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POPSWindow of Possibility TAKE YOURSELF OUT TO A FIELD some evening after everyone else is asleep. Listen to the migrant birds whisking past in the dark; listen to the creaking and settling of the world. Think about the teeming, microscopic worlds beneath your shoes—the continents of soil, the galaxies of bacteria. Then lift your face up. The night sky is the coolest Advent calendar imaginable: it is composed of an infinite number of doors. Open one and find ten thousand galaxies hiding behind it, streaming away at hundreds of miles per second. Open another, and another. You gaze up into history; you stare into the limits of your own understanding. The past flies toward you at the speed of light. Why are you here? Why are the stars there? Is it even remotely possible that our one, tiny, eggshell world is the only one encrusted with life?
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POPSWatch for Weird Life From Beyond "It is critical to know what to look for in the search for life in the solar system," Baross said. "The search so far has focused on Earth-like life because that's all we know, but life that may have originated elsewhere could be unrecognizable compared with life here."
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POPSExploring the origins of Solar System In an eight-year mission, Dawn is scheduled to enter orbit around Vesta in October 2011, proceed to Ceres in May 2012 and then begin orbiting Ceres in February 2015 -- travelling a total distance of 5.1 billion kilometers.
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