As if it were news, one thing the great flap over astrobiology and yesterday afternoon's NASA news conference tells us is that anything smacking of extraterrestrial life brings over the top commentary long before the findings are officially discussed, as should be clear from some of the Internet blogging about the GFAJ-1 bacterium found in Mono Lake. And what a shame. Despite the astrobiology teaser, GFAJ-1 does not in itself tell us anything about alien life and does not necessarily represent a 'shadow biosphere,' a second startup of life on Earth that indicates life launches in any available niche. But the find is remarkable in its own right. Let's leave the astrobiology aside for the moment and simply focus on the fact that life is fantastically adaptable in terms of biochemistry, and can pull off surprises at every turn. That's always a result worth trumpeting, even if it leaves the wilder press speculations in the dust. After all, it's long been assumed that the six elements...

I never have trouble finding topics to discuss on Centauri Dreams, but this morning's take was unusually bountiful. For the past several days I've had two embargoed stories to choose from, both going public this PM. Do I write about tripling the number of stars in the universe, or do I choose the first analysis of a 'super-Earth' atmosphere? It's a tough choice, but I'm going with the stars, given that the story relates to what I consider the most fascinating venue for astrobiology, planets around red dwarfs. We'll do the super-Earth atmosphere -- fascinating in its own right -- tomorrow. The story comes out of Yale University, whose Pieter van Dokkum led the research using telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. We've long known that because of their faintness and small size, getting a handle on the red dwarf population was problematic. Usually, I've seen a figure around 75 percent cited for the Milky Way, meaning most stars in our galaxy are red dwarfs (the Sun, a G-class...