Science is like a detective story. For astrophysicists, this truism comes with a twist. No other field of scientific sleuthing confronts such a diversity of scales and concepts. Our chronological scope of inquiry starts before the Big Bang and stretches out to the end of time, even as we recognize that the very notions of time and space are relative. Our research descends to quarks and electrons, the smallest known particles; it reaches out to the edge of the universe; and it concerns—directly or indirectly—everything in between.
