Princeton University Area Apartments for Rent

The story starts this way: “A giant Jupiter-like gas planet, the most light-thirsty object in the known universe, gobbles up 99.9 percent of the light that strikes it, more than anything known in the cosmos – it’s the darkest world ever seen by science. A mysterious atmospheric component seems to be present – but no one is sure what that component is.”

The introduction to a scary science fiction novel? No, it’s a description of a planet named TrES-2b, the object of research by Princeton University’s David Spiegel, a postdoctoral researcher in the school’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences.

As a world-renowned research university, Princeton strives for the highest levels of distinction in the discovery and transmission of knowledge. There’s a lot to live up to; this private research university in Princeton, New Jersey is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.

The school provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering; there are approximately 7,500 students enrolled.

From 2001 to 2010, Princeton University was ranked either first or second among national universities by US News and World Report, and fifth in the world in the 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Notable alumni include US Presidents James Madison and Woodrow Wilson; Supreme Court Associate Justices Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor; actor Jimmy Stewart; writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O’Neill; and General David Petraeus.