watch it: “The First Five Worlds of Kepler”

MaryAnn - have you seen Hubble 3D? Stunning graphics, and the sound in an IMAX theater really pounds on your chest when they show the shuttle launch from close up.

Even better news: The video is about the first five larger-than-Jupiter worlds, but last month NASA announced that Kepler has detected, for the first time, a possible Earth-size planet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/science/space/27planet.html

http://www.xkcd.com/786/

Truly, we live in astonishing times.

Is it me, or does science news get virtually no attention these days in major news outlets? I remember when I was a young boy and the pictures were coming back from Voyager of the outer planets of the solar system, and the Space Shuttle launches were all covered on live television. It seemed to me that there was quite a bit more mainstream coverage of these kinds of things, but it's quite possible that my memory is off, because my dad is an engineer and I was obsessed with space as a kid, so our house paid a lot of attention to science news.

Am I remembering right? Are we seeing less and less coverage of science in the media? It's a damned shame if we are, because this stuff is so much more important for humanity than who's building a community center where, or where Lindsay Lohan is at any given instant.

Brian - I think you're right, far less science in the media and almost nothing re: space exploration, although Tiger Wood's divorce gets a scrolling 'breaking news' bar on Sky News (which my housemate watches).

Yup. It's listed in my 2010 ranking.

Ah, okay. I looked through All Reviews and didn't see it listed.