Big Bang

Kingsley Davis,88, a sociologist who campaigned for zero population growth, died Feb. 27 in Stanford, Calif. The former senior research fellow at Stanford University argued in 1945 that developing societies had stable populations because of high birth and death rates.As a society develops, he argued, a decline in death rates leads to a population surge, followed by a decline in birth rates, until stability is reached with low birth and death rates.The theory was almost immediately disproved by the American baby boom.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- On the first day back in his office at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory after his own professional "big bang," Dr. George F. Smoot tasted the celebratory cake and submitted to a shower of confetti, all the while casting a twinkling eye this way and that on the fame now engulfing him.He was living through what his fellow physicists might call a phase transition in the long process of a scientific discovery. He had slogged through all the early steps: the definition of the question and the development of a way to answer it, with a set of instruments to be flown on a satellite.

GAITHERSBURG - NASA might have rockets and telescopes that serve as windows to the heavens, but some earthbound technology is probing the origins of the universe, too. In a cavernous hall the size of a college gym, researchers with the National Institute of Standards and Technology are using the neutron to probe an array of scientific mysteries - including the way that matter formed at the dawn of time. In NIST's Neutron Research Center, scientists use a 20-megawatt nuclear reactor to create the atomic particles, fire them through glass and steel-reinforced pipes, then monitor their behavior with 29 spectrometers and other instruments.

Before walking into BangBang Mongolian Grill, take a deep breath. It might be your last chance to relax until dinner is over. The new addition to the Can Company in Canton, which opened in February, promotes its healthy, do-it-yourself meals with exclamations like "An Explosion of Flavors Await!" and, splashed across a bright red wall, "BRING IT!" Fans of Tony Horton's P90X videos will chuckle - the energetic fitness guru uses "Bring it!" as his catch phrase. That's appropriate because BangBang's shares the same manic energy that Horton exudes in front of the camera.

The long-vacant site of the Columbus Center's defunct Hall of Exploration has finally found a tenant - though not the public attraction officials had hoped to lure to the Inner Harbor site. The state Board of Public Works approved yesterday a $700,000-a-year lease of 50,000 square feet in the building to Big Bang Products LLC, a manufacturer of sunglasses, ear warmers and other "performance wear." The board's approval of the seven-year lease agreement with the University System of Maryland came over the objections of Comptroller William Donald Schaefer.

Consider this:* Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine's "The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and The New Laws of Nature," (The Free Press. 228 pages. $24) trumpets a revolution in science equivalent to relativity and quantum mechanics.* Cosmologist Stephen Hawking maintains that the "big bang" that purportedly created the universe billions of years ago may never have happened, and that the "big crunch" ending the universe may not happen either. "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to the Black Holes" (Bantam.

WASHINGTON -- A stupendous explosion at the farthest reaches of the universe has dazzled Earth's astrophysicists and ignited a storm of debate about what could have caused such a blast."

Space shuttle Endeavour's record-long stargazing flight was extended to at least 16 1/2 days because of stormy weather at the landing site yesterday.The delay, after more than two weeks of round-the-clock work with a $200 million set of ultraviolet telescopes, left the crew a full day to rest and look out the window.The telescopes had already been packed away for the ride home Thursday night, just after scientists on the ground had a little fun with the crew.As they were preparing to shut down their equipment, Endeavour astronauts saw something strange on the TV monitor that displays what the telescopes are seeing.

As CBS prepares to present its slate for next season to advertisers this morning, the network has reportedly ordered four dramas and at least one comedy. In addition to the previously expected pick-ups, the industry trade papers are reporting that CBS will order Moonlight. Formerly titled Twilight, the Angel-esque drama stars Alex O'Loughlin as a vampire private investigator. Moonlight takes the slot most observers were expecting to go to the zombie dramedy Babylon Fields, which is still believed to be in contention for a midseason slot, along with the LL Cool J vehicle The Man and Skip Tracer, which stars Stephen Dorff.

FOR YEARS, Baltimore boosters have been dreaming about a "Big Bang" - a local burst of development akin to the birth of the universe. The announcement that Johns Hopkins medical institutions plan to spend $1 billion over the next eight years to upgrade their East Baltimore campus promises to be part of such a momentous chain reaction. Together with two separate projects, an $800 million biotech park and the city's ambitious plan to redevelop the old Church Home and Hospital site into a residential area, this commitment has the potential to transform the dank Broadway corridor and link it more closely to the downtown business district.