This artist's impression shows Earth alongside the super-Earth known as 55 Cancri C, which is thought to be a little more than twice as wide as our planet and 7.8 times as massive.

Two years ago, Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov stunned the world when he claimed there might well be 100 million Earth-size planets in the Milky Way. To some, the number sounded shockingly high. But the torrents of data that have come in from planet-hunters since then suggest that, if anything, the estimate was almost laughably low.

Just this month, researchers reported that there are probably more planets than stars in our galaxy, which would bring the total count well past the 100 billion mark. What's more, astronomers say the planets toward the lower end of the scale — "super-Earths" that are up to 10 times as massive as our own planet — are likely to be more common than Jupiter-scale planets.

"Small planets are really much more abundant than big planets," Sasselov told me last week.

Planet-hunters have already identified more than two dozen super-Earths beyond our solar system, including a batch of 16 announced on a single day last September. A couple of weeks ago, scientists spread the news about three planets smaller than Earth, and last week the science team for NASA's Kepler space telescope mission added still more super-Earths to the list.

That kind of planetary plenitude has even had an impact on the funny pages: "I don't know why this isn't the only thing people are talking about!" one character told another last week in the Arlo & Janis comic strip.

Basic Books

"The Life of Super-Earths" focuses on how the hunt for alien worlds and artificial cells will revolutionlize life on our planet.

It's the main thing that Sasselov is talking about, for more than one reason. He's a co-investigator for the $600 million Kepler mission, the director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, and the author of a new book titled "The Life of Super-Earths." In the book, he makes the case that super-Earths could be as hospitable to life as our own planet, and perhaps even more so. Super-Earths that lie in the habitable zones around their parent stars — that is, the zones where water can exist in liquid form — would be prime candidates in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

"Life is not rare, it seems," the Bulgarian-born astronomer says.

Sasselov talked about the Kepler mission, the plenitude of planets and its implications for the search for alien life during our wide-ranging interview. Here's an edited transcript of last week's Q&A:

Cosmic Log: Do you look back at your estimate from two years ago and just shake your head at the idea that you were guessing so low? Were people making a fuss over something that now seems obvious?

Dimitar Sasselov:I feel that I was on the right track. Basically, yes, we have on one hand an even larger number of planetary candidates than I anticipated two years ago. The numbers went up. However, there is also a result which cancels those large numbers. There is a fly in the ointment. The caveat is that as it happens, most of our planetary candidates and confirmed planets are in relatively short orbits.

That means two things. First of all, they don’t directly tell you what the exact prediction about planets in the habitable zone should be.

Second, a lot of our small-planet candidates are in compact, multi-planet systems. Planets are closely packed next to each other, and these planets usually are within the orbit of Mercury around a star which is not that different from the sun. So there must be something extraordinary about the way they formed. It's quite possible that the formation and evolution required to create such architectures in planetary orbits is different in some fundamental way from planetary formation and early evolution in our solar system.

Jon Chase / Harvard

Dimitar Sasselov is a professor of astronomy at Harvard University.

So it is still a question mark as to what these planets are telling us, and what they are made of.

For the Kepler-11 system, we have the mean density of the planets. Those little planets are very low-density planets. They’re nothing like a bigger version of Earth. They have envelopes of hydrogen, or probably hydrogen and helium. They're like mini-versions of Neptune and Uranus. There are no planets like that in our solar system, so we don't know much about them.

It’s a cautionary tale there. Yes, there may be plenty of planets that are just two to three times more massive than our own Earth. But their mean density may be very low, because they formed farther out and migrated inward, and ended up in the moderate temperature regions of their planetary systems.

What would happen if we have a very large number, maybe billions, of super-Earth-size planets in the habitable zones — but half of them, or even nine out of 10 of them, are these mini-Neptunes? Would I consider them Earthlike? Definitely not, because they don't have the same geochemistry.

So while on one hand, the numbers have gone beyond my expectations, the diversity has gone beyond my expectations, too. And that means we might have a lot of planets with something different from an Earthlike geochemistry. Looking at the physics and the geochemistry is the only way we can go to the next step — and that is the search for signatures of life.

Q: What is the next step? How do you go from Kepler and planet detection to getting at the more fundamental questions?

A: To me, the next big step is to go from discovery and detection of planets like our Earth, to understanding their geochemistry. We have to do that to be effective in searching for biosignatures. The way we would do the first step — that is, understanding geochemistry — is by finding enough planets that are close to us. Kepler's candidates are a little bit too far for a good follow-up on characterization. So in terms of a practical approach, we should be gearing up for surveys of the nearby population of stars, and discovering those nearby planets.

There, the news from Kepler is good, because the statistics are high. If the statistics were low, then it would take more of an effort. Once we make that survey, and we can practically accomplish that in the next 10 years, we can jump onto those planetary candidates, and do atmospheric analysis, and try to understand the diversity of their atmospheres. This is a necessary step to talk about the signatures of life. Otherwise, we'd be looking blindly.

Q: Some people might say, well, let's just look for oxygen or methane, or something we associate with life on Earth. 

A: That wouldn't be prudent at all. If we just look at biosignatures as we understand them on our own Earth today, they correspond to a particular moment in time in which the microbial communities on this planet have managed to change the atmosphere in a particular way. For about half of the history of life on Earth, the atmosphere wasn't anything like what it is today. It would be foolish to just assume that all life shares the same biochemistry and the same history.

Theoretically speaking, we should not assume that all planets that otherwise resemble Earth have the same geochemical cycle. There are alternatives.

Q: What sort of mission would work for this next step?

A: There are two approaches that need to be taken. The first one, when it comes to discovery, is a combination of space- and ground-based surveys. The space surveys would use smaller arrays of telescopes in orbit, and would scan the entire sky by observing the brightest stars, nearest to us, in a selective manner. But as opposed to concentrating in one direction, which was necessary due to the design of Kepler, we can select the nearest stars over the entire sky.

This can also be done from the ground for a particular subset of stars, which are the M stars. These stars are so much smaller than a sunlike star that the transits for Earth-size planets are much more prominent. You can see them using ground-based telescopes. You don't need to go to space. The trick is to do the whole sky and catch all those M dwarfs, and catch the transits.

Q: One of themes in your book is that we shouldn't limit the planet search to Earth-size planets, because the planets that are bigger than Earth — the super-Earths — might be more conducive to life than even our own planet. How can that be?

A: What we're finding out about super-Earths places them front and center as the most suitable places for life to emerge. These are planets that are only slightly bigger than Earth. In terms of size, we're talking about an average of 50 percent larger. In terms of mass, we're talking about two, three, five times as massive — maybe 10 in some cases, but overall, made of the same stuff.

Then you just compare the whole range of planets, from Mars to Earth to the largest super-Earths. In all different levels of comparison, the super-Earths end up being equal or slightly better when compared with Earth.

For example, one of the problems a planet could encounter is the ability to keep water liquid on the surface, and to have the good chemical exchange between the interior and the surface. That’s very difficult to do if you don’t have an atmosphere. An atmosphere in the habitable zone is difficult to keep, because it evaporates over the course of billions of years. If you have a small planet, made of rock but still low mass, like Mars is, eventually you lose more of your atmosphere than if you have a bigger planet. There is no negative factor, it is just more of a good thing.

