A lot has happened in the last twelve months. We inaugurated a new President, weathered a recession, and obsessed over and forgot hundreds of minor crises and scandals. See the original post here: 2009 Brought Big Changes to Financial Aid

One of the most important steps you’ll need to take in the financial aid application process is applying for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Originally posted here: FAFSA Available Starting Tomorrow, Jan. 1

We’re posting several of our most popular pieces from the past few months for your enjoyment this Holiday Season. Read more from the original source: Our Best Wishes for The New Year

String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we see as the Big Bang was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.  In their view of the universe the complexities [...]

The greatest breakthrough in our understanding of the scale of the universe since Copernicus and Galileo came in October of 1923 when a young astronomer (and athele and Rhodes Scholar) from the University of Chicago discovered a Cephid variable in what was then known as the sprial nebula in Andromeda, or M31. Today we know M31 as the nearsest spiral galaxy to our own, but at the time it was argued that it was just a luminous cloud in the Milky Way See more here:  New Year’s 1925: Hubble’s [...]

This summer, an international research team announced a breakthrough in self-replicating plasma crystals which could be an early form of inorganic life. New studies of dust that form lifelike structures suggest that extraterrestrial life may not be carbon-based at all Read more here: Was Inorganic Life Observed in Interstellar Dust Clouds? -A Holiday Classic

” No scientific subject holds more surprises for us than biology.” Freeman Dyson -Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton Cornell University Professor Emeritus Thomas Gold, who for 20 years directed the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, proposes the striking and controversial theory that “a full functioning ecosystem feeding on hydrocarbons, exists deep within the earth, and that a primordial source of hydrocarbons lies even deeper.” Gold believes that [...]

” No scientific subject holds more surprises for us than biology.” Freeman Dyson -Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton Cornell University Professor Emeritus Thomas Gold, who for 20 years directed the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, proposes the striking and controversial theory that “a full functioning ecosystem feeding on hydrocarbons, exists deep within the earth, and that a primordial source of hydrocarbons lies even deeper.” Gold believes that [...]

Few of us like to dwell on the fact our human cells are vastly outnumbered (10X) by microbes in our bodies’ cellular cities. If we went by cellular per capita, rather than size of cell, we’d be more microbe than man. In fact, various microbes have colonized nearly every conceivable part of our bodies, from the inside out Continued here: Clues Sought to Unknown Human-Microbe Life Colonies

Remember that great Stones’ ballad you heard on your first date with that first great crush? See original here: Music’s Power to Trigger Our Memories (A Holiday Feature)