Big Bang

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Baseball has its own Big Bang theory: Avoid the Big Bang, the big innings, and your chances of evolving into a serious contender increase dramatically.But if you're forever getting hammered for runs three or more at a time, the carnage takes its toll, as the Orioles can attest. California scored eight runs in the third inning last night on its way to an 8-3 victory over the Orioles, who have lost three consecutive games.Rookie Jimmy Haynes was responsible for all eight runs -- the 12th time in their last 12 games the Orioles have allowed three or more runs in an inning.

WASHINGTON -- Two international teams of astronomers peering through the Hubble Space Telescope said yesterday that they are closing in on the answer to one of mankind's most fundamental questions: How old is the universe?Dr. Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., said her Hubble Key Project team calculates that 9 billion to 11 billion years have passed since the "Big Bang" -- the titanic explosion that most scientists believe was the beginning of all time, matter and space.

Cease not to think of the universe as one living Being, possessed of a single substance and a single mind and heart.-- Marcus Aurelius,''Meditations''The whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature whatever.-- Thomas Aquinas,$ ''Summa Theologica''MY PHYSICIST friend tells me that one version of the Big Bang theory suggests that the universe exploded out of a tiny compressed dot of immensely heavy matter and will forever expand -- a kind of relentless, cosmic one-shot deal -- an open-ended game of chance where Providence always has time for one more roll of the dice.

In one of the more important discoveries in recent years, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have detected in intergalactic space huge clouds of helium gas believed to have been left over from the birth of the universe. The finding represents another major piece of evidence supporting the theory that all matter, space and time came into existence in an immense cosmic explosion some 12 to 15 billion years ago.The discovery was made using a Hopkins-designed telescope sensitive to the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Those who ignore the past are doomed to be excused from the NBA playoffs early. Michael Jordan doesn't seem to get it, but Charles Barkley does.For once, Barkley seems to be letting the facts guide him, rather than shooting off his mouth in defiance of common sense and the concept of bodily term limits.You can call him Chuckster, or you can call him Chokester. But you can't call him anything but inspired for realizing the glory days have passed him by, like the dying echo of a Springsteen ballad.

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.

The Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their first family album of galaxies as they appeared during the earliest stages of their evolution.Some of the galaxies photographed have a family resemblance to those visible nearby today. But others, scientists say, are as weird and puzzling as some of the fossil creatures paleontologists have found in Earth's evolutionary past.Hubble has made many discoveries, "but perhaps this is the most unexpected so far," said Dr. Duccio Macchetto of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and the European Space Agency.

Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered early in this century that the universe is expanding, astronomers have been trying to account for the origin of all things. Running the clock backward for Hubble's observation that the galaxies are moving apart from each other, theorists speculated that sometime in the distant past all the matter in the universe must have been packed tightly together. Today most scientists believe the universe exploded into being some 15 billion years ago out of an incredibly dense "primeval atom" billions of times smaller than the diameter of a proton.

SCIENCE AND technology are advancing so quickly the English language is huffing and puffing trying to catch up.In a recent newsletter from T. Rowe Price Co. a particularly painful-to-the-ears word surfaced: "commputainment." This stylishly shortens the names of three profitable and increasingly related industries -- communications, computing and entertainment.This oh-so-contrived word ought not to worm its way into everyday usage, but don't bet on it. The phrase "information superhighway" was unknown to mainstream America a few years ago. Now it's impossible to read a newspaper without finding it somewhere on the pages.

BEIJING -- The Wangfujing Department Store, for decades a dreary dispensary of low-quality goods at state-controlled prices, now sports a totally new look.The dowdy retailer on Beijing's premier shopping street shut down for two months to transform itself with bright lighting, shiny marble, gold filigree and expensive foreign products, from Japanese electronics to French cosmetics.But the changes at the venerable store run even deeper.The department store paid for its renovation with cash raised in a stock sale that changed it from a state-run entity to something resembling a capitalist corporation owned by shareholders.