Dr. Helen Quinn is a researcher and professor of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where her studies have focused in particle interations and the behaviors of quarks.
Even though we may tend to think of the universe as being mostly vast expanses of empty space, Quinn says that's not really true, so there's no place any extra antimatter could be hiding.
Looping eruptions on the Sun, like this one (right) on July 24, 1999, create antimatter. Earth is shown for size comparison.
Science fiction has long speculated about the possibility of using some kind of matter-antimatter reactor as a means of propulsion for spacecraft. Quinn says for that to become a reality, there is one huge problem that would have to be overcome first.
Pinker says he wrote his latest book to explore and explain the links between the ways we speak and the thoughts and feelings that shape that speech.
In this analysis, commentator Michael Schwartz demolishes the myths used to sell the U.S. public the idea of an endless "war on terror" centered in Iraq, and shows how the real U.S. interests in Iraq have been rooted in the geopolitics of oil and the expansion of a neoliberal economic model in the Middle East.
The dynamics of the debate and speculation over the war in Iraq changed during the past year, as defenders of the administration pointed to what they called the success of the "surge," the boost in troop levels in 2007, in damping down the levels of violence there. Schwartz says that comparative quiet was a byproduct of widespread factional cleansing that was actually enabled by the military surge. 
The election of Barack Obama as America's next president has boosted hope that he will take actions to expediently wind down the Iraq war. Schwartz cautions, however, that as a candidate, Obama's position papers did not show a marked break from the polices that got us into the war.
