Peter Williams Sweeps to Victory

Peter Williams swept to victory in the Teignmouth Central Ward by-election held on Monday 5th February, with 438 votes, increasing the majority from 44 votes to 73 votes over the second place Conservative with 365. The by-election was caused by the sad passing of veteran Liberal Democrat councillor Roy Phillips. Roy won the Central Ward by-election held in September 2016 with daughter Julie. At the age of 91, Roy became the oldest by-election victor in the UK. Peter has pledged to work for Teignmouth and "the prosperity and happiness of our town" will be his first priority. Clearly the voters of Central Ward have rejected the proposal to build 255 houses at Higher Exeter Road. The balance between the parties on Teignmouth Town Council remains unchanged with 6 Conservatives, 5 Liberal Democrats and 1 Independent.

Billions of Exoplanets Outside our Galaxy

Have scientists found billions of exoplanets outside our Galaxy? A group of researchers at the University of Oklahoma has just announced the discovery of a large population of free-floating planets in a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away. Their results were published February 2 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aaa5fb/meta Detecting planets in our part of the galaxy using the transit method or spectrometry, however quasar microlensing is great for sampling more distant stellar populations. Quasar microlensing provides a means to probe extragalactic planets in the lens galaxy, by studying the microlensing properties of emission close to the event horizon of the supermassive black hole of the background quasar, using the current generation telescopes.