In search of vulcanoids.

• Position: E-Buzz - Brief Article

You gotta' give it to astronomers Alan Stern and Dan Durda of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder for chasing their dream.

CNN reported the pair took a ride in a NASA fighter jet in late September in hopes of taking pictures of vulcanolds, a band of space rocks thought to circle the sun between it and the planet Mercury. The asteroids are named after Vulcan the Roman god of fire and metal but they've never been seen before by humans -- merely hypothesized by scientists going back to the 19th century.

"People have been looking for them for a number of years," said Durda, "actually for a century now." But the rocks are so small -- some...