Science: Astronomers in a Wood

Twenty-six miles north of Harvard University is the sylvan town of Harvard. On a wooded hill of Harvard town last week assembled a congeries of learned men and not a few women. An imaginative person versed in pagan lore might have guessed that this company in the woods was a sabbat of warlocks and witches who had coursed here from coverts in every cranny of the world. For they talked of things beyond ordinary men's ken—of island universes racing 7,000 miles a second, of the universe exploding...