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capri0mniSo, yesterday, I got into a discussion with vilakins in kerravonsen's reaction post to the recent Doctor Who Christmas Special, especially the line: "Christmas is always in winter."
ORLY?! asked all those Who fans who watched the Christmas Special after a Summertime Christmas celebration, for reals, right here on Earth. Andvilikins and I launched into a long, tangential, conversation about what sort of planetary factors go into what sorts of festivals the intelligent beings might celebrate, and what happens when you superimpose histories and politics on top of that.
And what about planets without any axial tilt?
And that's the reason I love the show, and the fans it attracts. The very premise and the format of the show prompts these sorts of questions, and gets all sort of juicy conversations going. My brain feeds on Juicy Conversations (and chocolate).
And late last night, that discussion reawakened a set of memories in my brain about two very real, nonfiction exoplanets that have been discovered just within the five years, both orbiting the same red dwarf star 20.5 lightyears from us: Gliese 581c and Gliese 581g (two wikipedia articles).
Both planets appear to be Earth-like, and to have conditions suitable to sustain the presence of liquid water and thick atmospheres that would moderate the extreme variations in the planets' surface temperatures. Therefore, these planets are more likely then not to support the presence of life as we'd recognize it.
Both planets are probably also without much, if any axial tilt. And both (like our own moon) are very likely tidally locked, so that the length of a day equals the length of a year. So: yeah -- right in our own galatic backyard, two planets that have both a "north" and a "south" but also planets where "north and south" probably wouldn't mean much, culturally speaking, if any cultures live there (but "Light, Dark and In-Between" would).
What I take away from all this:
Doods!! I mean Dooooods!!! We've only started our search for exoplanets fifteen years ago, and just four years in, we already found a planet that looks comfortable. And just three years after that, we find another one in the same system.
And our sample size is really small: just 420 out of the billions of stars in our galaxy. And we only picked those because they're close to us, and relatively easy for us to observe.
As Stephen Vogt, et alia (the authors of the paper in which discovery of Gliese 581g was announced) put it:
Dooods!!!eleventy!!!one!!
Eleventy!
(squee)
And also: If, in our own solar system, if Mars also fostered life at some point in our planets' mutual history (even if it no longer does), than maybe two life-supporting planets per star system is also relatively common.
What sort of implications would that have in science fiction stories?
An interview with Steve Vogt, about the (unconfirmed, yet) discovery of planet "Gliese 581g" on YouTube (in September of this year)
His conclusion: "Learn to wrap your mind around the incredibleness of the Universe, and it will make you happy if you do that."
All together now (with the hand motions & dance, if you want):
"Intellect and Romance over brute force and cynicism!"
vilakins in kerravonsen's reaction post to the recent Doctor Who Christmas Special, especially the line: "Christmas is always in winter."ORLY?! asked all those Who fans who watched the Christmas Special after a Summertime Christmas celebration, for reals, right here on Earth. And
vilikins and I launched into a long, tangential, conversation about what sort of planetary factors go into what sorts of festivals the intelligent beings might celebrate, and what happens when you superimpose histories and politics on top of that. And what about planets without any axial tilt?
And that's the reason I love the show, and the fans it attracts. The very premise and the format of the show prompts these sorts of questions, and gets all sort of juicy conversations going. My brain feeds on Juicy Conversations (and chocolate).
And late last night, that discussion reawakened a set of memories in my brain about two very real, nonfiction exoplanets that have been discovered just within the five years, both orbiting the same red dwarf star 20.5 lightyears from us: Gliese 581c and Gliese 581g (two wikipedia articles).
Both planets appear to be Earth-like, and to have conditions suitable to sustain the presence of liquid water and thick atmospheres that would moderate the extreme variations in the planets' surface temperatures. Therefore, these planets are more likely then not to support the presence of life as we'd recognize it.
Both planets are probably also without much, if any axial tilt. And both (like our own moon) are very likely tidally locked, so that the length of a day equals the length of a year. So: yeah -- right in our own galatic backyard, two planets that have both a "north" and a "south" but also planets where "north and south" probably wouldn't mean much, culturally speaking, if any cultures live there (but "Light, Dark and In-Between" would).
What I take away from all this:
Doods!! I mean Dooooods!!! We've only started our search for exoplanets fifteen years ago, and just four years in, we already found a planet that looks comfortable. And just three years after that, we find another one in the same system.
And our sample size is really small: just 420 out of the billions of stars in our galaxy. And we only picked those because they're close to us, and relatively easy for us to observe.
As Stephen Vogt, et alia (the authors of the paper in which discovery of Gliese 581g was announced) put it:
(Quote)
This detection, coupled with statistics of the incompleteness of present-day precision RV surveys for volume-limited samples of stars in the immediate solar neighborhood suggests that eta_Earth could well be on the order of a few tens of percent.
(unquote)
Dooods!!!eleventy!!!one!!
Eleventy!
(squee)
And also: If, in our own solar system, if Mars also fostered life at some point in our planets' mutual history (even if it no longer does), than maybe two life-supporting planets per star system is also relatively common.
What sort of implications would that have in science fiction stories?
An interview with Steve Vogt, about the (unconfirmed, yet) discovery of planet "Gliese 581g" on YouTube (in September of this year)
His conclusion: "Learn to wrap your mind around the incredibleness of the Universe, and it will make you happy if you do that."
All together now (with the hand motions & dance, if you want):
"Intellect and Romance over brute force and cynicism!"
