The grandeur of the cosmos has intrigued and challenged us since time immemorial and, on a clear night, looms above us stirring wonder in little boys and girls and discomfort in men who have lived a little.

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At the same time, in abrupt digressions, the cosmos churned, oceans teemed, nebulae exploded.

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Physicist (and revolutionary) Max Tegmark likes to say that his grandmother grew up in a different universe, because since the time when she was a child, humans have discovered that the cosmos extends much farther, and obeys vastly different rules, than previously believed.

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Virgin Galactic's set a tentative 2015 date for that, giving you, the every(wo)man, plenty of time to save up or mortgage your life for the opportunity to tour the cosmos.

ENGADGET

Rather, they're created inside stellar cores, implying that gas giants had a hard time forming until multiple generations of stars had been born, died and spread their innards throughout the cosmos in massive supernova explosions.

MSN: Alien Earths may be plentiful in our Milky Way galaxy

Started in late 1998, the space-alien hunt has recruited the owners of 2.5 million PCs, tapping their machines' idle processing time to search small chunks of radio telescope data for patterns that might signal intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.

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