Given the large amount of science news published online and in
print each day, it's always nice to find follow-ups on the
relatively obscure topics posted here. And so I smiled earlier
today when I saw on ScienceDaily an article about the latest
research on CoRoT-7b, the fast-orbiting exoplanet some 500 light
years away that was mentioned in my last post. Readers may
recall that astronomers recently determined that CoRoT-7b is
just slightly less than twice the diameter of Earth, about five
times Earth's mass, and similar in structure. Structure--meaning
rocky--is the key, because other similarities with Earth today
are practically non-existent. Apart from orbiting its star so
rapidly (once every 3 days, 17 hours), CoRoT-7b is only about
1.6 million miles away from it -- 23 times less than the
distance from our Sun to Mercury. And if this isn't distinctive
enough, one side of the planet always faces its star while the
other is in shadow, which means the exposed surface is extremely
hot. Just how hot is it? The