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 Distant
realms of the cosmos actually may be as close as a millimeter away. Whole
other universes may be within your grasp. Even if you cannot see these
other worlds, you may be in communication with them through that most
familiar of forces, gravity. This mind-expanding scenario is one of the hottest
theories in physics. What's more, it can be tested.
Scientists have begun a final push to recreate the extreme conditions and
temperatures that existed an instant after the Big Bang. At RHIC,
ordinary matter is now being shattered in tiny cataclysms that are
expected to briefly create a primordial state of matter which has been
theorized but never seen. Detectors will record fleeting fusillades of
subatomic particles and scientists can begin the job of sifting through
them, intent upon
discovery of the quark-gluon plasma.
 One day was all it
took a team of researchers at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome
Institute in Walnut Creek, California to unravel
the entire genome of the "superbug" Enterococcus faecium
-- an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that is one of the major causes of
hospital-acquired infections.
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