Jawaan!

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.

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.

We’re posting several of our most popular pieces from the past few months for your enjoyment this Holiday Season.

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 of an inflating universe after a Big Bang are replaced by a universe that was already large. flat, and uniform with dark energy as the effect of the other universe constantly leaking gravity into our own and driving its acceleration. According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.  Turok and Steinhardt were inspired by a lecture given by Burt Ovrut who imagined two branes, universes like ours, separated by a tiny gap as tiny as 10-32 meters.

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

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

” 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 the microbes predate all of the planet's other life forms, existing even before photosynthesis became the preferred life-giving form. Gold, a world-renowned physicist  and author of The Deep Hot : The Myth of Fossil Fuels, belives that oil and natural gas hydrocarbons are not biological in origin and are found not only in the shallow crust of the earth but also at greater depths. He maintains that hydrocarbons, especially methane, were an important constituent of the earth when it was formed and are widely distributed in depth

” 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 the microbes predate all of the planet’s other life forms, existing even before photosynthesis became the preferred life-giving form. Gold, a world-renowned physicist  and author of The Deep Hot : The Myth of Fossil Fuels, belives that oil and natural gas hydrocarbons are not biological in origin and are found not only in the shallow crust of the earth but also at greater depths

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

Remember that great Stones’ ballad you heard on your first date with that first great crush?