Today’s American Astronomical Society news feed brought me a small handful of press releases. Three releases (1, 2, 3) all related to the approximate mapping of the exoplanet HD 189733b and the discovery that exoplanet HD149026b is the hottest known world. Cool. The forth and final press release I received was also planetary science related, and embargoed, so I can’t really tell you anything beyond that my news feed lead me to believe that astronomers are currently only studying planetary science. The truth is, astronomers are exploring all the heavens have to offer in voracious detail, but the press officers (and press in general) are neglecting a lot of cool science going on in other areas.

Flipping over to the arXiv e-print service, a different picture emerges. The couple dozen submitted works for Wednesday, May 9, spanned subjects from string theory to CMB Anisotropies and the outer Solar System (1, 2). Some papers are still in peer review, and others will never be submitted to journals. All the papers are sitting there waiting to be read and learned from, and hopefully someday cited by someone not on the author list.