PLANETS
It has taken 13 years to pin down the masses of the first extrasolar planets ever detected. The three, in orbit around a pulsar, are the only Earth-sized planets seen so far. By tracking how their movements affect the radio pulses emitted by the pulsar, Maciej Konacki at Caltech and Alexander Wolszcan at Penn State University found two of the planets have masses equivalent to 4.3 and 3.9 Earths. The third was too small to detect.
SUPERNOVAE
The Nearby Supernova Factory collaboration predicts it will find 100 nearby supernovae by the end of the year. It has already found…
