Word: planetful
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...Prize last month with Al Gore, underscores just how momentous that challenge will be. The report predicted that at a warming trend of 3.6 degrees Farenheit - now considered almost unavoidable, due to the greenhouse gases already emitted into the atmosphere - could put up to 30% of species on the planet at risk for extinction. A warming trend of 3 degrees would puts millions of human beings at risk from flooding, wetlands would be lost and there would be a massive die-off of sea corals. Sea levels would rise by 28 to 43 cm, and most frightening...
...eight 16-in. (40 cm) telescopes on Mount Hopkins, near Tucson, Ariz., and pointing them over and over at the 100 closest M-dwarfs to see if their light dims in a repeating pattern. If it does, he won't have long to wait: a habitable M-dwarf planet would have a "year" only three or four days long, so transits would happen all the time. Things will get even easier in 2009, when NASA launches a satellite called Kepler. Soaring above our planet's murky atmosphere, it could spot Earthlike planets transiting across the faces of stars...
...silhouette strategy for planet hunting will not replace the wobble-watching method. Indeed, red dwarfs make that method easier and faster. "M-dwarf stars are small," says astronomer Geoff Marcy of UC 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...
...centuries-old debate: how do some nations attain long-term economic growth and an ever higher standard of living while others don't? What determines whether people in your part of the planet live in McMansions, mobile homes or mud huts? In the 18th century, proto-economist Adam Smith pointed to the transformative effect of the division of labor. In the 19th, David Ricardo highlighted the benefits of trade. In the 20th, Harvard University's Michael Porter made the case for industry clusters. Geography, physical capital, technology, worker education--they've all taken a turn as the supposed silver bullet...
...that adds up, according to the latest rankings from the World Economic Forum (WEF), to the third most competitive economy on the planet. But while economic competitiveness has often been sold as something that requires long hours, low taxes and minimal government--a litany often heard in the U.S.--Denmark doesn't fit that bill at all. Denmark has the second highest tax burden in the capitalist world (after Sweden, which is just behind it in the competitiveness rankings), a generous welfare state, a heavily unionized workforce and at least five paid weeks off every year...