Briefly...

Hi everyone, I'm away this week and so posting may be a bit patchy. But I've got time to  quickly point to a couple of interesting things:

• First: New evidence from preserved ocean sediments suggests that the early ancestors of humans may have witnessed our planet getting a spectacular near Miss from a supernovam Radiation from the explosion may have altered Earth's climate and influenced human evolution.
• Second: A little bit of a development on that rumour of an Earth-like planet being found orbiting the nearest star to Earth: German magazine Der Spiegel has published a new article on it, and Chris Lintot from the BBC reports he's filming a top secret Sky at Night episode that may be related to the rumour....

In other news: I'm going to start a fortnightly mailer, with links to the source materials for the most interesting space stories on the internet - there's a lot going on and I personally can only write about so much! It's totally free, and your email address won't be passed on to third parties to bombard you with spam. I'll be putting up a button that you can use to subscribe in the next week or so.  

Take care, and I should be back to normal service in a few days.

John F.