Word: reds
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...have all been impatient for the time when the damnable vagueness that surrounds public discussion of cancer prevention (Is red wine O.K. or not? Is it cool to order extra bacon with that double cheeseburger?) would be finally dispersed. That time for clarity is now, and the report should therefore have been greeted by a global outburst of thanks, with copies duplicated and shoved in every letterbox. Instead, it has been met with either irritated silence or trite complaints. The feckless comments made to a discussion thread on the BBC news website were typical: "So the choice is, eat boring...
...With its red-hot cinema, culinary culture and contemporary art scene, Mexico City is North America's capital of cool. But spare a thought for the colonial-era towns in the vicinity of the world's second largest metropolis. Chief among them is Puebla, two hours southeast of the capital. Set in a valley and ringed by a series of volcanoes - including the 14,636-ft (4,461-m) Malinche - Puebla was founded in 1531 along an important pre-Columbian trade route. This helped Puebla prosper during Spanish rule, resulting in one of the most elaborate and colorful town squares...
...type of dim red star known as an M-dwarf, only about a hundredth as bright as the sun. During the 1990s, sky surveys revealed that these puny stars are as thick as ants at a picnic, accounting for up to 70% of all the stars in the Milky Way. Because an M-dwarf is so faint, its habitable zone is much smaller, so any planet that falls within that zone would be much closer to it than Earth is to the sun. And that, says Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau, gives planet hunters a huge advantage. "Basically," he says...
Rather than looking for a stellar wobble, Charbonneau and others are watching red dwarfs for signs of their light subtly dimming as an orbiting planet passes in front of them--a sort of mini-eclipse known as a transit. "If an Earth-size planet in an Earthlike orbit passes in front of a star like the sun," he says, "it dims the star by 1 part in 10,000 or even less." Since a habitable planet around an M-dwarf is much closer--about 7 million miles (11 million km) away--the transit lasts significantly longer. And since the star...
...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...