Number 33 (Story #1), May 8, 1991 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein LIQUID-CRYSTAL COSMOLOGY. Speaking at the recent APS meeting in Washington, Isaac Chuang and Bernard Yurke (201-582-4961) of AT&T Bell Labs and Neil Turok of Princeton described an experiment in which they compared the behavior of a liquid crystal and the presumed behavior of matter in the early universe. Cooling and squeezing the crystal caused the constituent rodlike molecules to undergo a phase transition into a more ordered state. This symmetry breaking brought with it various imperfections in the liquid crystal which Yurke refers to as monopoles, strings, walls, and textures in analogy with similar "defects" believed to exist in the fabric of the evolving universe. Over time, the liquid-liquid defects exhibit self-similarity: the pattern of defects is similar on a variety of size scales. The universe itself, some cosmologists believe, may have this property. (Science, 3 May 1991.)