{"id":2620,"date":"2007-07-13T14:40:30","date_gmt":"2007-07-13T18:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/capitalregionliving\/2007\/07\/somewhere-over-the-rainbow.html"},"modified":"2018-06-27T10:38:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:38:14","slug":"somewhere-over-the-rainbow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/capitalregionliving\/2007\/07\/somewhere-over-the-rainbow\/","title":{"rendered":"Somewhere over the rainbow"},"content":{"rendered":"

By William M. Dowd<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As the rain spattered insistently on the skylights of our abode up here on what I like to call Weathering Heights the other night, I caught an occasional glimpse of lights on planes heading to the airport on the other side of the Hudson River.<\/p>\n

Seeing lights twinkling between the raindrops conjured up visual effects usually reserved for “Star Trek”<\/a> episodes.<\/p>\n

What, I wondered, would it be like to be looking down on this scene from far above the rainclouds and the imagination? Where happy little bluebirds fly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that will be answered by whatever beings, of whatever form, wind up inhabiting the smallest known solar system — the one scientists have just told us they’ve found in its infant stage.<\/p>\n

Observing through both space-<\/a> and ground-based telescopes, they’ve located a brown dwarf star less than one hundredth the mass of our sun surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas. It’s located 500 light years from Earth, in the constellation Chamaeleon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, the lead scientist, said the brown dwarf — larger than the typical planet but smaller than a star — is a failed star. In other words, it’s a ball of gas that failed to collect enough mass to start shining. But it does have enough planet-forming properties, perhaps similar to those that helped create our own solar system.<\/p>\n

So, with such cosmic thoughts swirling in my head, I dozed off to the sound of the rain.<\/p>\n

(Posted 07\/13\/07)<\/p>\n

Connect here<\/a> with columnist William M. Dowd’s lineup of blogs for news and information on food, drink and destinations.<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By William M. Dowd…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\r\nSomewhere over the rainbow - Capital Region Living Magazine On Albany.com - Your Source For Albany & Capital Region News<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/capitalregionliving\/2007\/07\/somewhere-over-the-rainbow\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Somewhere over the rainbow - Capital Region Living Magazine On Albany.com - Your Source For Albany & Capital Region News\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By William M. 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