Free Republic

A new cosmological model demonstrates the universe can endlessly expand and contract, providing a rival to Big Bang theories and solving a thorny modern physics problem, according to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physicists. The cyclic model proposed by Dr. Paul Frampton, Louis J. Rubin Jr. distinguished professor of physics in UNC's College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Lauris Baum, a UNC graduate student in physics, has four key parts: expansion, turnaround, contraction and bounce. During expansion, dark energy -- the unknown force causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate -- pushes and pushes until...

SEATTLE - The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor might be up to five times larger than previously thought. The newfound stars are massive, bloated stars known as red giants. Although found far beyond the most visible portion of Andromeda—its swirling disk—the stars are still gravitationally bound to the galaxy and make up part of its extended "halo." "We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo…extends to a very large radius and it actually...