Thought it all started with a big bang? Well, not so fast. If a new theory turns out to be true, the universe may not have started with a bang. In the new formulation, the universe has never been a singularity, nor an infinitely small and infinitely dense point of matter. In fact, the universe may not have a beginning at all. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. “The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there,” Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org. “Our Read More ›

Thirty years after Communism collapsed in ignominy, it is again fashionable to bash capitalism and the investor classes. The tone of that rhetoric is sufficiently scapegoating to justify a pause here at UD to make a few notes on a case in point. Accordingly, from the “Further” thread: KF, 232: >>the following are further interesting for the moment: >>recovery was bought by a program of tax-breaks, limited for the less well-off but open-ended for billionaires and big corporations.>> 0: Let me add some balancing context, on tax burdens in the US, c 2016: In 2016, 140.9 million taxpayers reported earning $10.2 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.4 trillion in individual income taxes. The share of reported income earned Read More ›