The Lives of Stephen Hawking, and of Subatomic Particles

            Hi, y'all!  Yes, I said y'all—I blame my time is West Virginia for that.

            Anyways, I'm back, still ducking my head from that flame war I was quite privy to whenever people are trying to criticize scientifically-and-humorously-minded and CONFIRMED SKEPTIC Adam Savage of MythBusters, mostly due to how I was still being tagged in all those tweets.  It's not that I regret doing it; I'd totally do it again, but with two separate differences: First, I'd NOT tag Adam Savage and Zak Bagans directly in the tweet again; Second, if I did tag them and Adam responded in the same way, I'd text my family and friends that I can't text right now, if you need to talk, CALL ME OR WAIT, while plugging my silenced cell phone into the charger due to an oncoming FLAME WAR.  *facepalms*  At least I learned something from this experience, and, as a bonus, figured out a contingency plan so I don't have to suffer ever again.  At least  I was able to feature the HILARIOUS tweets!  Note to hardcore paranormal-til-death Ghost Adventures fans: Adam Savage is a CONFIRMED SKEPTIC and prone to making assumptions, so don't get your panties in a twist any time a CONFIMED SKEPTIC says something negative about one of our favorite series, and also, if you're going to flame someone, at least make it funny, so I don't have to feel shitty inside, like the guilt just left its muddy fingerprints all along the lining of my intestines, stomach and soul—I HATE THAT FEELING!

            Aside from that issue, I figured that I should continue on with my blog, by featuring "The Edge" by Nigel John Stanford as this post's optional theme song:

Hawking: The Discovery Dramatization Show Where I'm Sure of the Existence of a Friendship Between Stephen Hawking and Benedict Cumberbatch—Translation: SQUEE!

            You guessed it: being a fan of science, I'm going to talk about Discovery's recent broadcast/airing of the 110-minute dramatized documentary of Stephen Hawking's earlier life (in this case, life in college), and his discovery of the Big Bang, as well as his battle with another noted-at-the-time scientist over the universe being in a perpetual static state vs. the ever-changing state that we now know it is.  I also tweeted about the "battle" between religion and science:

"Religion is the enemy of science....." -slams head on desk over and over again- NOT TRUE, DAMMIT! #Hawking #neilwithit
— Lady Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) January 11, 2015

            But I loved it!  I loved how Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch (*said with a bit of British class*) was able to portray him, how he was able to carry across the struggles that Dr. Hawking had at the time, how he was able to be profound and smart and classy and brilliant and fighting a battle that he was not expected to win in a role that was only mirrored by Eddie Redmayne in the movie The Theory of Everything.  It was beautiful!  In fact, because of all this, I decided to look up tweets that tagged this feature film and include them here:

            Extra-special double-unicorn magical thanks to Jenny The Bloggess Lawson for introducing me to Storify in her blogs.

          So, yes: I really was sure that there is a friendship between (*British class*) Benedict Cumberbatch and Dr. Stephen Hawking (*clears throat, resuming to normal*), because I had recently watched Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking on DVD (meaning, I did it last year) and noticed that Benedict Cumberbatch did voiceover for him on that DVD!  It could also be that Mr. Cumberbatch did an excellent job as Adam Turing in The Imitation Game, leading to his casting, but it's too much of a coincidence for that to be true!  *CONSPIRATORIAL FACIAL EXPRESSION*

            Overall rating: 6,000 beautiful nebulae out of 10 stars!  Or if you want it in Dalek terms, it'd be 60 plungers out of ten!  (The 6,000 is a reference to Creationism being stupid by denying the evidence of the trillions of years that the universe actually IS, with its birth being the Big Bang.)

            From Astrophysics to quantum physics-and-mechanics, I just had a really interesting and weird thought about protons and electrons and the Force of Star Wars!

What the F*ck Are They Thinking?  The Inter-Subatomic Particle Dialogue of the Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons

            So, yes, I tend to be a bit a crazy, quite weird, in a lovable and fun way that I'm very sure isn't annoying (*pointed glare at hometown*), but I did have a recent thought that pretty much was Shinto or Animist in principle, but it was on the scale of atoms: what the hell are protons and electrons thinking?!

            I'm sure that it goes like this:

~Protons (+, the Jedi): We're the good guys!  We balance out the bad guys, we want the universe to be good, because we're positively charged!  Yays, positivity!  Come here, electrons, so we can f*ck with you in multiple ways!

