Daily News Channel
Twitter is an online service you can use to send out short notes to the world via the Web, IM and text-messaging. People use it to issue updates about what they’re doing, eating, seeing, feeling, etc., to their family, friends and whoever else might be following them. When Twitter launched in 2006, it was like a relic from the Jurassic period of the dotcom start-ups, when you could get funding for anything.
As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there’s new buzz that "Star Trek’s" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched. Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space. There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book “The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets.” He made the prediction based on the number of “super-Earths” — planets several times the mass of the Earth, but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter — discovered so far circling stars outside the solar system.
Before there was an extensive fossil record, DNA sequencing or even a basic understanding of genetics, there was Charles Darwin.