John Horgan and George Johnson do a good job of hashing out the latest science news for a non-scientific audience (namely, me). Most useful is the healthy scepticism they bring to a lot of the gee-whizism in the press. This is not news but a sobering factoid to file away:
The nearest star to our sun, Alpha Centauri, is 4 light years away. Using present technology, it would take a space craft 60,000 years to reach it. Something for global warming naysayers to keep in mind.