Here's another example. A lot of people would say we have it good here on Earth because the moon keeps the axis of Earth's rotation more stable than it otherwise would be. It's the kind of momentum effect you get when you're on a bicycle — you can let the handlebars go and you still go straight. In a similar way, the existence of the moon out there cancels out the additional push and pull from the other planets, which could from time to time turn the axis of Earth dramatically and change the climate. This is what we think happened a few times on Mars. The more massive a planet is, the less vulnerable it would be to these effects.

Q: Is it always "the bigger, the better," until you get into a Neptune-class ice giant?

A: It's always the bigger the better. There's either no difference, or it's better. I didn’t find anything which was actually detrimental about having a big planet. Larger g-force, having more gravity on the surface, has a small effect when it comes to building biological structures, such as the membranes of cells. The list goes on and on. Everything gets better when you're slightly bigger.

Q: How long do you expect this book to stand up? I suppose that's an occupational hazard when you're writing about planet-hunting.

A: I would say it should stand up until we discover life out there on another planet, or in the lab when we manage to put it together as an artificial minimal cell. Then, of course, we'll open a whole new chapter in the history of science — and it will be so exciting that I wouldn't care. If a new book needs to be written, I will be happy to do so.

More about the planet search:

• NASA mission piles on the planets
• 160 billion planets in the Milky Way?!
• Three newfound worlds are smaller than Earth
• Flash interactive: How other worlds are found
• SETI researchers check signals in exoplanet study
• Millions of Earths? Talk causes a stir
• Cosmic Log archive on planets

Dimitar Sasselov will talk about the planet search during a book tour that takes him to Boston on Thursday and on Feb. 17, to New York on Feb. 6, San Francisco on Feb. 8 and Seattle on Feb. 10.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Scott Garner

Artist Scott Garner's Still Life project uses technology similar to that found in today's smartphones to bring a traditional painting to life.

Life isn't still. Paintings don't have to be either. And now, thanks to Seattle-based artist Scott Garner, still life art is catching up with the times.

He's created an interactive gallery piece called Still Life that comes to life when tilted: the vase tips over, fruit rolls off plates and across the table, the fruit stand tumbles.

"It is about the role of technology in our lives and finding ways to switch our perspective on it a little bit," Garner told me Tuesday.

The installation consists of a traditional still life scene — a set table with fruit, plates, and an ornamental vase — presented on a flat screen TV that Garner wrapped in a traditional wooden frame.

"In any digital project, I try to find some source for more traditional craft," he noted.

This framed TV is hung on a rotating mount so that it swivels from side to side. A motion sensor is hooked to the back of the TV. As the screen moves, the tilt data is fed into a computer.

The computer, in turn, runs a video game engine from Unity 3D that Garner programmed so that it moves all the objects in the digital scene as they would in real life.

He created Still Life while an intern at superfad, a brand driven design and production company. Garner is now packing his bags to travel around before starting graduate school in digital art next year.

Where he's going is undecided, but wherever he ends up, he'll likely cast technology in new ways.

"We have amazing technology like smartphones with touch screens and accelerometers and voice recognition and all of these things, but basically you are still using it like a bunch of analog buttons," he said.

"One of the things I'm really interested in is finding ways around that, in addition to just general creative exploration."

— Via Discovery News

More on high-tech art:

• Art museums pin hopes on high tech
• Molecular movies go Hollywood
• The physics behind the movie magic
• Bio-artists bridge gap between arts, sciences

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

An artist's conception shows astronauts walking up to an early lunar habitat. Five years ago, NASA was considering the deployment of such a habitat in the 2020s.

GOP hopeful Mitt Romney says that he’d fire anyone who suggested spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build a moon colony — but what about tens of billions of dollars? A former NASA adviser says he and others at the space agency drew up an approach that could put astronauts on the moon for $40 billion, as a “Plan B” for future exploration.

"We figured out at NASA how to do it in about 10 years for $40 billion," said Charles Miller, who recently left his position as NASA Headquarters' senior adviser for commercial space and is now president of NextGen Space. "The question is, would Mitt Romney fire me for a proposal to return to the moon for $40 billion?"

For a few years, NASA was following a plan to return to the moon by 2020 for $104 billion, through the Constellation program set up under President George W. Bush. But Constellation was canceled by President Barack Obama, and the space agency currently is gearing up for an effort to put astronauts on a near-Earth asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Last week, Romney's chief rival for the GOP nomination, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pledged to put an all-American settlement on the moon by 2020 if he was elected president. But Gingrich's initiative runs into the same problem that killed Constellation: federal budgets that are too tight to match lunar ambitions. Obama had to scale back what was once envisioned as an "inspiring" space program due to the economic downturn, as described by The New Yorker in an insider report last week.

The moon-shot cancellation was in line with an independent panel's conclusion that the plan was "not viable," considering the realities of the federal budget. But that panel was working under the assumption that a whole new deep-space infrastructure would have to be developed, including a heavy-lift vehicle then known as the Ares 5. That assumption was carried over into the post-Constellation plan, in the form of a heavy-lift Space Launch System that would cost $35 billion over the next decade or so. Billions more would have to be spent preparing for trips beyond Earth orbit — to an asteroid, to the moon, to Mars or other destinations.

Plan B for outer space
Miller and his colleagues on a NASA task force drew up an alternative plan, which they said would provide a less expensive and faster path to deep-space exploration. Rather than building an entirely new type of heavy-lift rocket, NASA would use a series of tried-and-true rockets — perhaps including the U.S. commercial Atlas, Delta and Falcon rockets as well as Europe's Ariane, Japan's H2 and Russia's Soyuz and Zenit rockets — to deliver propellant to an orbiting fuel depot.

After a series of low-cost fuel delivery flights, the high-value components for trips to the moon would be sent up and assembled in orbit. Once the lunar transfer vehicle was ready to go, the astronauts would climb aboard, head out of orbit for the moon, conduct their mission and return.

NASA would still have to develop a lunar lander, as well as the Orion deep-space capsule it's currently working on, and perhaps a habitat module as well. But it wouldn't have to build the heavy-lifter.

A preliminary version of the plan was leaked to the SpaceRef website last October, amid calls from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., for the report's release. At the time, the report suggested that missions to the moon could begin in 2024, but Miller told me that he challenged his team to optimize their cost and timeframe estimates. "They went from landing on the moon in 2024 to 2021," he said, at an average cost of $4 billion per year for 10 years. Such funding levels would be in line with NASA's current budget, with adjustments for inflation in the latter five years, he said.

Miller said the plan could conceivably be revised to reduce the time frame even further, from 10 to eight years. "It's ready when our national leadership decides it wants something more affordable," he told me. "I consider it to be Plan B."

NASA has not released the current version of the plan, but the agency's top executives have not been as bullish as Miller is about Plan B. During a congressional hearing last summer, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the alternatives to building a heavy-lift rocket were "not as economical, nor as reliable."

Miller contends that the plan didn't get a proper "apples-to-apples" comparison from NASA's top executives or from the Human Exploration Framework Team, which drew up NASA's Plan A. 

Reality check
It may well be technically possible to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 — but even if NASA successfully implemented the Plan B outlined by Miller, there wouldn't be a full-fledged moon colony by that time. Then there's the bigger question of whether it's worth spending tens of billions of dollars to put astronauts back on the moon, even if the experts agree it's possible to do it within a $40 billion budget.

"That's what you hire presidents to decide," Miller said.

Obama decided years ago that it would be better to go to a new destination in deep space, such as a near-Earth asteroid or the moons of Mars, rather than returning to the moon. "We've been there before," Obama said when he announced his space goals in 2009.

