NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don’t yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

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Full Story: NASA’s Kepler mission confirms its first planet in habitable zone of Sun-like star

For the second time in his Sprint Cup Series career, an off-track issue has cost Kurt Busch his job.

Busch will not return next season to drive Penske Racing’s No. 22 Dodge, multiple sources confirmed to the Observer on Sunday night.

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Full Story: Kurt Busch fired by Penske Racing

In this undated artists rendering provided by the University of Hawaii, a new planet forming around a star is seen. The Institute for Astronomy said in a statement Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, Adam Kraus and his colleague Michael Ireland from Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory used Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to find the planet. LkCa 15 b is 450 light years away from Earth and is being built by dust and gas. It’s the youngest planet ever found. (AP Photo/ University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, Karen L. Teramura)

This undated handout artist rendering provided by NASA shows Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star’s habitable zone — the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. NASA has found the new planet outside our solar system that’s eerily similar to Earth in key aspects. Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 72 degrees. Its star could almost be a twin of our sun. It likely has water and land. (AP Photo/NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A newly discovered planet is eerily similar to Earth and is sitting outside our solar system in what seems to be the ideal place for life, except for one hitch. It’s a bit too big.

The planet is smack in the middle of what astronomers call the Goldilocks zone, that hard to find place that’s not too hot, not too cold, where water, which is essential for life, doesn’t freeze or boil. And it has a shopping mall-like surface temperature of near 72 degrees, scientists say.

The planet’s confirmation was announced Monday by NASA along with other discoveries by its Kepler telescope, which was launched on a planet-hunting mission in 2009.

That’s the first planet confirmed in the habitable zone for Kepler, which had already found Earth-like rocky planets elsewhere. Twice before astronomers have announced a planet found in that zone, but neither have been as promising.

“This is a phenomenal discovery in the course of human history,” Geoff Marcy of University of California, Berkeley, one of the pioneers of planet-hunting outside our solar system, said in an email. “This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home. We are almost there.”

The new planet — named Kepler-22b — has key aspects it shares with Earth. It circles a star that could be the twin of our sun and at just about the same distance. The planet’s year of 290 days is even close to ours. It likely has water and rock.

The only trouble is the planet’s a bit big for life to exist on the surface. The planet is about 2.4 times the size of Earth. It could be more like the gas-and-liquid Neptune with only a rocky core and mostly ocean.

“It’s so exciting to imagine the possibilities,” said Natalie Batalha, the Kepler deputy science chief.

Floating on that “world completely covered in water” could be like being on an Earth ocean and “it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that life could exist in such an ocean,” Batalha said in a phone interview.

Kepler can’t find life itself, just where the conditions might be right for it to thrive. And when astronomers look for life elsewhere they’re talking about everything ranging from microbes to advanced intelligence that can be looking back at us.

So far the Kepler telescope has spotted 2,326 candidate planets outside our solar system with 139 of them potentially habitable ones. Even though the confirmed Kepler-22b is a bit big, it is still smaller than most of the other candidates. It is closest to Earth in size, temperature and star than either of the two previously announced planets in the zone.

The confirmation of one of two, though, has been disputed. The latest discovery has been confirmed several ways, including by two other telescopes.

Earlier this year, a European team of astronomers said they had confirmed another planet in the habitable zone, but that one was hot and barely on the inside edge of the habitable zone.

For Marcy, who is on the Kepler team, the newest planet is a smidgen too large. But, “that smidgen makes all the difference,” he said.

Because its size implies that it’s closer to Neptune in composition than Earth, “I would bet my telescope that there is no hard, rocky surface to walk on,” Marcy said.

Chief Kepler scientist William Borucki said he thinks the planet is somewhere between Earth and gas-and-liquid Neptune, but that it has a lot of rocky material. It’s in a size range that scientists don’t really know anything about. Measurements next summer may help astronomers have a better idea of its makeup, he said.

The planet is 600 light years away. Each light year is 5.9 trillion miles. It would take a space shuttle about 22 million years to get there.

Kepler spots a planet when it passes in front of its star. NASA requires three of those sightings before it begins to confirm it as a planet. Borucki said the third sighting for 22b happened a year ago, just before the telescope shut down for a while. It took several months to finish the confirmation.

“It’s a great gift,” Borucki said. “We consider this sort of our Christmas planet.”

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Online:

NASA’s Kepler Telescope: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

During the 2011 Major League Baseball season, there was only one reason to see the New York Mets, and his name was Jose Reyes. While Reyes had always been an exciting player to watch, his ninth season with the Mets proved to be the best of his career, as he led the National League in batting average. Combined with his incredible speed — he also led the National League with 16 triples — Reyes drove opposing teams to distraction all season long.

Even with Reyes in the lineup, the Mets struggled mightily to stay out of last place in the National League’s Eastern Division. But now, with the electric shortstop apparently on the verge of signing a six-year, $ 106 million contract with the Miami Marlins, it seems as if the team is on the verge of entering a reign of error that the franchise hasn’t experienced since the late 1970s.

