You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded.
To the question, “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, “Why not?”
Atheist: Natural Morals, Real Meaning, Credible Truth

02 February, 2011

Green Flash!

I finally saw a green flash last night at sunset over the ocean. Clear horizon and cold air. I stopped at a scenic overlook on the way to the airport thinking I might have a chance. Sure enough! Yay! Just wish I had my camera with me. :-( No chance tonight with cloud cover on the horizon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash



This hardly compares with the news from NASA today about the Kepler mission's success. This is very cool! Staring at a region of space that covers only 1/400th of our galaxy and they find more than 1200 potential planets. 50 of them in "habitable zones" around their stars. Scale that up and you get at least 20,000 planets in the right place for liquid water, potentially life, in our galaxy.
Motherlode of potential planets found: more than 1200 alien worlds!



With the potential of a million planets in just our galaxy being in the habitable zone of their stars, the chances of life elsewhere are huge, especially since we are thinking even the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have conditions that could breed life. Pretty amazing. Because of the physics of space and distance, we'll probably not visit or maybe even see any, but detecting the signatures of life is entirely possible.  

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