Published: Feb 21, 2012
Why is there something, rather than nothing at all? It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Oct 07, 2011
Friendship, Me. ALMOST every scientific talk or seminar in astronomy today starts from the idea that we live in a universe in which a mysterious force known as dark energy makes up about 70 percent of the total cosmic amount of everything. A mysterious substance known as dark matter makes up about 25 percent. And ordinary matter -- the stuff of the
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Oct 05, 2011
Three astronomers won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for discovering that the universe is apparently being blown apart by a mysterious force that cosmologists now call dark energy, a finding that has thrown the fate of the universe and indeed the nature of physics into doubt. The astronomers are Saul Perlmutter, 52, of the Lawrence Berkeley
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Oct 02, 2011
THE SWERVE How the World Became Modern By Stephen Greenblatt Illustrated. 356 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $26.95. History can be fatal to literature. Aeschylus wrote 80 or 90 plays, and Sophocles 120, yet we have just seven of each. Didymus Chalcenterus of Alexandria reportedly wrote 3,500 books; not one exists today. Between classical antiquity
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Oct 02, 2011
THE SWERVE How the World Became Modern By Stephen Greenblatt Illustrated. 356 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $26.95. History can be fatal to literature. Aeschylus wrote 80 or 90 plays, and Sophocles 120, yet we have just seven of each. Didymus Chalcenterus of Alexandria reportedly wrote 3,500 books; not one exists today. Between classical antiquity
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Aug 22, 2011
To the Editor: I couldn't disagree more with Neal Gabler (''The Elusive Big Idea,'' Sunday Review, Aug. 14). His conclusion that soon ''there won't be anything we won't know'' would be quickly corrected by a trip across campus to talk to students in science and engineering. The world is changing fast, driven by new ideas -- on how the brain works,
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Aug 16, 2011
For the last decade cancer research has been guided by a common vision of how a single cell, outcompeting its neighbors, evolves into a malignant tumor. Through a series of random mutations, genes that encourage cellular division are pushed into overdrive, while genes that normally send growth-restraining signals are taken offline. With the
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Jul 26, 2011
The thing about parallel universes -- which may be great or terrible -- is that in theory they don't collide. There may be an alternate reality in which Mookie Wilson's grounder does not go through Bill Buckner's legs, costing the Red Sox the 1986 World Series, but Mets fans in this one don't have to confront it. You don't have to engage with a
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Jul 26, 2011
The thing about parallel universes -- which may be great or terrible -- is that in theory they don't collide. There may be an alternate reality in which Mookie Wilson's grounder does not go through Bill Buckner's legs, costing the Red Sox the 1986 World Series, but Mets fans in this one don't have to confront it. You don't have to engage with a
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology
Published: Jul 07, 2011
The House Appropriations Committee proposed Wednesday to kill the James Webb Space Telescope, the crown jewel of NASA's astronomy plans for the next two decades. The telescope, named after a former administrator of NASA, is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and it was designed to study the first stars and galaxies that emerged in the
Read original article Topics: Physics-Cosmology