Today we are going to talk about the universe. Why? Because, as Sevren Darden of Second City used to say in his professor routine, "Zair eesn't ennysing else!"
Astronomer Adam Riess has now proven, to the satisfaction of his colleagues, that there was a "cosmic jerk" about 5 billion years ago (give or take a month or so, I suppose), when the forces causing the universe to expand -- "dark energy" -- overwhelmed the gravitational forces making it contract -- "dark matter." Thus we learn, to my immense relief, that the universe is not likely to contract and ultimately implode in another few billion years. But on second look, the news is not so reassuring. It now appears, as NYT reporter Dennis Overbye puts it, that "the universe will expand faster and faster as time goes on."
"It will be cold and dark in a few billion years," he quotes Dr. Frank Wilcsek of MIT, and "[t]hat would be very sad."
And I ask you, what are the Republicans doing about this?
