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Grab your cocoa or pumpkin spice — as today we examine what’s naughty and nice.

From New Scientist, Dec. 11, 2019: Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is quoted in this article on what scientists mean when they talk about the Big Bang. The best evidence for the big bang is all around us in the cosmic microwave background, the radiation released once the universe had cooled sufficiently for atoms to form, when it was about 380,000 years old. And that is the point: everywhere in today’s universe was where the big bang was.

From DOE, Dec. 11, 2019: Secretary Brouillette served in the U.S. Army and has three decades of experience in both the public and private sector, most recently as the deputy secretary of energy.

Scientists at CERN have found a way to learn more about the interior of neutron stars using the Large Hadron Collider. Researchers on the ALICE experiment are uncovering the properties of elusive hyperon particles hypothesized to be found inside neutron stars.

From DOE, Dec. 9, 2019: Fermilab scientist Josh Frieman writes about the search for the nature of dark energy at the national laboratories and how the Office of Science’s High Energy Physics program has been at the vanguard of a number of cosmic surveys.

The year 2019 was a banner one for Albert Einstein: It included the first image of a black hole and the 100th anniversary of the 1919 solar eclipse expeditions that validated his theory of general relativity. Learn more about both, plus topics such as quantum theory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the science (and fiction) of “Game of Thrones” in Symmetry writer Mike Perricone’s annual list of new popular physics books.

From Forbes, Dec. 6, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln gives a primer on neutrinos, neutrino oscillation and how studying neutrinos can help scientists explain the observed dominance of matter in the universe. And they’re doing just that with two Fermilab experiments, NOvA and DUNE.

From Time, Dec. 6, 2019: Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper summarizes the current state of the search for dark matter. Scientists can say with great confidence that we understand how and why our universe evolved over the vast majority of its history. From this perspective, the universe looks more comprehensible than ever before. And yet, not all is understood.

From Forbes, Nov. 29, 2019: Books by Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper and Fermilab Office of Education and Public Outreach Head Becky Thompson are selected for this holiday gift guide.

Enormous scientific collaborations are made up of hundreds upon thousands of individuals, each with their own story. Online collections of profiles, such as Faces of DUNE, the Dark Energy Survey’s Scientist of the Week blog and Humans of LIGO, reveal the sometimes-ignored human sides of scientists.