~Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland.
Order and stability in the giant world of stars and galaxies is dominated by the force of gravity. In contrast, the tiny world of atomic and subatomic particles is held together by nuclear and quantum forces. As one sizes up from the subatomic to the astronomical scales, a natural question emerges: What universal principles govern the world of the “in-between”? What happens to the laws of nature when the time and spatial scales change from large to small? In this talk, I invite you to a journey through the mesoscopic wonderland of dusty plasma, where principles are semi-classical, forces are non-linear, thermodynamics is non-equilibrium, and dimensions are quasi-defined. We will tour this almost impossible world by exploring dusty plasmas across scales, in nature and laboratory, both on Earth and in space.