The Death of A Universe

ninthwave writes "The Guardian is running an article on research into the visible effects of entropy in the Universe. Alan Heavens of The University of Edinburgh did the research also posted at The Royal Astronomical Society with this article" I dunno - expansion, heat death - it all reminds me of a teacher who said "I'm not a premillenialist, postmillenialist - I'm a pan-millenialist, as in it's all going to pan out in the end." Update: 08/18 16:36 GMT by S : Headline fixed.

Comments

Re:Am grammar died

[maddskillz]

Just to drive the point home, I found this at www.dictionary.com: In writing, the form a is used before a word beginning with a consonant sound, regardless of its spelling (a frog, a university). The form an is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an orange, an hour).

Re:"An Universe"?

[dodongo]

It's called "epenthesis"--the insertion of a sound becuase the language seems to dictate it.

Ex. A + hour ---> "An hour"

In this case, the [n] sound is epenthetic.

I'm sure some folks studying phonology can give us the official formula for English... I guess the [n] only pops up between the determiner "a" and a vowel sound-initial word. The "yoo" sound in "universe" is a semivowel :-P

Re:Now I'm worried

[Distinguished Hero]

Actually, since in the article they mentioned that the Big Bang occured 14 billion years ago, they are using "U.S. Billions" (10^9) and not "U.K. Billions" (10^12). That means that they predict the Sun will engulf Earth in 5*10^9 years (5 "U.S. Billion" Years).