Word: planeteers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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RICK SMOLAN'S "24 HOURS IN CYBERspace" was supposed to be a round-the-clock, planet-spanning online party, a feel-good cyberfest celebrating the paradigm-shifting possibilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Smolan, the photographer and entrepreneur behind the hugely successful Day in the Life series of photo books that document everyday life in Spain, Japan, Australia, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., hoped to do the same for the growing world of interconnected computers...
More surprises are almost certain to follow if astronomers find more and more planets circling other stars. But while finding new planets of any sort is terrifically exciting, says Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, "the Holy Grail is to find an extrasolar planet that is capable of supporting life...
Despite Goldin's caution about assuming the existence of Earthlike planets, few astronomers doubt they are out there. If other solar systems do contain Earthlike worlds, says NASA exobiologist Michael Meyer, at least some should fall into the "habitable zone"--the region, governed by a planet's distance from its star, where water is liquid rather than solid or gaseous. "The good news," he says, "is that if our solar system is typical, there's a 50% chance that a planet will be in the right zone...
Whether life would inevitably arise from those building blocks is still an open question. With only one example, it is impossible to say whether life on Earth was a fluke or a foregone conclusion. But most biologists cautiously lean toward the latter. Life on this planet emerged surprisingly quickly--as early as a few hundred million years after Earth formed. At the time, the planet was intensely volcanic, with the occasional leftover asteroid screaming in every few million years--yet primitive life forms persisted and flourished...
...understand how life could have arisen under such conditions. But laboratory experiments have convinced them that self-replicating molecules are relatively easy to assemble. And the discovery of hot-water volcanic vents deep in the ocean, surrounded by rich ecosystems of exotic life, implies that a hot, young, volcanic planet might in fact be an ideal incubator...