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Interesting Planet Apparently Heating Its Star
T. Panimaesh writes "A Canadian graduate student has discovered a planet which is heating the star it rotates around. 'Evgenya Shkolnik detected a spot on HD179949 that was 700 degrees warmer than the surrounding areas and circled the star at the same pace as the planet's orbit, once every three days. First seen in 2001, it also appeared in two sets of observations in 2002. It is probably not an intrinsic feature of the star, which takes nine days to rotate. Instead, the planet appears to possess a magnetic field that interacts with the star's magnetic field.' The 'roaster' planet being studied is almost as big as Jupiter, a gas giant planet in our solar system, and has 270 times the mass of Earth. It moves at 150 Kilometres per second, completing it's orbit in just 3.5 days."
Here, doggy, doggy!
There was a NYT article yesterday about how the US National Park Service is "re-evaluating" plaques that it placed in the Grand Canyon expressing the theory that the canyon was created during the Biblical Flood and is only a few thousand years old. Apparently the Bush Administration wants the plaques to be kept in the park, and other (read "sane") people are shocked and awed by the ignorance involved. If a number of US citizens REALLY believe that the Grand Canyon was formed when Noah was on an ark, then there is no logical limit to their ignorance. It may be hard to understand if you don't live here, but the scientific method is no longer taught in public schools. The idea of subjecting a hypothesis to tests conflicts with the value of "faith-based education" which gives us more in common with Iran than anywhere else. Oh well, I guess we'll always need gas station attendents. They can believe that the Grand Canyon came from the tears of Quarnog the World Unicorn if it makes them happy.