It's possible that Gingrich's pledge to build a moon base by 2020 has hurt him in the polls — even in Florida, where the aerospace industry has suffered a heavy blow due to last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet. On the eve of Florida's primary, surveys suggest that Gingrich is lagging by double digits behind Romney, who has been far less specific about his space aspirations. In effect, Romney wants to conduct another round of soul-searching about NASA's vision, retracing the process that Obama and his aides went through three years ago.

For now, NASA's big-ticket priorities in human spaceflight are to continue developing the Space Launch System and the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle, while commercializing operations to send supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station. The Space Launch System in particular has strong support in Congress — so much so that critics have dubbed it the "Senate Launch System." Any effort to change course at this point would probably run into significant opposition — unless the SLS project became totally unworkable and/or unaffordable.

In that case, Plan B ... or Plan C, or D ... might well get another look, regardless of who's in the White House.

Update for 7:50 p.m. ET: Over the past week, there's been a lot of debate over Gingrich's moon-base pledge, and over the justification for spending anything at all on space exploration. I've tried to step around the questions surrounding the rationales for spaceflight in this item — but Wayne Hale, who used to head up NASA's space shuttle program, provides a provocative perspective today in a posting to his blog, titled "What Would Rick and Gus and Dick Want?" The title is a reference to the anniversaries of the Columbia tragedy (helmed by Rick Husband), the Apollo 1 fire (with Gus Grissom as commander) and the Challenger explosion (commanded by Dick Scobee). Here's some of what Hale says:

"It is impossible to build a business plan on exploration of the unknown; some decisions aren’t amenable to the quarterly profit and loss statement. Seward’s folly, Jefferson’s gamble, Teddy’s canal – they were all the butt of jokes and sarcasm.  Yet, America, the land of opportunity, was not built by skeptics.  America was built by people who were willing to risk everything on a dimly perceived future.  Facing the unknown frontier changed Americans and made us what we are.  We would be a lesser people if our great-grandparents had not chosen those challenges.  The cost was high and many did not live to see the results of their gamble.  But as a nation we continued on and became great.

"Now where is our frontier?  Making corporate profits on Wall Street by moving money around?  Now what will inspire our children?  Playing video games that are made in overseas sweatshops? 

"You know better than that. Without the challenge of a frontier, stagnation, mediocrity and decline is our guaranteed future."

So what would Rick and Gus and Dick want? Read the full posting for Hale's conjecture. 

More moon-base blasts from the past:

• Russia calls for international moon base
• Will China take over the moon?
• Billionaire shoots for the moon
• Wanted: Home-builders for the moon

I discussed moon-base politics and much, much more with Dr. David Livingston on "The Space Show" today. If you missed the program, check the "Space Show" home page for the archived audio. Science and politics will also be on the agenda for my "Virtually Speaking Science" chat with Shawn Otto at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday. Otto is one of the organizers of Science Debate 2012 and the author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." I hope you'll join us, either on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

It's very cool that two 17-year-old Canadians sent a flag-toting Lego figurine into the sky on a weather balloon, as part of a weekend project that cost less than $500. It's cooler still that they got back some fantastic video of the toy silhouetted against the backdrop of a curving Earth beneath a black sky. But let's not call it putting a "Lego man in space." Even though the balloon ascended to around 80,000 feet, that's only a quarter of the way to the boundary of outer space.

That distinction doesn't take anything away from the feat that Toronto teens Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad pulled off this month: The high-school students worked during four months' worth of free Saturdays to put together their balloon-borne experimental package, including four cameras, a cell phone with a GPS app, a home-sewn parachute and a Lego "minifig" holding a Canadian flag.

When the wind conditions were right, as determined by a website that calculates balloon trajectories, the teens headed out to a soccer  field in Newmarket and sent their rig up on an $85 weather balloon. The data suggest that the balloon rose to somewhere around 80,000 feet over the course of 65 minutes, then blew apart. The Lego man and the cameras came back down to Earth, buoyed by the parachute and protected within a plastic-foam box during the half-hour descent. Eventually, the cell phone guided the kids to a field about 75 miles away from the launch point.

The cameras recorded two videos and 1,500 photos, documenting the Lego man's amazing trip up through the clouds. "We never knew it would be this good," Ho told the Toronto Star.

But it got even better: After the Star published the teens' story, they were swamped with media attention. Canon, the company that made the cameras used on the Lego man's trip, said it would give Ho and Muhammad top-of-the-line cameras so they could continue their "creativity and inspiration." Lego sent its congratulations. A Toronto couple offered to reimburse the kids for their costs. Reports about the feat filtered out to The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Huffington Post and elsewhere. The YouTube video has been viewed more than 600,000 times, and there's even a Facebook fan page.

Most of the reports refer to the Lego man as being "in space" — which makes for a nice headline but is unfortunately wrong. The issue may not seem like a biggie, but over the past year there have been all sorts of things sent up on balloons to stratospheric heights — including a chair, an iPad (sans parachute), a vibrator and iPhones galore. Heck, a 7-year-old and his dad sent up an iPhone a couple of years ago, and the Toronto teens said they took their inspiration from the MIT students who kicked off the craze with a $150 balloon mission in 2009.

This is all great, but it could give folks the impression that sending things into space is so easy a kid can do it — so why are we spending millions or billions of dollars to put things into orbit?

Lofting payloads on suborbital trips beyond the internationally accepted boundary of outer space — 100 kilometers or 62 miles or more than 328,000 feet in altitude — is devilishly hard. Just ask Virgin Galactic. or XCOR Aerospace, or Blue Origin, or Armadillo Aerospace, or Masten Space Systems, or all the other ventures that are trying to open the suborbital frontier.

Putting payloads in orbit is much, much harder. Just ask SpaceX, which burned through three launches and millions of dollars before achieving its first success.

Ho and Muhammad haven't reached those heights ... yet. But someday, they may well be putting real men and women into space. The teens are off to a good start, and they deserve all the accolades they're receiving this week for their near-space adventure.

More about near space:

• Balloons built for future frontiers
• Twin-balloon airship hits high frontier
• Student experiments soar on NASA balloons
• Students reach high for amazing launch photos

NASA via SpaceWeather.com

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures a picture of sunspot 1402 unleashing an X2-class solar flare on Friday, seen in ultraviolet wavelengths.

The sunspot responsible for setting off a colorful round of northern lights over the past week got off a doozy of a parting shot today, just as it was about to pass around the edge of the sun's disk.

Sunspot 1402 let loose with an X-class flare, the most powerful class of solar outburst, at 1:37 p.m. ET today, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a sequence of ultraviolet images as the blast went out. Fortunately, this one was not directed right at Earth.

SpaceWeather.com says NASA's Goddard Space Weather Laboratory detected a "spectacular" coronal mass ejection blasting away from the sun at 5.6 million mph (2,500 kilometers per second). CMEs send out electrically charged particles that can eventually interact with Earth's magnetic field — but here again, this particular ejection is not heading directly for Earth. There's a chance that it might strike a glancing blow on Monday or so, sparking another bout of auroral displays.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reports that the flare created R3-level radio blackouts at about 1:30 p.m. ET today. That level can result in wide-area loss of high-frequency radio comunication, as well as a temporary degradation of low-frequency GPS signals, but no significant problems came to light immediately. Solar radiation levels are elevated — which may lead to the rerouting of some airline flights. NOAA's guide to space weather scales explains what's what.

