A faint red star has been found to be one of the Sun's nearest neighbors. The story and an animated gif of the newfound star are at http://KenCroswell.com/SIPS1259.html .

This just goes to show that in our own galactic back yard there are still new things to find. Infrarad, with all of the new 8+ meter groud based telescopes equipped with top notch spectrometers and Spitzer, will be a source of a lot of new local discoveries.

__________________
...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...