Just some MLPing while I dwell on the brilliance that led me to register for three(3) honors-level seminars in the same year.
First and most impressively in my opinion, the Genesis solar probe, which drilled a hole in the desert instead of being recovered in midair, seems to have salvageable sample material on-board. This flies in the face of a whole lot of common sense, considering what the thing went through, but if they manage to pull a success out of this, my hat remains off to the boys at NASA.
And the boys down in Chile have done something noteworthy too: they have come up with what is probably the first photograph of an extrasolar planet. Not just a hint that the thing's there, but a decent enough shot that you can see what color it is. It's red, anyway. Now, if this is confirmed, then great. Sure, it's a really big planet, but it's also really far out. I wonder what's going to be picked up on next, considering the rate at which we're finding extrasolars. Amazing that only nine years ago we started getting hints that these things might exist. Shortly before that, some people seriously claimed there were no extrasolar planets, and now there's lots in the puny corner of the town we can see.
I believe "What's next?" is the appropriate question.
Posted by zibblsnrt at September 10, 2004 10:40 PM