One of the first questions people ask me, upon learning I am a physics major, is what exactly I study. In an abstract sense, I study the universe—its fundamental particles, forces, and the mathematics used to describe their interactions. Since this is usually still too broad, I describe my particular field of research: nuclear astrophysics. My advisor and I write and run computer code to simulate ...

I remember that when I was applying to Notre Dame, one of the questions I was asked on my application was this: “Why should we care about the rings of Saturn?” That question really intrigued me, and I believe I wrote something along these lines: If there were no universe surrounding this planet Earth, then human beings would have very little reason to think about their existence and be drawn to co...