Kid Rings Up $30,000 Cell Phone Bill!

What seemed like a good idea at the time turned into a whoppin’ cell phone bill for a California dad. In October, Ted Estarija thought he’d do something nice by adding his teenage son to his cell plan.

Estarija’s son is 14 and a high school freshman, so Estarija thought he had better up his “anytime” minutes with Verizon Wireless.

“I was on the 900 anytime minute plan, which was about $50 to $60 a month. I upgraded my plan to 1,400 minutes and added a text option, so I was expecting about $100 to $120 a month for my bill,” he says.

But Estarija was stunned when he was hit with a $22,000 bill on Dec. 1. “My instant thought was that something had to be wrong—the pricing has got to be off,” he shares. “I did call Verizon, and they called me back on several occasions saying they were still looking into it.”

Ten days went by and Estarija thought his incredible cell phone bill would make a good local news story in Hayward, Calif., which is along the San Francisco Bay. He contacted KTVU/Fox 2 news, but the story soon went nationwide on Good Morning America, CNN radio and in newspapers everywhere!

What wasn’t covered on Estarija’s plan was broadband access, which includes Internet access and downloads. From Oct. 15 through Nov. 15, his son had used about 1.4 gigabytes (GB), which added up to almost $22,000 in overage charges, according to Estarija. He called Verizon and suspended his son’s phone temporarily.

“I kept my cool. It was either going to ruin my credit or they were going to settle this somehow,” Estarija says.

Thankfully, Verizon waived the charges. But then came another call. “I thought everything was done, but there was another portion of the bill from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1,” Estarija recalls. “It turns out there was another $8,000 that was gonna appear on my next bill.”

Verizon offered to also credit that $8,000 for the next bill. “The total amount for all this confusion was $30,000—I think I broke the record!” Estarija adds.

His son is still waiting for his phone to be turned on again.

A Watery Super-Earth Discovered!

Using several small telescopes on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, astronomers discovered a planet they believe is covered with oceans!

In the science weekly Nature, Dr. David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his team shared their big find late last month.

Known as GJ 1214b, this planet has a diameter about 2.7 times that of Earth and closely orbits a dim red dwarf star. Because of its larger size and Earth-like characteristics, scientists call it a super-Earth!

“This is a great project,” points out Dr. Renu Malhotra, a professor at the Lunar and Interplanetary Sciences Lab at the University of Arizona. “Dave Charbonneau was setting up these small telescopes that any amateur astronomer can own these days.”

There are eight telescopes on Mount Hopkins that monitor a few thousand small stars in the neighborhood of the solar system, Dr. Malhotra says. By “neighborhood,” she means relatively close—only about 235 trillion miles away! The universe is much, much larger.

The team believes GJ 1214b is mostly water, which is an important ingredient for supporting life. But the planet closely orbits its dwarf star. In fact, Dr. Charbonneau and his team think the surface of its oceans are about 400° F, which probably gives it a thick, steamy atmosphere and makes it just a bit too hot for life.

Dr. Malhotra says these discoveries are important in answering some of the most basic questions like “Where do we come from? Are there others like us? Where are we going? And is there life outside of Earth?”

“(GJ 1214b) is only about a third of the density of Earth. From that, we can use our reasoning to figure out what it can be made of—like rocks, metals and water,” Dr. Malhotra says. “It’s a guessing game, but a very intelligent game.” GJ 1214b is mostly water with a rock core.