Tucker is a lifelong explorer of space and time. He has borne witness to a more glorious dawn: not a sunrise, but a galaxyrise. In fact he’s hitchhiked all the way around the Milky Way more than 50 times, towel in hand. From humble beginnings in the quark-gluon plasma, to baryogenesis, to the first stellar nucleosynthesis of carbon and oxygen and all the rest of the periodic table, subsequent explosions, complex interstellar and terrestrial molecular chemistry, and the origin of autonomous organisms, he’s seen a lot. Tucker finally settled down on a lovely little planet called Earth where he has thoroughly enjoyed most of the last 5 billion years. Highlights so far include the cambrian explosion, dinosaurs, and the refinement of uisge beatha distillation. Today he finds himself in a remarkably low-entropy state and spends much of his time trying to figure out how it all happened. Looking forward, he expects to merge with the sun in another few hundred thousand precessions and eventually zoom off for more exciting galactic exploration in the enveloping warmth of a planetary nebula. It’s going to be a spectacular journey.

Tucker currently works as an astronomer at UCSB. His research is focused on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the first few billion years of the universe. He has taught astronomy and analog electronics. He can (and often will) elaborate at excessive length on many aspects of Science.