Being a big gay science geek, I was immediately captivated by the teaser spots that The Science Channel has been running this past week for João Magueijo’s Big Bang.

Now having seen it, all I can say is, “Wow.”

Sexy. Smart. Beautifully presented. And that was just João. The show was good too!


Stop! In the Name of Love!

41 year old cosmologist João Magueijo has tried to make sense of the universe for the past 20 years. For his efforts in cosmology, Magueijo has been called an anarchist, a heretic, a radical and even a moron by his peers. All because of his proposed solution to the Horizon Problem—a fatal flaw of the Big Bang Theory which states that distant areas of space cannot have similar physical properties due to the immense distance between each area relative to the speed of light. The Horizon Problem is commonly accepted as solved by Alan Guth’s theory of Cosmic Inflation. Now, however, João has sent shockwaves through the scientific community by challenging Cosmic Inflation and claiming instead that one of the central tenets of Einsteinian physics is wrong.

Magueijo’s idea casts doubt on the central principle of physics, which is that light, in a vacuum, always travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, and nothing can travel faster. Light speed is a constant and a widely accepted concept of the physics world.


So kissable!

But what he proposed is that the speed of light is variable – that in the beginning of the universe light traveled at a much higher speed. Magueijo dubbed his theory Varying Speed of Light, and, if true, it makes the commonly accepted answer to the Horizon Problem redundant, as well as threatens to undermine hundreds of years of ideas and research, including Einstein’s E=mc2.


You’re cooking dinner for me? Okay!

Born in Évora, Portugal, Magueijo earned his graduate degree and Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He was awarded a research fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, the same fellowship previously held by noted theoretical physicists Paul Dirac and Abdus Salam.

Did I mention that he’s damn sexy, too?

Ah yes. Portugese and Brazilian men. During my tenure in San Francisco I dated both (and by dated I mean I had sex with them more than once). In 1987 I met my Portugese guy (whose name completely eludes me at this point) through mutual friends at No Name Beach. Fuzzy, funny and extremely bright, all he had to do was whisper in my ear and that delicious accent of his would make me melt. Alas, as I recall the reason we did not continue on a long term basis was the fact his visa was expiring and had to return home.

I met José—my Brazilian doctor—as I was leaving the Embarcadero MUNI station one afternoon in February 1993. The man knew only slightly more English than I knew Portugese (which was none—and ironically he was in SF attending an English language school), but we still managed to communicate. Oh, did we ever manage to communicate! A boca pode ser usada para mais do que falando!

(I hope that came out right. If not, blame Babelfish!)