There have been a number of true and non-silly stories about astronomy and cosmology recently, which I’ll collect here as penance for the earlier silly post:
Some theorists at Penn State have constructed a Loop Quantum Gravity model that they claim allows for an oscillating universe with no singularities. In one of those psychology-of-the-press moments, the PSU press release accentuates the positive, with the headline “What happened before the Big Bang?” Meanwhile, the IOP Physics Web news item goes negative: “‘Cosmic forgetfulness’ shrouds time before the Big Bang” (referring to the model prediction that even if the universe is oscillating, there would be no way to get information from the time before the last collapse. However you spin it, Sean Carroll doesn’t like it, for reasons having to do with entropy.
Closer to home, the Opportunity rover is still going, and planning to enter a deep crater. With all the crap NASA gets about their misplaced priorities and poor management, they don’t get nearly enough credit for their successes, which really are spectacular.
Finally, Tommaso Dorigo has a summary of the current sate of gravitational wave detection experiments. These are really cool stuff, and I may have more to say about the topic later.
And that’s what’s going on in the universe today.