To make this measurement astronomers used the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The new data revealed that CoRoT-7b has a mass about five times that of Earth, making it one of the lightest exoplanets yet found.

With the planet's mass and radius, the researchers calculated its density (about 4.7 grams per cubic centimeter), which placed it in firm rocky territory.

"This is the first proof of the detection of a rocky planet," planet-formation theorist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington told SPACE.com.

"It shows that rocky planets really are commonplace," said Boss, who was not involved in the new research. "The estimates are that about 30 percent of sun-like stars have these hot and warm super-Earths, and now that we know the density of one of them, it is easy to make the claim that most of the rest of them are probably rocky too. The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe."

Darwin argued that all organisms are descended from one or a few organisms and that natural selection drives evolutionary change. The fossil record demonstrates that the first mammals had teeth with enamel. Mammals without enamel therefore must have descended from mammals with enamel-covered teeth.

"We could therefore predict that nonfunctional vestiges of the genes that code for enamel should be found in mammals that lack enamel," Springer said. "When we made our predictions, however, we did not have sequences for the enamelin gene in toothless and enamelless mammals. Since then my lab worked on obtaining these sequences so we could test our prediction."

By telling an interesting story, and making Darwin human, Creation will I think encourage some viewers to find out more about the historical Darwin and his ideas. From my standpoint as director of NCSE, that's useful, indeed. The more people know about evolution and its most famous proponent, the less they will fear it. I'd like to see this movie get distributed in the US. Unfortunately, although Canadians and British will see it, there is not yet a US distributor. We can only speculate why, but the well-known American nervousness about evolution is probably and unfortunately part of the mix.

This movie deserves to be seen in movies, not relegated merely to Netflix on DVD. I hope the reviews following the North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10 are good, and also the reviews following the British premiere October 25. If a bomb like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed can get a distributor, a well-made movie with an excellent script, actors, direction, and cinematography like Creation surely should.

Dr. Herman is using resident nematode populations sampled from the Konza Tallgrass Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan, Kansas to link the responses of organisms to environmental change at the genetic level. He hypothesizes that different species may have varying genetic capacities to respond to changes in the environment; either by differences in the genes they possess or in how those genes are regulated. Learn more at his website.

Nematodes have successfully adapted to nearly every ecological niche from marine to freshwater, from the polar regions to the tropics, as well as from the highest to the lowest of elevations. They are ubiquitous in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments, where they often outnumber other animals in both individual and species counts, and are found in locations as diverse as Antarctica and oceanic trenches. They represent, for example, 90% of all life on the seafloor of the Earth. (cited from WIKIPEDIA.ORG)