From the letters page of Discover Magazine, I find that there's a theory out there called the "ekpyrotic universe" which, to quote the letter writer:

...eliminates the need for dark matter and dark energy, makes inflation unnecessary, offers an explanation for the Big Bang, offers an answer to whether our universe is a onetime fluke or one of many, and grows directly out of a physical theory that appears to reconcile all of the currently existing competing theories of high-energy physics.

What is it? Well, it appears to explain everything this way: There's Universe A and Universe B, each moving along a x-billion-year orbit around each other. Every so often, they crash. The result is us. Read more here.

In other news, Rimbaldi Da Vinci invented plastic.

In still other news, shit takes FOREVER on dialup.