We welcome Dr. Clifford Johnson, a theoretical physicist at USC, to the October Assembly, who will be doing a talk bound to make us "wonder more" about the latest discoveries supporting some of the more "outside-the-box" ideas about the Big Bang.  Have you heard about gravitational waves?  These are the ripples embedded in the fabric of space that are predicted by "inflationary theory", the idea that the Universe underwent an exponential, faster-than-light expansion in the first few zepto-seconds (yes, that's a real unit of time) after the Big Bang.  Last spring, physicists working in Antarctica announced the discovery of evidence for these gravitational waves, lending support to the inflationary theory.  Dr. Johnson will lead us into the weird world of Big Bang cosmology with his talk, "Even the Universe has an Origin Story".

And don't forget the DATE CHANGE for October!  Instead of our usual 2nd Sunday, just for October we've had to slip it back a week to Oct. 19, due to unforeseen circumstances (not an act of God, thankfully).