What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jan 24, 2012 - 50 comments

One of my favorite blogs happens to be local to me. Eric Berger, the Houston Chronicle's "SciGuy" usually reports on the weather. But he also posts entertaining and serious stuff as well. [more inside]
posted by PapaLobo on Nov 22, 2011 - 3 comments

"Zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn the scale of things along the way!" [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Jun 27, 2011 - 28 comments

to talk about the concept of "time" before the big bang; the Cyclic Universe Theory proposes an alternative to the predominant Inflation Theory that led to this intuition. Now Gurzadyan and Penrose have observed low-variance rings in the CMB, supporting the notion that it makes sense
posted by jjray on Nov 27, 2010 - 41 comments

A fascinating talk about the composition of the universe [Youtube, approx 1 hour], presented by Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at CIT. [via] [more inside]
posted by knave on Feb 11, 2009 - 29 comments

On Truth and Reality. Despite several thousand years of failure to correctly understand physical reality (hence the current postmodern view that this is impossible) it is actually very simple to work out how matter exists and moves about in Space. The rules of Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) and Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality) require that reality be described from only one single source existing, as Leibniz wrote: "because of the interconnection of all things with one another." [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jan 30, 2009 - 46 comments

Star Stories explains the life and death of stars using a multimedia approach that incorporates images, animation, video and text. From the official website of the Nobel Foundation. Don't miss out on the other cool games . [more inside]
posted by ozomatli on Sep 25, 2008 - 6 comments

A History of Scientific Cosmology from the American Institute of Physics has some great articles on the history of cosmology.
posted by RussHy on Jan 3, 2007 - 5 comments

Good evidence that dark matter is for real.
posted by kliuless on Aug 16, 2006 - 57 comments

Before the Big Bang - way, way out of my depth, but I thought this comment was intriguing: "The paper as published, along with a longer follow up paper, looks to my untrained eye a nearly complete quantum gravitation theory, which is an exciting prospect in itself. However, as with all physical theories, we will await for experimental support before popping the cork." Here's some more on loop quantum gravity, spin networks, the big bang and ekpyrosis.
posted by kliuless on Apr 16, 2006 - 18 comments

Misconceptions about the Big Bang
posted by Gyan on Feb 23, 2005 - 39 comments

Smolin vs. Susskind on the anthropic principle. For those keeping score: Stephen Hawking is for it. Brian Greene is not.
posted by kliuless on Sep 4, 2004 - 10 comments

It would seem that black holes may not lose information after all, in which case Stephen Hawking has lost another bet.
posted by Songdog on Jul 16, 2004 - 24 comments

Dark matter flowchart.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Oct 31, 2003 - 11 comments