~Electrons (-, the Sith): We're the real good guys!  We provide the real balance in the universe because whenever , and even though we are smaller than our positive counterparts that like to stick together in the nucleus, where it's "nice and safe" with the Strong Force keeping them all together, we're free to orbit around them, messing with their Up particles and Down particles, and we're behind the formation of molecules with other elements!

~Protons (+): No, WE'RE behind those formations!

~Electrons (-): NUH-UH!

~Neutrons (o): *munches on popcorn* This is interesting, so we're just gonna sit around and watch.  We ain't taking sides, so….you're on your own, here, boys and girls.  We also have good cheese here, and manufacture awesome watches.

~Electrons (-): But…but….they're so….stuck together and stuff!

~Protons (+): Yeah, but you like to move only in straight lines!  It's no wonder the cool dudes at CERN picked us to be in their Large Hadron Collider!

~Neutrons (o): *Chris Hardwick voice* Points to the Protons!  Also to the Electrons because we don't take sides, we're just here, partying in different isotopes.

            You get the idea.

            And then I had that tiny bit of an "Ah-ha!" moment: the electromagnetic force is the Force in Star Wars!  I mean, come on!  Emperor Palpatine was able to shoot lightning from his fingers to wrongfully kill the badass Mace Windu (who wants his motherfucking Sith off of his motherfucking ship!!!), but that's what electrons do!  I mean, come on!  If anything, Disney shouldn't ever kill off all the Sith, because it will throw the Star Wars universe out of balance!  I mean it!  Get to tweeting at or emailing to JJ Abrams, because he HAS to keep this in mind!  It's not too late to save Star Wars!

            Huh?  Am I doing this JJ Abrams thing?  No, I'm just watching you guys do it.  *munches on the Neutrons' popcorn*  Because this is interesting….  What do you mean, which side am I on?  I've already picked between the Light Side and the Dark Side!  I'm a Grey Jedi and I'm proud of it!

            So, if any astrophysicists or particle physicists, or quantum physicists want to start complaining, go ahead.  I just want you to say, "What if protons, neutrons and electrons could talk?  What would they say?"  I'd love to see Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Phil Plait aka Bad Astronomer, the ghost of Carl Sagan, Dr. Stephen Hawking, Leighann Lord, Chuck Nice, Eugene Mirman, Chris Hardwick, Matt Mira, and Seth MacFarlane provide their input on this.  Yes, that's an invitation to discuss this, y'all.  I'll be expecting to hear from you soon (if you would just please, please, please talk about this and then get back to me!   PLEASE!)

            So, yeah.  Not sure what else to say, except to check out Diane Martin's Di-Hard Podcast.  Because she's awesome and hilarious.  And a band-o—YAY MARCHING BAND!!!  And  to listen to StarTalkRadio, to watch StarTalk TV on National Geographic, check out both MythBusters and Ghost Adventures, and to buy the Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey DVD/Blu-Ray because SCIENCE!  (#neilwithit)

            With that, I shall leave you with this picture.  Enjoy it, AND YOUR TACQUITOS!

P.S. In case you REALLY wanted a showdown between MythBusters and the paranormal, here's one of those Epic Rap Battles ofHistory!

NOW, we're done!  So, please, STOP TWEETING ADAM ABOUT IT!  *ninja-poofs!*

WTF?!?!?!—The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Just a warning: your mind might be blown; you could get minor headaches or migraines from thinking about what I'm about to share with you too hard; I'm not responsible for either of these things, or for breaking you to the point that requires some therapy.  Seriously, I'm sorry for what happens to you after, despite your reaction to this post being COMPLETELY up to you.

            I will be honest here: I think I'm having a little bit of an existential crisis.  It's not exactly like, "What's my purpose in life?!  I NEED RELIGIONS TO GUIDE ME!" and it's definitely not like that more familiar Midlife Crisis of "Hey! I'm not that old!  I can still do young stuff!  BATCYCLE, TO ME!"  I know I'm addressing things that are WAY outside of most people's perspectives, but I'm serious—I'm having an existential crisis at the universal we're-too-small-to-have-any-major-impact-on-the-whole-of-the-universe-and-are-helpless-at-this-point-in-time-being-at-the-mercy-of-our-solar-system level.

            Please, allow me to explain….with the (optional) theme song being "FarCentaurus" by Nigel John Stanford, the guy whose Cymatics music video was so AWESWOME!

