Crash Course News: Earth-Like Planet Discovered, New Time Zone Ideas, and More

Earth-Like Planet Found, but it's Hotter than Heck

I like the unit "1 mass" a lot.

Astronomers have discovered a planet where a certain red guy with horns could make himself right at home.
It's a planet much like our own Earth, about the same size, with the same mixture of rock and iron, and it orbits a star like our sun, except that Kepler 78b is an infernal ball of fire. Located less than a million miles from its host star, that's 1% of the distance between Earth and our sun, its temperature ranges between 3,500 and 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's "well above the temperature where rock melts," an astronomer tells the New York Times. "This is probably one of the most hellish planets that have been discovered yet."

At 400 light-years from Earth, the exoplanet was first spotted by the Kepler spacecraft but astronomers on Earth took a closer look at its light frequency to discover its orbit and mass. The findings, published in two studies in Nature, show a planet that tightly orbits its sun—which from the surface would look 80 times larger than our sun—in just eight and a half hours. Adds an expert: "This planet is an enigma. It couldn't have formed in place because you can't form a planet inside a star."
But while astronomers are baffled as to how the planet got there, they're fairly certain it shows friendlier Earthlike planets are still out there.

New Idea for Time Zones in the US

On Sunday, Americans will turn their clocks back, an annoying, confusing, and arguably harmful annual ritual. We should stop all this clock-switching, Allison Schrager at Quartz argues, and she's got an ambitious plan for how: People on Eastern time should turn back their clocks as normal, while people on Central and Rocky Mountain Time do nothing. Then people on Pacific Time should turn their clocks forward an hour. Presto: The continental US would have two time zones, one hour apart.

"It sounds radical, but it really isn't," she assures us. The current time zones were created because railroad travel necessitated more cross-continental coordination. Today, our economy is even faster and more interconnected. "Why stick with a system designed for commerce in 1883?" Anyone who's ever done business with the opposite coast "can imagine the uncountable benefits" of a two-zone, minimal-jet-lag nation. Besides, studies show Americans plan their lives around the TV schedule more than the sun, suggesting that "in effect, Americans already live on two time zones." 
Read her argument in fullhere.

Twenty-Year-Old Woman Dies Looking Like a Two Year Old

She was 20 years old, but Brooke Greenberg had a rare and puzzling ailment that essentially froze her in time as a toddler. Brooke, diagnosed with something called Syndrome X, died last week in suburban Baltimore, reports Time. She had the physical and mental development of a 2-year-old. "In some people, something happens to them, and the development process is retarded," says a medical researcher who studied Brooke's case in an incredibly specific statement. "The rate of change in the body slows and is negligible." About a dozen kids worldwide are thought to have the condition.

Brooke's story had drawn national attention over the years and a previous story in Discovery News reported that scientists were studying her genes to see whether they might shed light on the aging process.
It's not clear what caused the syndrome, but Brooke had a series of life-threatening health scares in her first few years, including a stroke. She recovered, but soon stopped developing. Her mother once described her daughter's condition this way: "Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? That's Brooke. Every day is the same thing with her. She wears the same clothes she's been wearing for years. She hasn't changed in appearance or size."