Active regions move across the sun's disk from left to right, as seen from earth, so sunspot 1402 is just about to go around to the far side of the sun. There's a chance that the sunspot will come around again as the sun goes through its 27-day rotational cycle, and there are certain to be more (and stronger?) outbursts as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year activity cycle in 2013 or so.

Keep a watch on SpaceWeather.com, NOAA's space weather website and the prediction center's Facebook page for updates during the weekend. And if you're living the high-latitude life, keep a watch for better-than-usual auroras as well.

Update for 4:05 p.m. ET: Sunday's solar storm not only blasted past Earth; it also sent solar particles streaming by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, which is on its way to the Red Planet. Today, the Southwest Research Institute reported that one of the instruments on the spacecraft, the Radiation Assessment Detector, measured the effects of the solar storm.

"We only have a few hours of data downloaded from the RAD so far, but we clearly see the event," RAD principal investigator Don Hassler, science program director in SwRI's Space Studies Department, said in a news release. "It will be very interesting to compare the RAD data, collected from inside the capsule, with the data from other spacecraft."

Once Mars Science Laboratory gets to its destination, it will measure radiation levels on the Martian surface to determine what the effect might have been on past life ... as well as the radiation effects that astronauts can expect to experience during future interplanetary missions.

Update for 10:30 p.m. ET: In a Facebook update, the Space Weather Prediction Center says its "forecasters and scientist believe there will be very little effects of the CME observed here at Earth." The update also provides a killer video of the eruption, as seen in ultraviolet imagery from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. SpaceWeather.com, meanwhile, quotes experts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab as saying the CME "will just miss Earth when its edge passes by our planet on Jan. 30-31."

On tonight's "Nightly News," NBC's Brian Williams talked about a time-lapse video showing the aurora over Norway earlier this week. We included this video in Wednesday's northern lights roundup, but it's nice to hear Brian marvel over it again:

 More auroral glories:

• Planet looks back at northern lights
• Auroras spark awe across the north
• Northern lights go way, way south
• Speed through Lapland's lights
• Beautiful blasts from solar storms
• Get a video view of Canada's aurora
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

NBC Sports Group

Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne gets face time in "Science of NHL Hockey."

Why does a hockey player's stick actually strike the ice behind the puck for a slap shot? How quickly does a player pick up speed during a breakaway? The answers to these and other questions are explored from a scientific point of view in a new series of videos presented by the NHL, the National Science Foundation and NBC Learn.

"Science of NHL Hockey" is the latest video tutorial done up by NBC News' educational arm with the cooperation of sports officials, athletes and scientists. (NBC Universal is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture.) It's made for students and teachers to use in the classrooms, in conjunction with specially prepared lesson plans. But you don't need to be in school to check out the series. The videos, anchored by NBC News' Lester Holt, are available online via NBC Learn, NBCSports.com and Science360.gov. You can also catch the segments this weekend during NBC's coverage of the NHL All-Star Game.

The scientific concepts at work in the fastest game on ice are broken down using a high-speed camera that can capture movement at rates of up to 10,000 frames per second. The super-slo-mo views allow for frame-by-frame analysis of the Newtonian physics and biomechanics behind the action. There's even a segment about the science of the Zamboni machine.

"Wayne Gretzky once said, 'The only way a kid is going to practice is if it's total fun for him ... and it was for me,'" Morris Aizenman, senior scientist for NSF's Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, said in a news release about the project. "'Science of NHL Hockey' is an NSF and NBC Learn project that continues our effort to make science total fun for students. We hope, after watching these videos, that students will also want to learn and practice science."

Among the players participating in the series are St. Louis Blues goalie Jaroslav Halak, Colorado Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson, New York Islanders left wing Matt Moulson, Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne and Dallas Stars left wing Brenden Morrow.

"It was exciting to be part of a unique project that utilizes hockey to help educate students on science and physics," Morrow said. "It was fun to participate in and was very interesting. I learned a lot myself."

More science of sports:

• Ready for some football science?
• Jump into some Olympic-size science
• The math and science of baseball
• Why March Madness isn't that mad
• The science of soccer stats

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The science team for NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission nearly doubled their list of confirmed planets beyond our solar system in one fell swoop today, announcing the discovery of 26 planets spread among 11 star systems. Their sizes range from just a little bit bigger than Earth to super-Jupiter-size, but they're all closer to their parent stars than Venus is to our own sun.

The accelerating pace of discovery is matched by the diversity seen in the worlds discovered so far, one of the Kepler mission's co-investigators, Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, told me today.

"There is more diversity out there than our limited imaginations could come up with, which is good," he said.

The $600 million Kepler mission, launched in 2009, now has a list of 61 confirmed planets, and another 2,326 planetary prospects that have yet to be confirmed. At this rate, Kepler's worlds could soon account for the majority of the exoplanets detected beyond our solar system — a tally that now stands at more than 700.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said in a news release. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

The Kepler space telescope searches for other worlds by staring at more than 150,000 stars in that fist-sized patch of sky, straddling the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Kepler's instruments can detect the faint dips in starlight that occur on a regular basis as a planet passes over the disk of its parent star, as seen from Earth. By analyzing the patterns of those passes, also known as transits, Kepler's scientists can figure out the orbit and the size of a potential planet — but not its mass.

An alternative method has to be used to confirm that Kepler is actually looking at a planet rather than something else, such as mutually eclipsing binary stars. The mission's early discoveries were confirmed by looking at the candidates' stars with ground-based telescopes and checking for the telltale gravitational wobbles that are caused by big, close-in planets.

Transit timing variations
Most of the planets added to the list today were confirmed using a different backup method. The Kepler mission's astronomers analyzed subtle changes in the intervals between the transits, caused when multiple orbiting planets exert gravitational pull on each other. The resulting data on acceleration and deceleration can be used to confirm the planets' existence and calculate their masses.

"By precisely timing when each planet transits its star, Kepler detected the gravitational tug of the planets on each other, clinching the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary systems," said Dan Fabrycky, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the lead author for a paper confirming four of the planetary systems, known as Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32.

Other newly confirmed planetary systems include Kepler-25, 26, 27 and 28, described in a paper with Fermilab's Jason Steffen as lead author; and Kepler-23 and 24, which was the focus of research led by the University of Florida's Eric Ford. In today's release, Ford said the transit timing variation method "dramatically accelerated" the pace of planetary discovery.

Yet another study, led by Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, detected five planets around Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than the sun. Those five planets range in size from 1.5 to five times the width of Earth, and they're all closer to their parent star than Mercury is to our own sun.

"The approach that was used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows that the overall reliability of Kepler's candidate multiple transiting systems is quite high," Lissauer said in today's release. "This is a validation by multiplicity."

Five of the newly confirmed planetary systems (Kepler-25, 27, 30, 31 and 33) contain a pair of worlds that are bound together in a 1:2 resonance. That means the inner planet makes two circuit for every one circuit made by the outer planet. Four other systems (Kepler-23, 24, 28 and 32) have two planets that are linked in a 2:3 resonance, like Pluto and Neptune in our own solar system.

"These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," Steffen said.

Fifteen of the 26 planets announced today are Neptune-size or smaller, and the orbital periods range from six to 143 days. The planets' distances from Earth range from 623 light-years (for Kepler-25) to 4,064 light-years (for Kepler-29).

Great expectations
Sasselov, who has just come out with a book about the Kepler quest titled "The Life of Super-Earths," marveled that so many of the newfound worlds are in multiple-planet systems. He recalled that when the Kepler mission was proposed to NASA, more than a decade ago, "there was one little sentence that said maybe two or three of the systems will have multiple transiting planets."

