Monday, February 23, 2009

The Britney Spears of planets

"The Tracker’s head is spinning like a hot jupiter cooked with too many plasmatically searing eruptions of confusing and somewhat repetitive news. One thing is sure: for a place without a common name a world called HD 189733b has gotten a lot of attention the last two days. It’s the Britney Spears of planets - in the news with or without much new to say. We read of it about two weeks ago. And before that, about a year ago. (OK, starlets and other young, pretty, and unpredictable entertainment stars get more ink than this real star). All this due to the gases - CO2 and H2O - in its atmosphere as revealed in spectra that the NASA space telescopes Hubble and Spitzer have gathered. The science here is wonderful - I just don’t understand the news flow."
(Dec. 11, 2008, Knight Science Journalism Tracker)

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