This game is played by two people, using small rackets, called battledores, made of parchment or rows of gut stretched across wooden frames, and shuttlecocks, made of a base of some light material, such as cork, with trimmed feathers fixed around the top.
An alternative model which once enjoyed equal status with the big bang is the steady state theory, first proposed in 1948 by Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle. This model, too, assumes that the universe is expanding, but proposes that it has no beginning or end in space and time.
Saturn's rings. The rings of Saturn have puzzled astronomers ever since they were first seen by Galileo in 1610, during the first telescopic observations of this planet. Although he saw the rings first, Galileo did not know what they were. They appeared to him as 'ears' or lobes either side of the planet. It was Christaan Huygens who first proposed that Saturn was surrounded by a solid ring in 1655.