            Just recently (as in, this past weekend and prior to), I indulged a bit at the library, checking out Discovery's How the Universe Works and Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.  Just a quick bit about these two shows: the former, sometimes having blogger-and-discovery-of-dark-energy-assist-master Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) in it and voiced overall by Mike Rowe (#NerdCombo #NerdDrool), and the latter written by Stephen Hawking, with voice-over segments done by Benedict Cumberbatch (#SQUEE!).  Both of these shows are very well done, but they both also changed my perspective quite a bit.  And when I say quite a bit, I am really saying BY A FUCKLOAD!

            What I gathered from these two shows is that we, the denizens of the planet Earth (Sol-3), are not exactly the creation of a deity.  We're not living in the only solar system that exists in this universe (If you need more proof, just look at science headlines that go along the lines of "NEW EARTHLIKE PLANET DISCOVERED!"), and our physical selves did not just come out of nothing.  We're made of STUFF, these different elements such as iron, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, iodine, sodium, etc, that did NOT exist at time of the Big Bang.

            Instead, we're the product of a series of VERY fortunate happy accidents.

            Think about it: we're probably in one of very few (out of an infinite number of) universes that actually supports the existence of life, that mysterious chemical reaction that results in organic multi-cellular beings, with each one made of an uncountable number of molecules, making up a shit ton of cells that are able work together to function as a whole system by itself.  This universe was able to form out of matter and not antimatter, just because particles of matter simply just happenedto outnumber antimatter particles.  The universe that then formed after this cosmic battle of matter-vs.-antimatter (which results in the destruction of both particles, by the way) just happened to be uneven enough for gravity to attract these particles to each other, enough to form the first stars.  These stars just  happened to create the elements (out of hydrogen nuclear fusion) necessary to build us.

            Yes, we're not made of regular dust just like the Bible states in the Book of Genesis; we're made of stardust!  Which is pretty neat, if you think about it long enough; it's kind of romantic, in a sense.

            Anyways, some of these stars just happened to explode, creating enough material to form our current solar system, and the sun (Sol, of course) just happened to form successfully, and in just the right size in the PERFECT spot in the Milky Way Galaxy: not too far from the central supermassive black hole, but also not too close to whip us around at impossible speeds, expose us to deadly radiation or to suck us into the black hole.

            And, in addition to the whole "What the Fuckery?" I just laid out, the Earth formed in just the right spot in the solar system, at just the right size with the perfect amount of gravity and elements, AND survived the Hundred-Planet Demolition Derby that took place after the sun first formed.  Not to mention that enough comets hit the surface of this rocky and hot world to give us exactly the right amount of water (give or take a few litres) to cool it down to exactly the right temperature.  Plus, the atoms of specific elements successfully created these molecules that formed the first cells and, therefore, the first forms of life!

            And to top it all off, Jupiter, our big tough super-strong super popular planetary brother, formed far enough away to not affect us, but also to act as our bodyguard, deflecting and/or attracting in-bound comets and asteroids that would've hit Earth and prevented our existence otherwise.  Plus, the moon formed and took its spot at the right distance for us to land on it, and gives us almost the right amount of light at night so we can still see just enough to be able to not trip on something in the meadows and grasslands.  (Well, in my opinion, at least…)

            AND, to top it all off, that comet/asteroid that hit Earth millions of years ago wiped out all the dinosaurs, to allow US, the mammals, to survive, and evolve into creatures that can understand and map the universe!  We are simply the product of a series of accidents who can create abstract ideas that have no solid tangible presence in the universe, and extremely large solid objects made up of the same stardust as us that DO have such a presence!

            Which.  Is.  Weird!!!!

            What the hell?!  What is humanity's purpose in the universe?  Are we really experiments, something that just SO happened to form as part of a simulation (which I suspect due to the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, or the Keyon, as I like to call it)?  Or are we the creation of the universe itself so that this (possibly sentient) universe could understand itself—making us its neurons in three-dimensional space?  I have so many questions, many of them being "WHY….?" and eager for an answer that doesn't just have any basis in statistics and probability.

