Word: lifes
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...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...
Charbonneau's group isn't the only one looking. An international consortium of observatories just announced the discovery of several other super-Earths around Sun-like stars, though these new planets are far too hot to sustain life and too far away to be able to study. Separately, NASA's Kepler Mission will present the first results of its planet search at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington in January. "[The Kepler team] has already submitted 28 scientific papers based on 43 days of data or less," says MIT planet theorist Sara Seager. "It's going...
...discuss also the women “for whom the Stupak amendment would make abortions prohibitively expensive.” We are not talking about women with iPods, but rather those whose medical conditions may make pregnancy dangerous, yet not sufficiently life-threatening to warrant insurance; women whose partner relations do not qualify as rape but are almost as far removed from free choice; women who prior to the passage of Roe vs. Wade died every day after botched illegal abortion procedures. For these women, the choice to have an abortion may be the only free choice they are able...