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On February 12-16, 2009, the Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers was held in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. With the theme "Our Planet and its Life: Origins and Futures", it recognizes Charles Darwin's birth and 200th Anniversary. It also celebrates the 150th anniversary of his book, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection."  Honoring the fields of science, technology, and engineering, a fascination with Charles Darwin is still going on with intense research and a unique evolutionary path.

Over 175 seminars, symposia, and workshops for career development combined with lectures—topical and plenary—given by the world's leading engineers and scientists offer a wide arrangement to the 10,000 participants and national/international members. The theme's foundation is the dynamic forces of nature with surrounding evolution, with evidence from Earth's past of four billion years—through the atmospheric composition, climate, different forms of organisms, and in the many continents. The fields of neuroscience, astronomy, physics, linguistics and mathematics play a major part in this evolution to tell us about Earth and the entire Universe.

A fascinating discussion at the meeting was of planets similar to Earth, with life-sustaining conditions in our own galactic neighborhood, based on the studies of US astrophysicists. They stated that there are a couple dozen solar-types located within 10 to 30 light-years of the sun, but have not been definitely located yet according to Alan Boss, the astrophysicist from the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Light years play a major role in the study of the Universe, with one light year equaling the distance that light travels in one year (hence the name "light year")  at the speed of 186,000 miles per second and at 5.88 trillion miles.  Alan Boss says that NASA's Kepler space telescope will be launched this coming March 5th will be able to view these imitation Earths, or the French European COROT telescope-equipped satellite which has been in orbit since 2006 as they are already being found without them.

Once these planets are found by these two telescopes, the next developed telescopes will be easier to develop which will be able to view more detail of the planets. The upcoming images will tell our scientists whether or not they contain methane and oxygen, and whether or not they are inhabited by what will be needed by life, such as microbes.  As far as the minute chance of finding an extra-terrestrial civilization, the scientists feel it is worth delving into. A lot of the reasons for the upcoming searches are the effects of climate changes and the survival of our present species.

Charles Darwin is a man to be honored, someone who single-handedly changed the way the world looks at what is natural within it in a new look at evolution. Scandalizing the entire world, it stirred the thinking processes of thinking man to look at natural selection and the survival of the fittest—a process which is still going on today.  With Darwin's book, "The Origin of Species" came out in 1859 to be sold out in one day, it was printed in 1,250 first edition copies at a price of $42.76. Today, this same book sold at Christie's Auction House for $194,500. This was quite a thing for a young man who was initially trained as a doctor two hundred years ago in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, but joined the clergy as he could not stand the sight of blood. As we know today, his studies would over time transfer to the changing world of evolution which he would eventually state to a close friend, "simply believing in evolution seems like confessing to a murder."