Though even the nearest star is too far away for a planet drifting across its disc to be seen, astronomers can detect the drop in starlight caused by the obstruction.

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He believes the Internet is in the process of being geographically indexed (known as "geotagging"), which should allow for much richer applications, such as using your cell phone to find the nearest four-star hotel, get a cab and so on.

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Mr. Scharf makes vivid the mind-boggling nature of the universe by noting, for instance, that the space between a star like the sun and its nearest neighbor is 30 million times the diameter of the sun itself and that there are 10 billion stars in the universe for every human being who has ever walked the Earth.

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But after I struck out there, I looked to the nearest big city and its newspaper, the Kansas City Star, now owned by the McClatchy Company.

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