THE BIG RETORT

Many scientists in the United States and worldwide are furious that the space agency NASA has apparently allowed a small body of Kepler scientists to sit on data that may confirm if another Earth-like planet lies within 'lens' reach of our solar system. (That's anywhere light years away.) But could the leaking of the discovery made by the Kepler scientists be due to a simple glitch in the machine? It has been argued that more time was needed for Kepler scientists to confirm the discovery of over 140 Earth-like exoplanets. Apparently the 'yearly' transits of these planets needed to be confirmed by additional research, an investigation that would, under Earth-like circumstances, take three years. Apparently it takes our planet one whole year to go around the sun and back again. It takes three such years then to confirm the findings? Not so. Dimitar Sasselov, an investigator with the Kepler group itself - accidentally on purpose? - released some of the findings to a sp...

A Texan aged 63 has won at scratch-off card games every two years since 2006. In 1993 she also won a lottery bringing her total winnings to over $20m. Which is amazingly coincidental. But what if a seemingly ordinary person somehow managed to narrow the odds and beat the system, goddamnit? An American newspaper might say slim pickin's. TheBigRetort says ... Joan Rae Ginther’s luck began in 1993, when she won $5.4 million dollars on a game known as “Lotto Texas“. Another win thirteen years later in 2006 netted her $2m. Curiously, every two years since that date, she has won at scratch off games, two cards having been bought at her local store. In 1993 she won $5.4 million; the odds: 1 in 15.8 million; in 2006 she won $2 million in a scratch off game; the odds: 1 in 1,028,338; in 2008 she won $3 million in a scratch off; odds: 1 in 909,000. Her latest win in 2010, also a scratch off, was for $10 million; odds of winning: 1 in 1,200,000. In fact experts contend that the odds of winnin...