Perspective: Now You Have It

            It's frustrating and scary to see how we have all of this amazing stuff going on and NONE of it is the primary focus of the human race!  We're all on the same spherical rocky iron(ic) boat, orbiting the same star, paying witness to some of the same awesome stuff in the skies (including the moon), and yet we're too busy bickering with each other about police brutality and who crossed which lines in the sand, eager to collect all parts of an abstract creation of ours, an idea that we place numerical value upon, despite it having not a lot of purpose besides being a tool that we use in a system that we set up, and fighting over how people see other people who are different from them (Sunni vs. Shiite and Middle East vs. America—everyone wants to be right, nobody wants to be wrong; it's pointless to force your ideas of how people should live/think/function onto someone else, and that goes QUADRUPLE to the (tel)evangelists and racist fucknuts out there!).  Why do this, when we have a whole other realm to explore?

            And why destroy the planet we're all living on?  IT'S THE SAME PLANET EARTH!!!!  The climate-change global warming deniers (read: idiots) are poisoning the same air that everyone else is breathing and relying on for survival, only because they're not educated enough or they don't believe that we're all going to destroy ourselves as the result of our own actions.  We're making each other sick, we're killing each other, and we're ruining ourselves because of disagreements and bullshitting.  (Also, any deniers are NOT going to be allowed in my boat.  You cause it, you suffer the consequences—have fun either treading water or drowning or dying from dehydration!)

            Why fight?  Why destroy things?  We could be the only witnesses to everything the universe is showing us, and yet, we're staring at the ground and our cell phones and computer and/or television screens, and glaring at everyone else.  We're unhappy narcissistic creatures that are intent on focusing on ourselves and our own problems.  Our world-view is small, limited to what we each see around us, when we could just look up together and learn what we have yet to know about everything and everyone.

            Why don't we just do this right?!

            This is all I can say right now.  That is the gist of my sort-of existential crisis.  That is the result of watching those two shows on DVD—and I think everyone else should do this, too.  It would be good for you, at least, to realize what I have learned: we're a miracle that isn't acting like one, and should start in order to save itself from the extinction we've forced on many other creatures that live on the same planet we do.  If we do get our act together, cooperate and accept everyone's differences (including the colors of our skin, the religions we practice, and the fact that many of us have Autistic Spectrum Disorders and other disabilities), we can do incredible things, which can help us understand the universe (that can be scary due to the sheer size and scale of it—but only if you look at it that way) and also ensure the survival of the human race in case the universe decides to butt-fuck us again, with Apophis or whatever else is out there.

Random Thoughts Are Random

            I know: I was "thinking like a crazy person" (despite being completely reasonable) prior to this part, so why not share some thoughts that I had amidst this whole existential crisis I'm having and before?

Aw, @Macys! Plz use "Question!" next yr, if not to promote critical thinking, then to have buildings across the st. do "Answer!" in reply!
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) December 1, 2014

to me, right now, a lot of things don't just not "matter" to me--actually, they #antimatter to me. HAHA! #neilwithit
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) December 2, 2014

I wonder what would happen if you stab someone with a #unicorn horn. What magic would take place? @TheBloggess
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) December 1, 2014

            That's all for now, folks!  Keep sharing this blog, and ENJOY YOUR COSMIC TACQUITOS!

A Review of the Great Cosmos: A New Journey Begins When Another Ended

            Wow!  WOW!  I know this is a highly verbose review, but I am typing this up as fast as possible so that all the knowledge and impression of the show doesn't fade away from my brain or attention span!  The theme for this blog post is Snow Park by Connect Ohm!

            On Sunday, March 9, 2014, at 9:00pm EDT on all the Fox and National Geographic networks, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, author and hilarious scientist, led us on our first steps on a journey that Dr. Carl Sagan started a generation ago, on the show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (preceded by Cosmos: A Personal Voyage) with the (paraphrased) words, "It's time to get going again."  I've been treated to a perspective that the late loved Dr. Sagan has only introduced us to, to a thirst of knowledge that many scientists are trying to quench with new information about Life, the Universe and Everything (to which the Answer is 42!  HA!  Hitchhiker's Guide, people!  Come on, nerd out with me with that one shitty joke!).

