Word: banging
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nagging, fundamental question: Why is the universe lumpy? Some regions of the cosmos are crowded with giant clusters of galaxies, millions of light-years across. Other, even vaster spaces seem to be largely empty of matter. Scientists have assumed that this unevenness resulted from irregularities in the big bang that began the universe between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago. But that greatest of all explosions was almost perfectly uniform, as evidenced by its leftover radiation, which radio telescopes can detect in every part of the sky. Then how did such a smooth start result in a chunky cosmos...
Strings first popped up unexpectedly in the mathematical models of particle physicists. Right after the big bang, the mathematics suggests, the rapidly cooling cosmos underwent a phase transition, roughly analogous to the sharp change that occurs when water turns into ice. And just as an ice cube is marred by cracks and lines left over from uneven freezing, the universe too might have developed flaws -- in the form of strings. These strings would try to straighten and contract, often whipping about and getting tangled in the process. When a string crossed itself, the resulting loop would pinch off from...
...stages of what NASDAQ President Gordon Macklin calls a "global market for equities." That integration took a significant step forward in London last week. With much popping of champagne corks, exploding of fireworks and high jinks on the trading floor, the British financial community hailed the advent of Big Bang: the Oct. 27 abolition of a regime of fixed brokerage fees in existence since 1908, and their replacement by competitive commissions...
...British reform, which brought the London exchange into line with practices on Wall Street, will boost Britain's competitive position as an international equities-trading center. Big Bang also inaugurated an era of enhanced computer trading on the London Stock Exchange, where a new $21 million automatic stock-quotation system, known as SEAQ, went into operation. The Big Bang welcome was moderately dampened when trading on the London exchange was delayed for 65 minutes at the start. The reason: a computerized stock-quotation system crashed...
Thai Airways International Flight 620 was nearing Osaka, Japan, when suddenly a terrific bang in the rear of the plane sent it into a steep, rolling descent. Within minutes the A-300 Airbus had plummeted four miles, to 12,000 ft. Passengers were pitched around the cabin, said a witness, "like astronauts training in a gravity-zero zone...