Word: lifes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bitterness, Bad might be closer to Jack Baker of The Fabulous Baker Boys, 20 years down the road and without Michelle Pfeiffer's Susie Diamond for motivation. Bad is angry at just about everything, from what might have been in his personal life (there's an abandoned son out there somewhere) to the fact that his slick protégé Tommy Sweet (a spot-on Colin Farrell) is hugely successful, largely on the basis of having turned one of Bad's songs into a smash hit. Bad would tell you Tommy's career was never...
...1214b, is too big to be considered Earth-like, it comes pretty close. But GJ 1214b's relatively compact size - smaller than the vast majority of planets identified so far - is only one reason for astronomers' enthusiasm. Another is GJ 1214b's likelihood of bearing the stuff of life: water...
...looking for a world where life might thrive, a planet must be at the right temperature for water to exist in liquid form. So it needs to orbit its star in the so-called habitable zone, a "Goldilocks" location that allows a planet to be neither too hot nor too cold. In that respect, GJ 1214b is again a near miss. Its surface temperature hovers at a sweltering 190°C (374°F), which is well above the boiling point of water, at least in Earth's atmospheric pressure. Fortunately, GJ 1214b's atmosphere makes the pressure...
Nevertheless, it's too soon to suggest that astronomers have found the site of potential exoplanetary life. "What you want [for life] is a nice toasty ocean with a little bit of atmosphere. That's not going to happen here," says Charbonneau. "I think it would be foolish to say categorically that [GJ 1214b] doesn't have life. But we have no basis for thinking it could...
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the discovery of GJ 1214b is that the planet was found at all. Planet hunters usually focus their attention on Sun-like stars - that is, large and hot - on the assumption that if you're looking for life, you should look in a place that is as similar to our solar system as possible. Charbonneau, however, focused on about 2,000 small, dim, red stars known as M-dwarfs, nearby Earth. M-dwarfs are much more numerous than Sun-like stars; of the 300 stars closest to Earth, says Charbonneau...