Why else would a 20-year-old, or a 35-year-old, choose - willingly, it seems - to die in petrol-fuelled flames lit by their own hands?

BBC: Who is fanning Tibet's flames?

As we walked past houses nearby, we saw the candles lit in the windows and everyone gathering with their own families.

CNN: , Special to

The cosmos was born in the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago, and the first stars in the universe are thought to have lit up about 100 million years afterward, when gas finally gathered in clumps dense enough to collapse under their own gravity and ignite nuclear fusion.

MSN: We could soon detect the first stars in our universe