An Economy Devastated By Birthdays

I love the news of new planets being discovered all the time. Maybe it's time for me to get a real estate license, with all the new territory about to be opened up.

Most of the ones being discovered are Jupiter sized and probably lifeless. But they're expecting to find some Earth-sized ones out there as well.

There actually is one that's about the same size, but it's too close to its sun (meaning it's extremely, hellishly hot). Up there the number one industry is sunscreen -- and the average SPF is 40,000. You layer it on six inches thick before you take the dog out.

One interesting detail is it rotates its sun all the time -- whoosh, there it went again! -- meaning lots more years are passing.

Here's a laugh line from a very good article about the new planets:

The expolanet's "year" is thus shorter than our day - meaning that even if there is an asbestos-based civilization their economy is utterly devastated by birthdays.

That's the way to say it! Imagine having a birthday every few hours. You're just born and you're older than Methuselah (well-known old guy, look it up).

Big News For Real Estate

Wow, this is an incredible number. It's up there in government spending territory, and that's as high as you can get.

A scientist from the Carnegie Institution of Science, Dr. Alan Boss, says there could be 100 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy!

Even though our telescopes have only detected 300 planets besides the ones we already knew about, Dr. Boss estimates that each Sun-like star has an Earth-like planet. I suppose that's on the average, but who knows.

A reasonable conclusion to draw from that would be that there must be life of some sort on at least one of those planets, even if it's a single mosquito.

The good news for us is ... if we can get up there, that's an awful lot of land. Free land for everybody!