"This artist rendering provided by the European South Observatory shows some of the 32 new planets astronomers found outside our solar system." This is an example of a mesofact. According to Wikipedia, "as of January 2010, 429 extrasolar planets have been confirmed."
"Introducing the mesofact"
Source: Samuel Arbesman, The Boston Globe, February 28, 2010
"When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, and facts that fluctuate constantly, like the temperature or the stock market close.
"But in between there is a third kind: facts that change slowly. These are facts which we tend to view as fixed, but which shift over the course of a lifetime. For example: What is Earth’s population? I remember learning 6 billion, and some of you might even have learned 5 billion. Well, it turns out it’s about 6.8 billion."
Comment: A good point. In addition to things we know that are true, and the things we "know" that are not true, we can add the things we "know" that were once true but have changed! Thanks to Julianne for the tip on this article. JAD
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