Reading a few science-y books got me thinking about the question of Origin: where did everything come from? What was there before the Big Bang? I went digging around the Internet, hoping to find some interesting theories. But to my disappointment, it seems as if physicists were quite conservative in coming up with theories to answer this question. (Perhaps I should turn to Sci-fi or mythologies to satisfy my thirst for mind-blowing conspiracies.) I have summarised some of the main theories below: Cyclic Model (the Big Bounce) The ancient Hindu cosmology says that the universe is eternal, consisting of infinite series of cycles. In modern cosmology, physicists have come up with similar models as well. One of the famous bounce cosmologist, Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, wrote a paper in 2002 on " A Cyclic Model of the Universe " with Neil Turok of Perimeter Institue in Waterloo. We propose a cosmological model in which the universe undergoes an endless seq...
Photo from PEOPLEIMAGES/GETTY IMAGES Last week, I was down with a fever, flu and a bad sore throat. Being ill made my head really fuzzy and my body weak, and I spent most of my time in slumber, only waking to eat or drink. Naturally, I stopped any form of exercise, which included my daily evening runs. When you stop a habit you have been keeping for some time, restarting it is actually quite hard. For the past three days, I have been well enough to continue my running routine, but I kept making excuses, like the weather being too hot and sunny. Today however, after a short workout at home, I felt a little of that running itch. I think it's because when you have been maintaining a habit for a long enough time, even if you have broken the streak, your body will still remind you of it when the time comes. I decided to put on my running shoes and a cap, and head out into the sun. Just one round, I thought to myself. I started off at a slow pace, waking my legs...