Word: planetful
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...That obstacle was overcome in 1995 when astronomers Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the planet 51 Pegasus b orbiting the eponymous star 51 Pegasus. The astronomers made their find not by spotting the planet directly but by measuring the minute gravitational wobbles it causes in its parent star as it orbits. With those scraps of data, they could calculate the planet's mass, velocity, orbital altitude and more...
...That was big news if you were hunting for planets but no news at all if you were hunting for life. A planet with enough gravitational oomph to jiggle a star is probably a gas giant like Jupiter, orbiting so close to the fires of its sun that nothing living would have a chance. What biology needs in order to get going is a relatively small, rocky planet orbiting in what's called a star's habitable zone - a place where things get hot but not too hot, cold but not too cold. A place like Earth, in other words...
...unblinking look at Cygnus-Lyra is important because even if Kepler were to detect any telltale fluctuations in stellar light, that wouldn't be proof of a planet. The telescope would have to keep looking and see if the flickering is repeated roughly once a year, or about the time it would take an Earth-like planet to circle around its star and pass in front again. Record three or four such passes, and you can be pretty sure you've got a planet - hence the 3½-year mission...
...there life on other planets? David Charbonneau, a Harvard associate professor of astronomy and most recent recipient of the Alan T. Waterman Award, thinks there might be. Charbonneau is currently working on a project called MEarth, which aims to detect planets that are rocky and warm enough to sustain life—previous research has focused mostly on gaseous planets, because they are usually large and easier to view. The Alan T. Waterman award is specifically targeted to young professionals, requiring that the recipient be under the age of 35, a U.S. citizen, and have had a Ph.D. for fewer...
...Congress. They planned to shut down the plant by peacefully blocking the entrances, a textbook act of civil disobedience for which many expected - perhaps eagerly - to be arrested. The message was simple: the burning of coal, which accounts for some 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, "is destroying the planet through global warming," as Kennedy put it. America needs to get off coal, which supplies nearly half the country's electricity, if it wants to have any hope of controlling its greenhouse gas emissions, and it should start with the Capitol plant. (See the top 10 green ideas...