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Big Bangs

By Peter DuCharme
February 15, 2015

science and culture for people who love beautiful writing.

Where do we start? Often, with a bang. Take our modern universe. It didn’t grow slowly and linearly, but was instead a violent departure from what came before. Big Bangs like this aren’t exclusive to cosmology: There are the sudden appearance of language and tool use, the Cambrian explosion in the diversity of life on Earth, and the sharp divergences of economic cycles.

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