None of the planets announced today would be conducive to life as we know it, because their orbits are so close to their parent stars. It's likely to be just a matter of time before Kepler achieves its main goal — confirming the existence of Earth-size planets in Earthlike orbits around sunlike stars. Unfortunately, it may be a matter of more time than initially expected.

Funding for the Kepler mission is due to run out in November, but the mission's scientists "don't have enough to statistically complete the core goal of the mission," Sasselov said. It turns out that the data collected by the telescope is "noisier" than expected. That means more observations will be required to confirm the mission's trickiest planetary finds.

The Kepler team has applied for a four-year extension, and is currently waiting for a decision from NASA executives.

More about the planet search:

• 160 billion planets in the Milky Way?!
• Three newfound worlds are smaller than Earth
• Flash interactive: How other worlds are found
• Two new 'Tatooine' planets with two suns
• SETI researchers check signals in exoplanet study
• Cosmic Log archive on planets

The planetary confirmations are described in four research papers:

• "Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: II. Confirmation of Two Multiplanet Systems via a Non-parametric Correlation Analysis'' by E.B. Ford et al., The Astrophysical Journal.
• "Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: III. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by a Fourier-Domain Study of Anti-correlated Transit Timing Variations," by J.H. Steffen et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
• "Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: IV. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by Simple Physical Models," by D.C. Fabrycky et al., The Astrophysical Journal.
• "Almost All of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates are Planets, and Kepler-33 5-planet System," by J. Lissauer et al.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Goran Strand

Göran Strand of Östersund, Sweden, took a panoramic photo of Tuesday night's sights and wrapped it into a 360-degree composition titled "Planet Aurora."

The skies are settling down after this week's big solar storm, leaving behind a gallery of green-glowing pictures as a lasting legacy.

For a time on Tuesday, the solar radiation levels registered as the highest in more than eight years, but the most significant impact came in the form of shifts in airline routes to avoid polar disruptions in communications. Strong solar storms have the potential to disrupt electrical grids and satellite operations, but no big problems were reported on those fronts this week.

"Conditions are now beginning to trend back toward quiet levels," the experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reported today. By Thursday, geomagnetic activity is expected to be back down to background levels.

The bright northern lights associated with the storm wowed observers in Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland, but the show "petered out almost completely by the time it reached North America," SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips reported. Oh, well. At least we have the photographs captured by those who did get in on all the fireworks.

One of the most unorthodox views comes from Göran Strand of Östersund, Sweden, who took a panoramic photo of the northern lights and wrapped the sights into a 360-degree composition titled "Planet Aurora." The picture shows a photographer standing on a snowy circle, with trees bristling around the edge and ripples of red and green light glowing in the surrounding sky.

"Me and a friend went out to capture the beauty, and what a show it was," Strand told SpaceWeather.com. "I made two panoramas of my friend while he was taking pictures." Check out this page to see how the wide-screen panorama compares with the 360-degree planet view. While you're at it, visit Strand's AstroFotografen website, and don't miss the other images in SpaceWeather.com's aurora gallery.

Here are a few videos featuring views of the northern lights:

More auroral glories:

• Auroras spark awe across the north
• Northern lights go way, way south
• Speed through Lapland's lights
• Beautiful blasts from solar storms
• Get a video view of Canada's aurora
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Coren Apicella

A woman from Tanzania's Hadzabe tribe studies a social-networking chart.

Hunter-gatherers exhibit many of the "friending" habits familiar to Facebook users, suggesting that the patterns for social networking were set early in the history of our species.

At least that's the conclusion from a group of researchers who mapped the connections among members of the Hadza ethnic group in Tanzania's Lake Eyasi region. The results were published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"The astonishing thing is that ancient human social networks so very much resemble what we see today," senior author Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School, said in a university news release. Researchers from Harvard, the University of California at San Diego and Cambridge University worked together to document the Hadza's social networks.

"From the time we were around campfires and had words floating through the air, to today when we have digital packets floating through the ether, we've made networks of basically the same kind," Christakis said.

Another co-author of the study, UCSD's James Fowler, said the results suggest that the structure of today's social networks go back to a time before the invention of agriculture, tens of thousands of years ago.

For decades, social scientists have puzzled over the origins of cooperative and altruistic behavior that benefits the group at the expense of the individual. That seems to run counter to a basic "tooth and claw" view of evolution, in which each individual fights for survival, or at least the survival of its gene pool. One of the leading hypotheses is that a system to reward cooperation and punish non-cooperators ("free riders") grew out of a sense of genetic kinship between related individuals. But how far back did such a system arise?

To investigate that question, researchers spent two months interviewing more than 200 adult members of the Hadza group who still live in a traditional, nomadic, pre-agricultural setting. To chart the social connections, the researchers asked the adults to identify the individuals they'd like to live with in their next encampment. They also looked into gift-giving connections by giving their experimental subjects three straws of honey — one of the Hadza's best-loved treats — and asking them to assign them secretly to anyone else in the camp. That exercise produced a complex web of 1,263 "campmate ties" and 426 "gift ties."

Separately, the researchers gave the Hadza additional honey straws that they could either keep for themselves or donate for group distribution. That was used as a measure of cooperation vs. non-cooperation.

When the researchers analyzed all the linkages, they found that cooperators tended to group themselves together into one set of social clusters, while non-cooperators were in separate clusters. Even when other factors were taken into account, such as connections between kin and geographical proximity, the cooperation vs. non-cooperation distinction was significant. That finding suggested that even in pre-agricultural societies, social networking strengthened the connections between people inclined toward different kinds of behavior.

"If you can get cooperators to cluster together in social space, cooperation can evolve," said Coren Apicella, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in health-care policy at Harvard Medical School and the Nature paper's first author. "Social networks allow this to happen."

The researchers said the dynamics of the Hadza social networks — including the kinds of ties that bind a group's most popular members and the reciprocal connections within the group — were indistinguishable from previously gathered data about social networks in modern communities.

"We turned the data over lots of different ways," Fowler said in the news release. "We looked at over a dozen measures that social network analysts use to compare networks, and pretty much, the Hadza are like us."

Beyond the Facebook angle, the rise of relationships between cooperative individuals has larger implications for the study of human evolution. "This suggests that social networks may have co-evolved with the widespread cooperation in humans that we observe today," the researchers wrote.

Update for 2:15 p.m. ET: In a Nature commentary, University of British Columbia anthropologist Joseph Henrich said that the study provided a "glimpse into the social dynamics of one of the few remaining populations of nomadic hunter-gatherers" — and pointed up the parallels between modern-day social networking and the kind of society in which our distant ancestors lived.

One of the more interesting findings was that non-cooperators preferred to associate with other non-cooperators, rather than with the givers in the Hadza group, Henrich told me. That could be because people tend to make those they associate with more similar to themselves — sort of like a curmudgeonly married couple. Or it could be because non-cooperative types avoid the cooperators in the first place — sort of like the high-school kids who shun the goody-goodies and form their own clique of bad boys and girls.

Henrich said the cooperation vs. non-cooperation distinction was surprisingly strong. "In fact, the gift-network results indicate that this extends to friends of friends: if your friend's friend is highly cooperative, you are likely to cooperate more, too."

He said the findings support the principle of homophily in social relations: "People tend to pick people like themselves." But does the cooperation connection apply to modern-day social networks as well? If you're a giving person, do you tend to friend other givers online? "We don't know," Henrich told me. That's a topic for further research.

