Preston Singing at Christmas show. Really! His friend Chloe is next to him. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWApyAvw1sg
Nativity in yard
I’ve been meaning to put up a Nativity scene in our yard for years, but this year I remembered to get one early enough. Each year I think I’ll try to add more members; started with just the Holy Family and a couple of lambs. One nice effect is the shadow of the Nativity stable frames one of the windows our house. Neat.
The snowcouple snowglobe had to go up as well; the kids like it. I tried leaving it out, but Olivia remembered it from last year…:)
Protected: Preston and Oliva Portraits 2011
Christmas Portrait 2011
Yearly (attempt) at a Christmas portrait of the kids (see last year…). This year the youngest two were smiling a lot more than Big Brother Dylan (most of those now toast). Note however, that when Preston and Olivia asked if they could hold their “friends” (Mr. Duck and Skippit Dog), Dylan also had to run upstairs to get his Elephant. :)
We haven’t decided on the official one yet. Might be a collage. :) Click picture for slideshow…
Kepler-22b: First Habitable-Zone planet found
Scientists at NASA announced today that they have discovered the first (probably rocky) “superEarth” planet orbiting in the “habitable zone” of a Sun-like star. The “habitable zone” is an orbit where liquid water is possible on the surface of the planet.
This newly discovered planet is a “superEarth” because it is only ~2.4 times the size of the earth, and thus not a gas-giant. Gas-giant planets have previously been discovered in such habitable zone orbits of stars, but this is the first earth-type (i.e. rocky) planet. Gas giants in general are not considered capable of supporting life (as we know it).
On the other hand, Earth-like rocky planets in habitable zones are capable of supporting life. Kepler-22b is estimated to have an average surface temp of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Nice!
Discoveries like these really do hint that life may very well be possible in lots of other systems in the universe. In order to detect such planets, their orbits must be “on-edge” in relation to us. Specialized telescopes like the Kepler can detect the (slight) dimming of the light from the star as the planet travels in front of the star (between us and the star). If the orbit of the planet was off-edge (in relation to us), it wouldn’t block the light from the star anytime during it’s orbit, so wouldn’t be detected. So, it is quite likely that there are many more such planets we can’t detect via this method. Wow!