I still remember how I felt in 1957, when the Soviets launches Sputnik. That made two things I knew about the Russians. They were evil, and they had just done something we (the good guys) couldn’t do. I felt scared. Life was simple then for a nine year old boy. I remember feeling comforted when Jack Kennedy promised we would beat the Russians to the moon. Today I am 62 and I feel scared again because our nation, once again is threatened. But if science gave us the answer to what we could do about the Soviets, perhaps science can give us the answer to what we can do about the Teabaggers.

Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way. At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope. Kepler science chief William Borucki says scientists took the number of planets they found in the first year of searching a small part of the night sky and then made an estimate on how likely stars are to have planets… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Salon>