mathoda.com

Check out this article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/uoca-epm090506.php.

Here’s a snippet from it :

More than one-third of the giant planet systems recently detected outside Earth’s solar system may harbor Earth-like planets, many covered in deep oceans with potential for life, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and Pennsylvania State University.

Of course such studies are based on computer models, which are (ironically) notoriously subject to human error. But if it were true, it certainly makes it more likely that there is life similar to Earth life elsewhere.

Think you know what the solar system looks like?

Think again: http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, gas and plasma. They often come in a spiral shape or an amorphous blob. However, about 300 light years away from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, there is an 80 light year long nebula, which appears to be in the shape of a double helix. I believe this is the first double helix nebula to be discovered. There may be many more, it’s just that the instruments used to detect nebula weren’t sophisticated enough yet to detect their double helix structure. Most of our genetic information is encoded in strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which also takes the shape of a double helix.

Isn’t it nice to see archetypal shapes repeat? Maybe it’ll spawn a religion or two. I wonder if the similar structure is because electromagnetic force on a cellular level has a similar effect (diminishing by the square of distance) to gravitational force on a large scale.  Of course DNA in your body doesn’t have a spinning centerpiece.

For more, see http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060315/sc_space/cosmicdnadoublehelixspottedinspace