The country’s financial institutions are getting a good kicking — perhaps deservedly so.

IT may seem obvious to a child, but not to most adults: If the Big Bang was so violent why do scientists appear to spend time trying to see it rather than hear it?

* The Little Black Sheep by Elizabeth Shaw [O’Brien €6.99]

Gravity waves — ripples in spacetime — have been detected by scientists a century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence.

Astronomers studying 200,000 galaxies have confirmed that the universe is slowly dying.

A monster black hole powering “the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe” has been discovered that is 12 billion times more massive than the sun, scientists have revealed.

Stephen Fry’s tirade against God on RTÉ’s Meaning of Life programme received worldwide attention.

Margaret Thatcher's most senior official warned privately that her financial sector reforms were giving birth to a new culture of corner-cutting and "unscrupulous" practices in the City, according to newly-released UK government papers.

Rolling north through the pleasant greenery of Tipperary, Laois and er, the other counties you pass getting to Dublin gave me a chance to catch up on my reading.

A new kind of rocky planet — dubbed a mega-Earth — has been discovered in a distant star system.

Scientists have come up with the best computer model yet of the universe.

Thirty years back, we had fewer skills and less education, yet the social divide wasn’t as severe, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

Astronomers announced that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.

Australian astronomers say they have found a star 13.6bn years old, making it the most ancient star ever seen.

A new European space mission will listen for the “sound” made by gravity disturbing the fabric of space-time.

British physicist Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, of Belgium, have won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics for their theoretical discoveries on how subatomic particles acquire mass.

Decoupling food production from hydrocarbons is vital to our survival. John Sweeney considers a book that suggests we look to the sun for an alternative source of energy

New results from a look into the split second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is 80m years older than previously thought.

New results from a look into the split second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought.

In a super-arid desert at an altitude of 5,000m, with almost no humidity or vegetation, the world’s largest ground-based astronomy project opened for business yesterday — ready to probe the universe with unprecedented might.

The Face of God

Dec 21 2012 is the most eagerly-awaited date since 2000. But we’ve a history of getting it wrong, says Oliver Moore

British astronomer Patrick Moore died today aged 89, a group of his friends and staff said.

LAST Sunday night there was an explosive row at the house concerning six sweat shirts and a custard yellow fleece.

A fuzzy cluster of stars 13.3 billion light years away is believed to be the most distant object ever observed.

An amateur astronomer has said he got the shock of his life when he made Ireland’s second discovery of a supernova in less than two years.

British Chancellor George Osborne has revealed plans to further scale down the investment banking arm at RBS and shift the taxpayer-backed bank’s focus to the UK.

IT has been called “the brick that built the universe” and “the God particle.”

Many City workers in London believe there is too great a gap between rich and poor in the UK, a think-tank report published today reveals.

Scientists say they will either prove or dismiss the existence of a long-sought theoretical particle by the end of next year.

A BRIGHT beacon in space believed to be powered by a black hole may shed light on a hidden era of the early universe.

IT was destined for the scrapheap, but a rusted and outdated satellite dish will soon be transmitting sounds from the very edges of the known universe.

WILLIE “BIG BANG” CASEY will be back in the gym in two weeks, according to his trainer, Phil Sutcliffe, who admitted yesterday that they were all very disappointed with Saturday night’s loss to Guillermo Rigondeaux.

CERN scientists have staged their first speed-of-light particle collisions of the year, resuming their probes into the origins of the cosmos in the centre’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

GUILLERMO RIGONDEAUX will complete his preparations for his world title defence against Willie “Big Bang” Casey at a special training camp in Cork.

WILLIE “Big Bang” Casey and Guillermo Rigondeaux came face to face at the Montenotte Hotel in Cork for the first time on Saturday ahead of their world title fight in March.

WILLIE ‘Big Bang’ Casey and Guillermo ‘El Chacal’ Rigondeaux will exchange pleasantries for the first time ahead of their March 19th showdown when they meet at the Lee Rooms in the Montenotte Hotel in Cork next Sunday at 2pm.

GOD’S mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict has said.

David Lewis-Williams

SCIENTISTS smashed sub-atomic particles into each other with record energy yesterday, aiming to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang that gave rise to the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

The world’s largest atom smasher today conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those immediately after the creation of the universe.

The world's largest atom smasher was poised to start a new era of science today, colliding beams of protons to learn more about the make-up of the universe and its smallest particles.

The “Big Bang” machine with which scientists hope to re-create conditions at the dawn of the universe smashed the world record for accelerating subatomic particles today.

Scientists switched on the world’s largest atom smasher for the first time since the $10bn (€6.7bn) machine suffered a spectacular failure more than a year ago.

FRENCH magistrates charged a nuclear scientist suspected of al-Qaida links with “membership of a terrorist group” yesterday, judicial officials said.

A SCIENTIST working at the giant European CERN atom smasher laboratory has been held on suspicion of being linked to al-Qaida, it emerged yesterday.

A scientist working at the giant European CERN atom smasher laboratory has been held on suspicion of being linked to al-Qaida, it emerged today.

Karen Gillan didn’t tell her family she had landed a role in 'Doctor Who'.