Appeared in The New Republic on October 8, 2011

This week, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2011 Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine or physiology in Stockholm, Sweden. The new laureates are in the company of some of the most distinguished in their fields—Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Sir Alexander Fleming, to name a few. The awards recognize the extraordinary achievements of individuals, and this year they certainly didn’t disappoint. Indeed, in the past few weeks, the popular media has swooned over a number of discoveries that are forcing scientists and the rest of us to question just about everything we thought was settled about the universe and how it works. In what follows, TNR presents a few of the more mind-blowing discoveries.