In what might amount to an early Christmas present to the universe, two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of what they say — and other astronomers agree — are probably planets going around other stars.
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“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia. “Now that we know they are there, there is going to be an explosion.”

“We were totally expecting this,” continued Dr. Marois. “The Americans have just elected their first black president, which means it is now officially the future. Discovering new planets is just the kind of thing that’s going to happen now that Barack Obama has been elected. This is only the beginning.”

According to Dr. Marois, the reader can also look forward to bitterly opposed visitors from the post-apocalyptic future, a “light-to-moderate” global plague of nanobots, and the successful cloning of Adolf Hitler, all by the midterm elections in 2010.

“By then, people will wish they hadn’t voted for quite so much change, but the future is not a genie you can just stuff back into its bottle.”

Dr. Marois went on to predict a close presidential race in 2012 with President Obama and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska both being narrowly edged out by Xanthu, a superintelligent orangutan from one of the newly discovered planets.

Assured Dr. Marois: “His reign shall be just.”

Tags: politics, barack obama, science, the future, astrophysics, extrasolar planets, xanthu