Maybe. How’s that for a definitive answer? New planets around stars other than our sun (exoplanets) continue to be discovered almost weekly. If we include the 1200 or so from the last Kepler mission data release (see this earlier post), the total number is rapidly approaching 2000. And the longer we look, the more likely [...]
On Saint Patrick’s day, the MESSENGER spacecraft will slip into orbit around Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, and the smallest of the eight classical planets. It will be the first to do so. You would think this would have happened before now. After all, there are numerous spacecraft in orbit around Mars, and [...]
Over the weekend of February 19th and 20th, I was privileged to attend the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. This is always one of my favorite scientific meetings, mostly because it covers such a wide range of topics, and the topics are the sort that are [...]