            I have to say, the introduction was mind blowing!  I swear, all the visuals in the intro sequence gave my mind a blowjob!  I loved it so much, I think I was sort of drooling at the end of it, but only "sort of" because I was having dinner, my Soup of the Cosmos (which I will share the recipe to at the end of this post; it's perfect for people on the lower end of the income scale!).  Anyways, to have Dr. Tyson start the show at the edge of the very same sea cliff that Dr. Sagan stood on when he started his Personal Voyage is entirely poetic; it's like Dr. Sagan was still with us, continuing our journey through the universe that we dwell in.  I've been fortunate enough to be able to watch Cosmos: A Personal Voyage thanks to National Geographic airing it before the premiere of A Spacetime Odyssey.  We were taken on a journey of the mind, to the edge of our universe, being given our address in it, which I have to say is a little inaccurate: according to the Doctor of the Whoniverse, we live in the Sol system, on Sol-3!  Not just "the Solar System"!  So please, astronomers and astrophysicists, incorporate that into our universal address!  But I swear my brain was fried when we went a bit "Inception" with the Universe-inside-of-a-multiverse-that's-inside-of-another-Universe.  My nose didn't start bleeding, but at least my brain got a warm-up before the show: Journey to the Edge of the Universe, narrated by Alec Baldwin, describing our observation of the universe as we come across celestial bodies in the sky, such as "angry moons", dangerous hypernovas, etc, etc.; during that show, I managed to come across a realization of my own, Dr. Carl Sagan style:

If we were to travel across the Universe beyond our galaxy, we'd also be traveling back into time, as the universe is not only a bubble of a network, but also has a reverse sort of tree-ring effect to the point where the farther we travel from Earth to the edge of the Universe we live in, the more we travel into the older parts of the universe, and if we exited past the universe's threshold, we would've been able to witness the Big Bang, to which I ascribed the physical edge of our Universe, the Big Bang Threshold.

            Not only that, Dr. Tyson says that our Universe started out smaller than a subatomic particle; in a sense, it relatively still is if you're far enough past the Big Bang Threshold, outside of every Universe located within our multiverse; we're still smaller than sub-atomic particles in a universe before the Big Bang, like cells in the human body.  Yes, it's frustratingly confusing, but it really is Inception-like!  BWAHHHHH!!!

            I'm sorry, through that shared epiphany, if I made everyone's noses bleed and their brains hurt more than Chris Hardwick's and Matt Mira's did when Dr. Tyson described the Ascent of the Cubes in Nerdist Podcast episode number 139.  If you have to be redirected to it, I suggest you check out the bottom part of this ranty blog post.

            But I have to say, "Spaceship of the Imagination" is pretty cool, despite the name!  I would've loved to have kept the retro look Dr. Sagan had in his spaceship, but Dr. Tyson's ship is a bit cooler, having the ability to not just travel across space but also peer through time, with its poetic floor-portal to the past in the floor (archaeology anyone?) and ceiling-portal to the future (STAR TREK IS OUR FUTURE!  If we have not destroyed ourselves with the thermonuclear World War III or disastrous climate change due to our self-inflicted global warming!), and has a sort of gyroscopic sort of bridge in that spaceship (in a realm beyond ours that has no "up"?  Really, Dr. Tyson?), which, to me, is in the shape of a dandelion seed.  You see, the dandelion seed is quite an integral part of the Cosmos program, and Dr. Sagan used it quite a bit when he was hosting Personal Voyage, and it only seems poetic to be traveling on that seed throughout the universe as we know it, as the dandelion seed in the organic sense is actually an organism traveling in its own spaceship to someplace new where it can colonize the ground it lands on.  But I also have to say, "Spaceship of the Imagination," doesn't exactly have a good ring to it: I understand that it's, to put it in Dr. Tyson's words in Nerdist podcast episode #139, "a journey of the mind," but couldn't you just name it the "Tyson TARDIS"?  Or the A.S.S. Imagination?  Just saying.

            But the visuals were stunning, the inclusion of history in the science exploration, the addition of the multiverse inside of the lectures, the sharing of the perspective of our slice of time in the universe, how the birth of the universe and our existence would've looked liked spread over a Gregorian calendar year, how religion treated new ideas, all of it, to me, was pure GENIUS!  I was looking forward to this premiere, as my friend Jesse (who still needs to do that superhero blog post) also was, despite not having access to cable.  And I can't wait to continue on with our next steps in this journey of 13 episodes where we are enlightened over how scientifically accurate the theory of evolution is, and the whole Creationism issue may go back as far as the Big Bang, which I'm sure was not instigated by Stewie Griffin restarting his time machine.  Which is why during the show, I posted these tweets:

OW OW OW! My brain is hurting! Because @neiltyson mentioned the multiverse! #cosmos
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) March 10, 2014

Shut up, Hamm! #cosmos
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) March 10, 2014

            And I hate to spoil it for everyone, but I have to describe the end bit: I saw all the old footage, and the Sagan seaside cliff bit, and I can't help it but I cried a little much like Matt Mira teared when he was watching the last shuttle launch of NASA, but for reasons a little bit different from what Dr. Tyson ascribed to him in that first episode of Nerdist podcast that he was on all that couple of years ago.  In fact, I tweeted this when it happened….