Update for 10:35 p.m. ET: In a follow-up phone interview, Fowler told me the results that he and his colleagues are reporting add a new twist to the old nature vs. nurture debate. People aren't shaped merely by genetics and their physical environment, he said.

"Social networks were actually just as important as the other two," he said. There may even be a genetic component to the associations you make. Along with Christakis and UCSD's Christopher Dawes, Fowler conducted research suggesting that genetic factors affect social behaviors. Previous studies have also shown that social networking among hunter-gatherer societies like the Hadza are not governed strictly by kin-based relationships.

"What's new here is that we've specifically tied this idea of cooperation to ties between non-kin," Fowler said.

Fowler acknowledged that studying hunter-gatherer societies are not a foolproof way to trace the evolutionary roots of the behaviors we see in modern-day society, including Facebook friending and Twitter tweeting. "This isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of determining what we were like hundreds of thousands of years ago," he said. But considering that scientists can't interview Stone Age social networkers, Fowler believes this is one of the best methods available to anthropologists.

More social-network science:

• Human brain limits Twitter friends
• As social network grows, so does the brain
• Study suggests blogging makes new moms happy
• Key to social-network success: Get a media star to join

In addition to Apicella, Christakis and Fowler, authors of "Social Networks and Cooperation in Hunter-Gatherers" include Cambridge University's Frank Marlowe.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Surveying the biodiversity of the world's last wild areas is often a depressing business, due to the effects of deforestation and development, but in a roadless region of the South American country of Suriname, scientists have come upon a good-news story.

"We can say for sure that this is still a pristine area, in contrast to most of the places that we visit," Trond Larsen, director of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program, told me today.

Part of the payoff for Conservation International comes in the form of scientific discovery. Today, the nonprofit group is reporting the identification of 46 potentially new species, observed during a three-week expedition to southwest Suriname in 2010. The list includes a fancifully named "cowboy frog," a strangely spiked species of armored catfish, and colorful breeds of beetles and katydids. Check out our slideshow to get a close look at a few of the newly identified critters.

As far as Larsen is concerned, it's just as important to document the nearly 1,300 previously known species that were observed during the survey. After all, the main purpose of the Rapid Assessment Program is not just to add names to a list, but to lay down a baseline for assessing the health of an entire ecosystem.

"It's a quick and dirty way to go into an area ... and say something meaningful about the importance of that place," Larsen said.

CI-Suriname

This map of South America highlights the region known as the Guiana Shield in medium-toned green and the country of Suriname in dark green. The Guiana Shield is one of the world's most biologically diverse regions.

Thanks to the RAP survey, Larsen and his colleagues know that the remote area along Suriname's Kutari and Sipaliwini Rivers is an important place. "It's one of the last really vast areas of unroaded tropical wilderness," he said.

Conservation International's survey was conducted by 53 scientists in collaboration with students and the region's indigenous Trio people.

Leeanne Alonso, a former director of the RAP program who is now with Global Wildlife Conservation, said the scientists were impressed by "the amazing diversity of birds and mammals of the region."

"You can really get up close to wildlife here," she said in a news release. "A camera trap recorded a jaguar about one hundred yards from our camp." The cameras captured nighttime glimpses of a giant armadillo, a peccary and an ocelot as well.

Conservation International Suriname

This ocelot (Leopardus paradalis) was captured on film by a camera trap on Aug. 8, 2010.

The scientists also observed cave petroglyphs near the Trio village of Kwamalasamutu, at a site that Conservation International is helping local communities preserve as an ecotourism destination. The site, known as Werehpai, is the oldest known human settlement  found in southern Suriname: Radiocarbon dating and archaeological studies suggest that the first signs of habitation go back at least 5,000 years.

"The Kwamalasamutu area's pristine nature and cultural heritage make it a unique destination for more adventurous tourists, who enjoy trekking through the dense rainforest to discover flora and fauna," said Tjon Sie Fat, executive director of Conservation International's operation in Suriname. "CI-Suriname and the Trio are hoping to further develop a niche market ecotourism site here."

Trond Larsen / Conservation International

Petroglyphs have been discovered in a cave system near the Trio village of Kwamalasamutu in Suriname.

The region's newfound species add to the strangeness of the setting. Among the finds reported in the RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment series are these:

• Cowboy frog: This potentially new species of frog (Hypsiboas sp.) was discovered during a night survey in a swampy area of the Koetari River. It has white fringes along its legs and a spur on each heel — which inspired the amphibian's nickname.
• Armored catfish with spines: There are numerous species of catfish that are "armored" with external bony plates, but this one (Pseudacanthicus sp.) is unique because of the spines covering its plates of armor. Larsen noted that the fish live in a river that is infested with giant piranha fish. "Presumably, the spines are adapted to protect against the piranha," he said.
• Crayola katydid: The Suriname species (Vestria sp.) is one of only a few types of insects that are named after the popular brand of crayons, because of their striking coloration. The "Crayola" critters are the only katydids known to employ chemical defenses to repel bird and mammalian predators.

Such species will take their place alongside other strangely named critters found in that region of Suriname, including the Pac-Man frog and the conehead katydid. And there may be more to come: Conservation International is planning to send another RAP expedition to southern Suriname in March.

More about species:

• Taking stock of 2011's new species 
• New bee or not new bee? That is the question
• 'Lost' rainbow toad rediscovered
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• The Amazon's amazing species
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• More strange species from Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking

Don't miss our slideshow featuring the strange species of Suriname.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

AuroraMAX / Canadian Space Agency

The northern lights take on a weird, rippling shape in a super-wide-angle view captured Sunday night by the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX webcam in Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories. There's more from AuroraMAX at the project's website and on Twitpic.

Is it "auroras" or "aurorae"? The dictionary prefers the former, but either way, there was a multiplicity of auroral awesomeness this weekend — thanks to a solar storm that swept past Earth's magnetic field over the weekend. During the past few days, we've shown off a few stunning images from Norway and Canada, and there's a new crop to share today.

First, a little explanation for what you're looking at:

Auroral lights arise when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with atoms and ions high up in Earth's atmosphere, 60 to 200 miles up. The interaction sets off emissions in wavelengths ranging from blue, to green (the most common color), to red. The colors depend on the energy of the particles in question. To get the full story on that, check out the explanations from the "Causes of Color" website and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

This weekend's auroras were particularly bright because of a strong solar outburst that occurred on Thursday. There's an interval between the outburst and the displays because the particles that are ejected from the sun travel at far less than the speed of light. But they're still pretty speedy — the velocity is on the order of a million miles an hour.

Solar outbursts, known more formally as coronal mass ejections or CMEs, have the potential to disrupt electrical grids or satellite communications. There could be radiation effects on astronauts in orbit or passengers on high-altitude, pole-traversing airplane flights. Thursday's outburst dealt Earth's magnetic field a glancing blow, and no significant negative impact has been reported. However, an even stronger CME is currently on its way toward Earth and may force the rerouting of polar flights. Once again, electric-grid managers and satellite operators will be on alert, as will aurora-watchers.

Observers in northern latitudes can look forward to enhanced auroras over the next couple of nights — and the rest of us can look forward to more images like these:

Bjorn Jorgensen

Bjorn Jorgensen's view of the aurora was captured on Sunday at Grotfjord, close to Tromso in north Norway. "This was amazing," he told SpaceWeather.com. "It was a wonderful experience to see these stunning auroras." The bird-of-prey picture was taken with a Nikon D3S camera equipped with a Nikkor 14-24mm lens. Exposure for the pictures in Jorgenson's set was ISO 2200 at five and six seconds. Check out SpaceWeather.com and ArcticPhoto.no for more views.

Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

Chad Blakley said on Sunday that he had "an unbelievable night" at Sweden's Abisko National Park. "As soon as the sun went down I realized that we were about to experience something special," he told SpaceWeather.com. "The auroras have been dancing all night long and show no sign of stopping! I only came in because 32 gigabytes of memory cards were full and all three batteries were dead!" Click on over to Blakley's Vimeo page for a time-lapse video version of this imagery, and check out SpaceWeather.com for more from Abisko.

Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

The auroral lights in Sweden were so bright that Chad Blakley could capture this view from the street. Blakley says his pictures were shot with a Nikon D7000 and a Tokina 11/16 lens at 2.8 with a 1600 ISO six-second exposure. For more of Blakley's images, check out the Lights Over Lapland website.

Adrian Jannetta and Emma Maddison

Adrian Jannetta took this picture of the auroral arc on Sunday night, about 2 miles west of Morpeth in the Northumberland region of England. "This is the first time I've photographed the aurora and the first time I've seen it since about 2004," he wrote on Flickr. The picture was taken using a Nikon D80 with 18mm lens, set for ISO 1250, f/3.5, 2x30sec exposures. For more auroral views from Jannetta, check his Flickr photostream.

Gregory Clarke

The green glow of the aurora is reflected in a rock pool on the Emerald Isle, in Ireland's County Donegal. "The photo was taken at the end of my shoot as a last grab before heading home," photographer Gregory Clarke said in an email. "I climbed over some rocks to get to a rock pool, took a few test shots and then was treated to what I photographed. The photo was taken at Malin Head, County Donegal, using a Canon EOS Mk3. For that shot I bumped up the ISO to 1600 at f4, shot in RAW, and it seems to be the settings that worked for that shot." You'll find many more shots in Clarke's Flickr photostream.

Jason Ahrns

The red and green auroral lights look like glowing curtains in Jason Ahrns' photo, captured near Fairbanks, Alaska, using a Nikon D5000 camera and an all-sky lens. You can see a time-lapse video that includes this still at Ahrns' Flickr gallery.

Marketa Stanczykova

Marketa Stanczykova said she used a Canon 5D camera with a 17-40mm lens to take this picture of the northern lights dancing over Chatanika in Alaska. "I recently moved to Fairbanks," she said in an email. "My friends, photographers Ronn Murray and Casey Thompson (aurora chasers) took me close to Chatanika. It was an amazing night." For more of her pictures, check out this SpaceWeather.com page and this gallery from 500px.

More great auroral views:

• Northern lights go way, way south
• Speed through Lapland's lights
• Beautiful blasts from solar storms
• Get a video view of Canada's aurora
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Canadian Space Agency

This fisheye view of the auroral display above Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories was captured by the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX project early Saturday.

Last updated 1:45 p.m. ET Jan. 22:

Forecasters say a blast from the sun should strike a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field, starting Sunday, and create a mild geomagnetic storm. That's not enough to pose a planetary threat, but the storm should spark better-than-usual auroral displays. Skywatchers are already getting some great pictures in advance of the peak.

The blast, known as a coronal mass ejection, was witnessed by sun-watching spacecraft on Thursday — and at the time, NASA projected that the geomagnetic impact on Earth would be felt today. But experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado say the peak will come later.

"We're looking at it to start on Sunday, about 1 o'clock [p.m.] Eastern time," Joe Kunches, a space scientist at the prediction center, told me today.

The storm of electrically charged particles is projected to take a relatively non-threatening path past our planet. "We think it'll go to the north of Earth ... rather than right at us," he said.

The center's prediction projects that the "bulk of the disturbance" should occur on Monday. But even then, the storm will be a G1, which is the lowest ranking on the scale of geomagnetic activity. Such a storm generally produces weak fluctuations in electrical grids and has the potential for minor effects on satellite operations — basically, nothing for regular folks to worry about.

The main effect is expected to be bright northern lights that could be visible farther south than usual. In northern regions, aurora aficionados are already seeing some fantastic fireworks. Keep watch up above, particularly if you're in an area with clear, dark skies. Keep watch for updates in SpaceWeather.com's January aurora gallery as well. The Canadian Space Agency has its AuroraMAX webcam working in the Northwest Territories, and you can even sign up for updates via the project's Twitter account, @AuroraMAX.

If you have pictures to share, please pass them along via the Cosmic Log Facebook page or msnbc.com's FirstPerson in-box, and we'll put together a gallery of our own on Monday.

Update for 1:45 p.m. ET Jan. 22: The Space Weather Prediction Center is showing a rise in solar particle flux, and European observers are passing along some great pictures. Among the places to check, in addition to SpaceWeather.com, are the Aurora Sky Station in Sweden, the Facebook page for Iurie Belegurschi Photography in Iceland and this awesome Vimeo video (plus Flickr page) from Norway (play it at full screen for full effect):

Have you come across other websites or pages on Facebook or Google+ with great sights of the northern lights? Feel free to pass them along in your comments below. One caveat, though: Newbies may not have the capability to pass along Web links, so you might have to spell them out, as in www-dot-cosmiclog-dot-com. And as always, be cautious when clicking on external links.

Check out our gallery of the weekend's auroral awesomeness

More great auroral views:

• Northern lights go way, way south
• Speed through Lapland's lights
• Beautiful blasts from solar storms
• Get a video view of Canada's aurora
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Did you hear the one about the planet that's boiling away? Astronomers working with data from NASA's Kepler planet-hunting telescope say they're seeing evidence that a star system 1,500 light-years from Earth has a "super-Mercury" orbiting less than a million miles from its sun. At that distance, they surmise that the blasted world (known as KIC 12557548) is slowly being vaporized by temperatures in excess of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius).

The report about the boiling planet appears on ArXiv.org, and was the focus of a posting by Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. It's also the top story on the Weekly Space Hangout, a Google+ live video show that brings together a gaggle of space writers, including yours truly. Check out the hourlong video above for more about KIC 12557548 as well as the other stories listed below:

• 'Pillars of Creation' reloaded (11:30)
• Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson on the dark-matter galaxy (16:13)
• Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla on the Phobos-Grunt endgame (and her space craft projects) (23:09)
• Astronomy Cast's Pamela Gay on the quest to take a picture of a black hole (28:41)
• Questions from the audience (36:00)

This week's Hangout panel also included Discovery News' Nicole Gugliucci (the Noisy Astronomer) and Universe Today's Jon Voisey (the Angry Astronomer), with Universe Today's Fraser Cain as host, organizer and moderator. Tune in at 1 p.m. ET Thursday for the next installment of the Weekly Space Hangout, and check out these archived vidcasts:

• Jan. 12: Planets, dark matter, "Trek" tricorders and more
• Jan. 5: NASA's moon probes, the hype over 2012 and more
• Dec. 20: All about Kepler's alien worlds

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Danny Martindale / Getty Images

Reality-TV impresario Simon Cowell poses for photos with fans as "Britain's Got Talent" kicks off its annual talent search Friday with an event at the Lyric Theatre in Manchester.

More than a decade after the first effort to blend reality TV with real-world spaceflight, talent-show impresario Simon Cowell says the winner of "Britain's Got Talent" could go into outer space on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.

