Word: planetful
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Time was, being an earthling was something special. In a universe full of apparently planetless stars, our colorful solar system seemed like one of a cosmic kind. The planet club became a little less elite last week, however, when astronomers announced the discovery of a Jupiter-like world orbiting a not-too-distant star, a star that could well have an Earth-like planet in its brood...
...star that's causing all the buzz is 55 Cancri, about the size and age of our sun, located just 41 light-years away. This is not the first time a planet has been seen orbiting the star. In 1996 Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and astrophysicist Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington spotted a different Jupiter-size world circling 55 Cancri in a close-up orbit just 10 million miles from the solar fires--closer than little Mercury orbits our own sun. All told, astronomers have found about...
...close similarity to Jupiter has a special significance to astronomers. One of the things that made life on Earth possible in the first place was the looming presence of our sun's fifth planet, whose massive gravity vacuumed up a lot of incoming comets and asteroids, keeping the small inner worlds relatively safe in the shooting gallery that was the early solar system. The clear lane Jupiter created became a sort of orbital sweet spot, where temperatures could remain moderate and volatile substances such as water could persist, giving life a chance to arise. While plenty of stars beyond...
Whether there's a lush little Earth spinning around 55 Cancri is still anybody's guess. Spotting even a giant planet in the glare of its sun is so hard--astronomers compare it to looking for a firefly next to a searchlight--that no one really sees any of these extra-solar worlds. Instead, investigators look for tiny perturbations in the position of the mother star that may suggest that the gravity of a planet of a particular size and distance is tugging...
...that.' The information was correct. Maybe it was a message (I'm watching; don't try any funny business), or maybe he's just a guy who does his homework. Hard to tell with Cruise, who's known for being the most guarded, in-control movie star on the planet. I know one journalist who did an interview with him, then received in the mail a complete transcript of their conversation simply labeled 'For Your Convenience.' The divorce, Scientology, Penelope Cruz--he's addressed all those subjects, and no question can surprise...