Dammit. Tears. #cosmos
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) March 10, 2014

all because not only did Dr. Tyson talk about how much of a leader Dr. Sagan was, but he also suddenly pulled out Dr. Sagan's planner, and turned to the page where an appointment with a young Dr. Tyson was listed, and it was not only a tale of how a young man growing up in the Sky View apartments in the Bronx was influenced by his genius and his tutelage, but it was also, in Dr. Tyson's words, a sort of "passing of the torch," which made me think a little: Dr. Sagan would've been so proud of him, and he wouldn't have trusted anyone else to do the reboot of his show, because Dr. Tyson would've been the only one to do it right.  He influenced many scientists, much like Aristotle influenced many mathematicians.  He is the Aristotle of our time, and if he saw the show today, he would've approved, despite any flashiness.  RIP, Dr. Carl Sagan, wherever you are, whether you're in heaven, the great big observatory/laboratory in the sky or even in the fourth or fifth dimensions.  We miss you, even though I haven't watched your show before Saturday or Sunday, March 8/9th, 2014!

Our Universe Is One Giant Pot of Soup: A Recipe for the Soup of the Cosmos

            Because I was running a little low on food, I improvised my dinner, anxious to have it be done by the time Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (which shouldn't be "STO", because "STO" is already taken by Star Trek Online!  It should be ASTO, so as to not confuse people!  #addressingthiswiththehopethatIAmNotTooLate #longhastags #hashtaggingoutsideofTwitter) aired.  And I tweeted:

I think i just came up with a new recipe: Soup of the Cosmos. @lisar_m @dihard11 @nasagoddard
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) March 10, 2014

because I'm sure that it has not yet been done in detail!  Nerd-Chef Alton Brown might disagree, but goddammit, IT'S MY RECIPE AND I SHALL SHARE IT WITH Y'ALL FOR NEXT WEEK'S EPISODE!

Soup of the Cosmos (aka, Cosmic Soup)

Pasta In Potato Pot (aka, a saucepan that's the second to smallest you have)

1 ½ cup salted water

1/2 cup small pasta shells

Broth In Vegetable Pot (aka, smallest pot you have)

1 ½ cup salted water

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon chopped basil

1 tablespoon (or more) dried minced onion

½ cup panko bread crumbs

Other

Fancy shredded Mexican blend cheese

Four packets of string cheese, unwrapped and chopped into 1/8-1/4 inch long pieces

1.  Boil pasta according to directions.
2. In small "Vegetable pot", boil water; crush and add chicken bouillon cube, stir.  Add basil, minced onion and panko breadcrumbs; stir, let sit.
3.  Drain pasta when finished, return to "Potato pot" without heat.  Add broth to pasta, stir.  Stir in shredded cheese and chopped string cheese, making sure it melts.
4.  Serve warm.  Makes two servings.

Isn't our Universe like this soup?  Isn't the basil like the asteroids and comets, the chopped string cheese like our planets, the pasta shells like our stars in the sky, the shredded cheese like the nebular clouds and the broth like the dark matter of space?  It's so poetic that I think it's appropriate for everyone to have.  Also, it's great for Lent because it doesn't have real meat!  It has chicken broth, but not REAL meat or poultry or pork!  Can't the bouillon be an exception to this, Church?  PLEASE?

           Anyways, I hope you enjoyed Cosmos ASTO just as I enjoyed my soup with it.  And I hope everyone gets to experience the enlightenment and pleasure of education in the hopes that we can all become smarter, we can all become nerds and continue to have intelligent discussions about science, the universe, the multiverse, and our place in the—SQUIRREL!  *scamper, chase, falls asleep and snores*

P.S. I have GOT to share this tweet!  This tweet won the Internets last night in my opinion....so go Favorite and Retweet this, because it's HILARIOUSLY TRUE!

The show #Cosmos is the perfect qualifier for my online dating: "If you don't find Cosmos fascinating we are not going to be life partners."
— Andy Johns (@ibringtraffic) March 10, 2014