"I love the idea that if they are up for it they have the option of performing in space," Cowell told Britain's Daily Star. The comment comes as Cowell is ramping up for a new season of the show that inspired "America's Got Talent."

Cowell has already signed up for his own flight on SpaceShipTwo, which could start flying passengers beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) boundary of outer space on $200,000 suborbital rides as early as next year. The longtime record producer, who left an enduring mark on reality-TV history as the black-garbed, brutally frank judge on "American Idol," hinted that he's worked out a deal with British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic.

"It's tens of millions of pounds, but Richard genuinely is up for doing it," Cowell told the Star. "I am being serious, I swear to God and on my mum’s life. Don’t worry about the details, we’ll make it happen."

If Cowell is to make it happen anytime soon, the winner would most probably have to travel to New Mexico to follow through on the flight plan. And it seems unlikely that going into space would be a requirement placed on the winner, whoever he or she turns out to be.

Producers have tried for years to put together a reality-TV show focusing on spaceflight. The highest-profile effort was "Survivor" executive producer Mark Burnett's plans in 2000 for a show that would follow contestants through the training routine for spaceflight. The winner would have been sent to Russia's Mir space station — but that concept fizzled out even before Mir was deorbited in 2001.

Other proposed entertainment projects have revolved around pop singer Lance Bass and film director James Cameron. Just last week, Beyonce and Jay-Z were said to be interested in doing a music video aboard SpaceShipTwo.

No Hollywood space effort has yet gotten off the ground, but if anyone has the required combination of guts, glitz and gold, I suppose that'd be Branson. Like Cowell, Branson is a veteran of reality TV, having starred in "The Rebel Billionaire," a series that aired on Fox in 2004-2005.

Who knows? In the next year or two, there may be more than one way for reality-TV contestants to get into outer space. Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer for XCOR Aerospace, says his company is moving ahead with its own Lynx rocket plane — and he's not shy about courting Cowell's attention.

"If Simon wants to take a more exciting ride at half the price, I'd take his call," Nelson told me today.

More about commercial space:

• Next steps in a new space race
• Virgin Galactic picks Air Force pilot for spaceship
• Slideshow: The making of SpaceShipTwo
• Gallery: Ten players in the commercial space game

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Sarah Lee / The Science Museum via Reuters

Physicist Stephen Hawking is seen in his office at the University of Cambridge in this photo taken for London's Science Museum in December. The picture is part of a series of photographic portraits commissioned by the Science Museum to celebrate Hawking's 70th birthday on Jan. 8. The pictures are part of an exhibit at the musem celebrating Hawking's life and achievements.

The cosmic curios of the world's best-known physicist went on display today at a London science museum, chronicling the amazing 70 years of Stephen Hawking's life. Over the decades, the quadriplegic genius has popped up in so many pop-culture settings that some of those curios require a little explanation.

That's what we found when we ran a picture of the professor in his Cambridge office as the first installment of a "Where in the Cosmos" series on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. There's such a generous assortment of gewgaws that it's a wonder Hawking gets anything done.

It turns out that the scene was arranged to show off Hawking's stuff for the exhibit at the Science Museum in London. Take the bronze statue on the desk, for example. I was particularly intrigued by the out-of-focus statue because it seemed to hold such a prominent place in the picture.

"I believe the statue is of the pope," Tracey Walters wrote. "But the picture is kinda fuzzy, so who knows which one?" Others wondered if it was the theologian Erasmus, or maybe King Midas.

Hawking's longtime executive assistant, Judith Croasdell, straightened out the mystery in an email.

"The statue is the Fonseca Prize which Professor Hawking received in Santiago de Compestela, in 2008," she wrote. "It normally sits not on Stephen's desk but on the window shelf because it is heavy — 2 kilograms worth of bronze. Obviously it was put on the desk for the photographers."

A less weighty curio is far easier to recognize: It's a plastic action figure of Hawking as he appeared in an episode of "The Simpsons," the animated show that the physicist has called the best thing American television has to offer. The figurine is festooned with the helicopter top and the spring-loaded boxing glove that played their part in the "Simpsons" plot. In the distance, you can just make out a picture on the wall that shows Hawking encountering Maggie Simpson and other characters from the show. Watch this YouTube clip to learn more about Hawking's "Simpsons" connection.

Other items include a little toy computer with sticky notes, a space shuttle model, and a crystal globe. "The crystal globe is a present given by Discovery and shows a map of the world," Croasdell says. "Carved on the globe are the words 'What is essential is invisible to the eye,' [from] Saint-Exupery."

There's a humidifier on his desk that holds an assortment of seashells. The blackboard you see in the picture above is covered with equations scribbled by his students. Another blackboard in the room, not seen here, that has mathematical in-jokes written on it.

Sarah Lee / Science Museum via Reuters

Another picture commissioned by the Science Museum shows Stephen Hawking with a picture of Marilyn Monroe looming over him.

Another photo of Hawking's office, taken from a different perspective, gives prominent play to his picture of Marilyn Monroe, who is one of the professor's favorite personages from the past. "If I had a time machine, I'd drop in on Marilyn Monroe in her prime," he once mused. The room's walls are covered with flyers as well as photos from Hawking's trips around the world.

To find out more about these items and others in Hawking's office, check out Roger Highfield's profile of the professor in The Telegraph.

The photos are just one little piece of the Science Museum's one-room exhibition: Museumgoers can also see pictures of Hawking before his struggle with motor neuron disease, as well as mementos that touch upon the highlights of his long career. The Science Museum's inventor in residence, Mark Champkins, created a "Black Hole Light" in Hawking's honor that uses a swirl of neon tubing to evoke the path photons would take as they fell into a black hole.

Here's a sampling of the sights:

AP

The Science Museum displays a selection of books and papers by British physicist Stephen Hawking. His best-known work, "A Brief History of Time," has been translated into more than 30 languages. The object at right that looks like a model of Saturn is actually the 2010 Cosmos Award, which Hawking received from the Planetary Society. Hawking's Fonseca Prize and Prince of Asturias Award are also on display.

Alastair Grant / AP

A diagram by British physicist Stephen Hawking, titled "Black Hole and Unpredictability," is one of the papers on display at the Science Museum.

Alastair Grant / AP

A marked script from a "Simpsons" episode that aired in 1999 highlights Stephen Hawking's lines, including this one: "Silence! I don't need anyone to talk for me except this voicebox." The Stephen Hawking action figure has a helicopter-style wheelchair and a boxing glove, just like the character on the show.

Update for 12:45 a.m. ET Jan. 21: When the Planetary Society's Charlene Anderson took a look at the pictures above, she saw a familiar sight — the planet-shaped Cosmos Award that Hawking received from the society in 2010. Check out her posting to the Planetary Society's blog, in which she expresses her surprise and pleasure at seeing the society's award in such a place of honor.

Next on 'Where in the Cosmos': Today's picture puzzle focuses on a far-out subject that's been the subject of research recently. I haven't written anything about it yet, but next week I'll fill you in on why it's significant. One of our Cosmic Log friends has already figured out what the picture shows, and as a reward I'll be sending her a copy of John Gribbin's latest book, "Alone in the Universe." To join the conversation, check out the "Where in the Cosmos" posting on the Cosmic Log Facebook page.

More about Stephen Hawking's life and work:

• Stephen Hawking misses 70th-birthday party
• What mystifies Stephen Hawking? Women
• Hawking defies crippling disease at 70
• Hawking's quantum universe

The exhibit celebrating Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday runs through April 9 at the Science Museum in London.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.