Watch live pictures from the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC., as the high court hears arguments in California’s Proposition 8 that limits marriage to opposite-sex couple.
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On the second day of his first official trip to Israel, President Obama delivers a 45-minute speech to the Israeli people.
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The most detailed picture yet of the early universe is to be revealed today in Paris. Taken by the European spacecraft, Planck, it could tell us about events that took place during the first second of the universe's existence.
Planck's image will show the universe at an age of around 380,000 years. This is before stars and galaxies formed. At that time, all that existed was a vast sea of atoms and radiation. Gravity was just pulling the atoms into clumps and these would go on to become stars and galaxies. The current age of the universe is 13.7 billion years.
In short, Planck's image is the blueprint for the universe.
Planck sees the clumps by collecting the microwave light that has come from them. This radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background and it outnumbers atoms in the universe by a billion to one. The clump temperatures are all slightly different but hover within a hundred-thousandths of a degree of 2.725 Kelvin (approximately –270° Celsius).
These fluctuations are referred to as anisotropies and although they are minuscule, they are enough for astronomers to do their work.
The first results will be announced today at a press conference taking place at the European Space Agency's Paris headquarters at 10:00 CET, Thursday 21 March. You can watch a live webcast here.
Whatever is announced today, it will not be the end of the story. The Planck data will keep scientists busy for years. There are many hopes riding on this data because it is becoming increasingly obvious that we do not understand the universe very well at all.
Most of the matter is thought to be in particles that hardly interact with normal atoms. Although astronomers and particle physics have plenty of candidates for what this matter may be, they have no direct evidence for any of it yet. They call it dark matter.
Worse still, is that the natural expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than decelerating as astronomers had expected. The acceleration suggests that some exotic form of energy pervades all space, overwhelming gravity on the largest scale. They call this dark energy.
Together, dark matter and dark energy are calculated to make up 96% of the universe. Put another way, astronomers do not understand what 96% of the universe is made from. Either that, or their understanding of gravity on the largest scales is faulty.
Although the Planck data is not expected to refine those estimates dramatically, it could help reveal some of the dark matter. Some particle physicists believe that the three known neutrino species know could be joined by a fourth. Others have suggested a shadowy form of light called a dark photon. These could influence the shape of the clumps in the Planck data.
Another mystery Planck will investigate is known as inflation. This is a hypothesis that the universe underwent a catastrophic expansion a split second after the big bang. This largely smoothed out matter across the universe and explains why the microwave temperature anisotropies are so small.
There have been two other space missions to study the cosmic microwave background, as this radiation is termed. Both were launched by Nasa. COBE blasted off in 1989 and WMAP in 2001. Planck is the first European mission to study this phenomenon.
Nobel Laureate John Mather, who won the Nobel for his work on COBE is quoted as saying that he hopes for some surprises in the data because, "the last decimal places are never very interesting.'
I would say that those decimal places are exactly where the excitement takes place. It is in the details that the we see where our current theories fail. After all, it wasn't until the fifth decimal place of Mather's COBE data that the anisotropies were found – and they gave us the first rough sketch of the universal blueprint.
Today, Planck will unveil that blueprint as a finished masterpiece.
• Stuart Clark is the author of The Day Without Yesterday (Polygon)
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
At the American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson moderates a debate between prominent scientists and thinkers regarding the existence of nothing. Watch live video below:
Following the first meeting of his Mideast tour, President Obama delivers a statement with Israel's President Shimon Peres.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the future of drones in America with a focus on law enforcement and privacy considerations.
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The House Science, Space and Technology Committee holds a hearing on threats from space and government efforts to mitigate asteroids and meteors.
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A judge hears testimony from victims and relatives of murdered victims in the sentencing trial of convicted Ohio school shooting suspect T.J. Lane.
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President Barack Obama announces that Tom Perez is his nominee to become the next U.S. secretary of labor.
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Ram Singh, accused of leading five others in fatal attack on woman, has been found hanged in jail cell
The man accused of leading five others in the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapist in Delhi in December 2012 has been found dead in the high-security prison where he was being held during his trial.
The attack in the Indian capital prompted global outrage, protests acrossIndia and calls for deep legal and policing reforms. It also led to a fierce debate over attitudes to women as a factor contributing to the wave of sexual violence against women that has hit the country in recent years.
Ram Singh, 34, was on trial with five others at a specially established fast track court in Delhi and faced the death sentence. The trial opened in February but there have recently been delays. Singh was found hanged by his own clothes and a prison blanket at 5am, officials at Delhi's Tihar jail have said. An inquiry is under way.
There was shock in India at the news and fierce criticism of prison authorities. Relatives of the victims said they were disappointed that Singh, a bus driver with a history of hard drinking, had apparently been allowed to take his own life.
"He knew he was going to die anyway because we had and still have such a strong case against him," the murdered woman's 20-year-old brother told the Reuters news agency.
"I'm not very thrilled with the news that he killed himself because I wanted him to be hanged ... publicly. Him dying on his own terms seems unfair. But, oh well, one is down. Hopefully the rest will wait for their death sentence."
The assault took place on the bus Singh drove for a living. The victim and a 28-year-old male friend boarded the vehicle on a Sunday evening as they returned from seeing a film. They had believed the bus to be one of the many unlicensed carriers that fill the gaps left by Delhi's inadequate public transport system. The pair were however attacked with an iron rod and the woman repeatedly raped. After almost an hour they were pushed from the moving bus on to a roadside near the city's airport. The woman died later of massive internal injuries sustained during the assault.
The accused adults in the case – along with a 17-year-old – were swiftly detained for their alleged roles in the attack, which took place on 16 December 2012. The minor is appearing in a separate court.
Singh's lawyer said he had been murdered in prison, possibly by the police. "What do you mean killed himself? He has been killed in prison," said defence counsel AP Singh. Lawyers for the accused have claimed that their clients have been repeatedly attacked by other inmates in prison and were tortured by police.
Investigators say there is a very strong prosecution case with 80 witnesses, DNA evidence and statements from both victims.
Singh's younger brother, Mukesh, is among the accused. The pair had been living in a slum neighbourhood in the south of Delhi at the time of the attack. They had been joined by a fruit seller and a part-time gym assistant, a former colleague and the juvenile, who was an illiterate drifter, on a "joy ride" after hours of heavy drinking on the evening of the assault. They had come across the woman and her friend by chance, statements from two of the accused claim.
© 2013 Guardian News and Media
Watch the video, published on The Guardian on March 11.
President Obama and Vice President Biden deliver remarks at Violence Against Women Act bill signing in DC.
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Members of the U.S. Senate discuss John Brennan's nomination as CIA director and the use of lethal force on American citizens that are deemed security threats.
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Shooting victim Gabby Giffords and others hold an event at the Safeway supermarket where the 2011 Tucson shooting occurred to urge action on “common sense solutions” to reduce gun violence.
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