Talk about an expanding universe

It may be cold enough to freeze your coffee inside its not-particularly-well-insulated Starbucks cup, but that’s not about to stop your new professors from piling you with work. But this semester is going to be The Semester – the one when you finally get ahead in your classes, find a cool paid internship, and figure out the secret to impressing strangers at parties. The rest of the world is stepping up its game enough that you kind-of have to work a little harder (and sleep a little less) just to keep up.

Yesterday, the British Parliament held a debate over whether or not to ban Donald Trump from the UK. The Parliament doesn’t have any actual authority with which to ban US politicians, no matter how offensive they may be, but the debate did give British lawmakers a fascinating opportunity to weigh in on US politics. (Washington Post)

Meanwhile, in California, a group of protesters calling themselves Black.Seed forced a standstill in traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge by chaining their cars across the five-lane highway. The protest, in honor of MLK Day, was intended to last for ninety-six minutes to represent the ninety-six hours of action protests in Oakland over the weekend, but the police shut it down after only half an hour. (SF Gate)

The recently-studied star system KIC 8462852 is getting stranger the more researchers examine it. Researchers attempting to explain the unusual light fluctuations discovered in the system a few years ago have now ruled out frequent comet activity, as well as several other natural causes. So is there an “alien megastructure” out there trying to send us light signals? Well, we can’t definitively say there isn’t. (Science World Report)

Hamilton, Columbia’s current favorite musical, will soon be the focus of a new installment in the PBS series Great Performances, which airs plays, concerts, and other spectacular performance events. The Hamilton episode, called Hamilton’s America, won’t actually show all of the musical, but it will air extensive interviews with the cast and crew, clips, and other never-before-seen footage. We’re all gonna be in the room where it happens. (Vanity Fair)

Everything’s getting bigger via Wikimedia Commons