Word: planetful
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...enough, she not only believes in spirit animals, crystal power, and being abducted by aliens, but she also protests anti-globalization: “I’m against killing baby seals and McDonald’s and the CIA and everything that’s wrong with the planet.” The poor girl, apparently, doesn’t have a normal gene in her body...
...Mixed Nuts and Death to Smoochy, Jon Stewart won't be confused with Jimmy. But big-screen chops aren't essential to the job; Johnny Carson was a five-time winner as Oscar host. Besides, the new guy has miles of charm, glib ad-lib-ability and the planet's smartest comedy writers. If Stewart can't make this year's Oscar show the wittiest in memory ... well, the Academy could turn next year to another cool dude over at Comedy Central. Paging Stephen Colbert...
...behind it. In his original paper, Einstein doubted that such a thing would ever be seen- but he didn?t count on modern technology. Since 1997, a Polish-led team of astronomers has been using that technology in a project called OGLE, for Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (hence the planet?s name) to search for just such magnifications. They?ve seen hundreds, but one that happened last July was followed a short while later by a smaller flicker- evidence that the magnifying star had a planet trailing behind (the planet?s flicker was actually detected by another group of astronomers...
...intensity of the flicker told the scientists how small the planet was- too small to be a gaseous blob like Neptune- and therefore probably made of rock and ice; the timing told them it?s about three times further from its star than we are from the sun. Its surface temperature is probably below ?360 degrees F, much too frigid to sustain life...
...good news, however, is that it?s at least relatively earthlike- and because it's only the third planet discovered this way, the proportion of earthlike planets is probably pretty high. That means Einstein?s trick of light is almost certain to yield others. So while this isn?t quite the discovery astronomers have been hoping for, it?s a signal that finding a close twin of Earth...