Consider the following:

• The Philadelphia Phillies have won five consecutive National League East titles, and will enter the 2012 season still boasting what is generally considered to be the best pitching rotation in all of baseball;

• Winners of 89 games last season, the Atlanta Braves only missed the playoffs by dint of losing a game on the last day of the season;

• The Washington Nationals, a team that finished ahead of the Mets in the standings, are loaded with young talent, including phenom pitcher Stephen Strasburg. And lurking in their minor league system is outfield prospect Bryce Harper, another overall #1 pick from baseball’s amateur draft.

• As for the Marlins, they’ve got cash to spend just a few months ahead of the opening of a brand new ballpark in Miami. In addition to Reyes, the Marlins already signed closer Heath Bell to a three-year, $ 27 million contract a few days ago, and now are also apparently in the hunt to sign free agent first baseman Albert Pujols.

If all that Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson had to do was replace the offensive production the team will lose when Reyes signs with Miami, his job would be difficult enough. Unfortunately for Alderson, he’s going to have to do it on a shoestring budget. The Mets have been bleeding red ink for years as the team has crashed through the standings, something that didn’t turn around when they moved into their new ballpark, Citi Field, in time for the 2009 baseball season.

More importantly, the team’s co-owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, could be on the hook for as much as $ 386 million for the alleged role they played in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard is suing Wilpon and Katz, alleging that they should have known that they were collecting phony profits from Madoff. In the meantime, Major League Baseball has been loaning the Mets money to keep them afloat, but one has to wonder out loud just how long that credit line can last.

Looking ahead to 2012, it’s safe to say that the losses on the field and in the box office will likely continue. We’ll see how long the owners of the team can hang on.

Eric McErlain blogs at Off Wing Opinion, a Forbes “Best of the Web” winner. In 2006 he wrote a “bloggers bill of rights” to help integrate bloggers into the Washington Capitals’ press box. Eric has also written for Deadspin, NBC Sports and the Sporting News, and covers sports television for The TV News. Follow Eric on Twitter.

Facebook’s Ken Patchett showed up in Prineville, Oregon to run the company’s new-age data center, and Steve Forrester recognized him right away.

Forrester, Prineville’s city manager, is a fourth-generation Oregonian and about as far removed from a Silicon Valley insider as you can get.

But he remembered the Facebook man from a meeting years earlier, when Patchett sold him a wood chipper while working for an outfit that manufactured forest equipment. “It blew my mind,” Forrester says. “We actually have a lot in common.”

Full Story: Facebook Dons Cowboy Boots, Rides Into Desert For Economic Rescue

Director Madonna attends a special screening of “W.E.” at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)

Director Madonna attends a special screening of “W.E.” at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)

NEW YORK (AP) — Madonna will perform at halftime of the Super Bowl in Indianapolis in February.

NBC, which broadcasts football’s biggest game, announced during the Detroit-New Orleans game Sunday night that the Grammy Award-winning singer will take the stage at Lucas Oil Stadium on Feb. 5.

The Super Bowl halftime show is the most-watched musical event of the year, with more than 162 million in the U.S. watching The Black Eyed Peas’ performance in Dallas last February.

Madonna, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, joins such acts as Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Prince, U2, Paul McCartney, The Who and the Rolling Stones to perform during recent Super Bowls. She will collaborate with a team from Cirque du Soleil, choreographer Jamie King, and artists from Moment Factory.

The U.S. is invoking Cold War-era national-security powers to force telecommunication companies including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) to divulge confidential information about their networks in a hunt for Chinese cyber-spying.

In a survey distributed in April, the U.S. Commerce Department asked for a detailed accounting of foreign-made hardware and software on the companies’ networks.

Full Story: U.S. Uses Cold-War Powers to Unmask Spyware

FILE – This Oct. 11, 2010 file photo, shows the logo of the online network Facebook, recorded in Munich with a magnifying glass of a computer screen of a laptop. Facebook said Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, it is settling with the Federal Trade Commission over charges it deceived consumers. The FTC had charged that the social network told people they could keep the information they share private and then allowed for it to be made public. The charges go back to 2009.(AP Photo/dapd, Joerg Koch)

Facebook has acquired location based services app Gowalla, according to a report by CNNMoney citing an anonymous source close to Gowalla.

Facebook and Gowalla could not immediately be reached for comment.

Austin, Texas-based Gowalla was a competitor to check-in app company Foursquare but never took off and eventually revamped, recasting itself as a travel-oriented guide app. Gowalla had an emphasis on design with intricately designed interfaces and badges. But Foursquare had many more users.

via Report: Facebook Acquires Location App Gowalla – Forbes.

You may not have seen the show “Diary of a Single Mom” co-starring Billy Dee Williams, but your tax dollars helped pay for it.

Through the federal economic stimulus program, a company owned by actor-director Robert Townsend was paid more than $ 230,000 to produce and direct the Web-based show, records show. Other production costs on the show paid to different vendors total more than $ 700,000.

Full Story: Online soap opera cleans up with stimulus broadband cash

Imagine this scene: You’re the CEO of a hot company that makes diagnostic software for smartphones.

Your software is used by some of the biggest carriers in the world–including Sprint and AT&T–to maintain the quality of their subscribers’ calls, improve smartphone battery life, and troubleshoot any other problems with their handsets.

But your diagnostic app is always installed on handsets by manufacturers and carriers in a manner that makes it difficult to remove, if it can even be detected.

Full Story: Carrier IQ Gets Scrooged For The Holidays