It's that time of year again!

Early January is the AAS (American Astronomical Meeting, "double-A-S") meeting, and as always there's a slew of astro articles / press releases that trickle out from it through the media. The first one I've seen is how Mars missions killed life. Keep in mind that these are press releases and/or submitted presentations. There has been no peer review of the material, even though it's been worked on very hard by the astronomer presenting it and his/her team. It could still be proven wrong. The actual peer review papers associated with these things are usually quite tame by comparison.

And while we're at it, the word of the year is "pluto" - but as a verb! I might've preferred "climate canary" myself - even though Pluto's demotion is exciting, it holds much less meaning for the human race than global warming and those species that it is pushing past the edge of extinction.