. Read more here.

A Rare Prehistoric reptile found in New Zealand. More here.

‘Missions in Spacetime’ Nature Videos are here.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in the United States is encouraging you to go outside at nightfall, look up, count the stars you see in a specific constellation and report what you see online. Read more here about opening the windows to the universe — October 20 to November 3 2008.

The ExoFly, a lightweight aerobot that looks like a “dragonfly-on-steroids”, is being created at the Technical University Delft, Wageningen University in the Netherlands. One day this flying robot equipped with a tiny camera may be used for geological exploration on Mars or Titan. Read the full article and check out the video here.

The Noble Prize for Physics was announced this past Tuesday.
Yoichiro Nambu (University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute), Makoto Kobayashi (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization Tsukuba, Japan) and Toshihide Maskawa (Kyoto University’s Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics) shared the Nobel Physics prize - Nambu for the principle of symmetry breaking and Kobayashi and Maskawa for the prediction of three generations of elementary particles called quarks. Read more here.

We are back from our summer hiatus of working on the film.
It is very close to completion with a screening imminent this fall.
In the meantime, we are very excited about the opening of CERN
tomorrow - the beam will be turned on for one of the most elaborate
experiments in history. Scientists may learn more about the evolution
of the universe and perhaps see the particle that gives all particles their
mass - the Higgs Boson. For the world’s largest particle accelerator to
operate its magnets, the Large Hadron Collider’s 27km ring can be
super-cooled to degrees colder than outer space -271 degrees celsius !!
Learn more here.