Free Republic

We know, to the best of our senses and instruments, that the universe exists. How did it come into reality 13.8 billion years ago? In other words, what caused the Big Bang? Roughly speaking, there are two possibilities: “nothing” caused the universe to come into being or “something” triggered it into existence.

Charges build up due to exchange of material, study suggests A balloon rubbed against the head can be both a hair-raising and a hair-tearing experience, a new study suggests. Clumps of balloon and hair invisible to the naked eye may break off each object during contact and stick to the other. The existence of this exchange could challenge traditional theories about how static electricity builds up, a process known as contact electrification. “The basic assumptions people have made about contact electrification are wrong,” says Bartosz Grzybowski, a physical chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He and his colleagues describe...

Today, January 9, is National Static Electricity Day according to the Crazy Holidays Calendar. So, rub your feet along the carpet, take a sweater off really fast and reach out and shock someone.

'Einstein Gap': It's all relative BY DAVE BARRY Recently, I received a phone call from my son, Rob. It was a phone call that every parent dreads. That's right: My son told me that the universe does not exist. Or at least it does not in any way resemble my concept of it. According to Rob, I understand the universe about as well as a barnacle understands a nuclear aircraft carrier. I blame college. That's where Rob is getting these ideas, which have to do with Einstein's Theory of Relativity and something called ``quantum physics.'' Rob and his roommate, Hal,...

Man's static jacket sparks alert An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation. Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview. As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up. "It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that," he said. "Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt," he told...

The virus of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) can live for up to 15 days without the human body, Chinese scientists have discovered. According to Tuesday's China Daily, the Key Science and Technology Group under the National Task Force for SARS Control and Prevention revealed that the virus can exist in temperatures of 24 degrees Celsius for five days in patients' saliva, mucus andexcrement, 10 days in urine and 15 days in blood. It can live indoors for three days on paper, cotton cloth, wood, metal, plastic and glass surfaces and in soil. Experiments by the group indicate that the...