Word: closers
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...that these puny stars are as thick as ants at a picnic, accounting for up to 70% of all the stars in the Milky Way. Because an M-dwarf is so faint, its habitable zone is much smaller, so any planet that falls within that zone would be much closer to it than Earth is to the sun. And that, says Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau, gives planet hunters a huge advantage. "Basically," he says, "it lets us cheat...
...mini-eclipse known as a transit. "If an Earth-size planet in an Earthlike orbit passes in front of a star like the sun," he says, "it dims the star by 1 part in 10,000 or even less." Since a habitable planet around an M-dwarf is much closer--about 7 million miles (11 million km) away--the transit lasts significantly longer. And since the star is smaller and dimmer to begin with, the light reduction from one of these mini-eclipses is more like 1 part...
...Berkeley, one of the discoverers of 55 Cancri's newfound planet. "That means planets can kick them around more easily." And all that means the first twin of Earth might really be found before long--and the discovery of life on other worlds could get a whole lot closer. The 55 Cancri Family of Planets [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] A SIMILIAR SYSTEM? The Star 55 Cancri is 41 light-years away and roughly the same mass and age as our sun. Here's how the orbits of its planets compare to our solar...
...than twice a day. Maybe it's worth taking the test: Do our devices really make us more efficient or less so? Do they bind us--or isolate us, becoming screens against intimacy and contact, zoom lenses that let us operate from a safe distance so that we seem closer than we really are? One suspects that trying to cut back may only teach us how attached we've become, at least to our gizmos. Like our children, they are little miracles, whose workings we can't really understand, as they make our lives bigger in surprising ways and keep...
...Over the next few years the two grew closer. Kerik and Giuliani were literally inseparable on 9/11 and in the months that followed. Crime declined on Kerik's watch, though the big drop had taken place years before. After years of mutual hostility, City Hall's relations with local African-American leaders slowly began to heal. Kerik's press was good, but unlike Bratton, Kerik took care to stay in Giuliani's shadow when it mattered. By the time Kerik stepped down in 2002, Giuliani was the godfather to two of Kerik's kids. The two men then took their...