I Can't Get Enough About Zarmina

[caitri]

Which is, y'know, kind of ridiculous cos it's still twenty lightyears away and all. But still. Here's a great interview about the possibilities of the new planet.

But reading about it just makes me want to go reread so many old stories and stuff. I mean, think about it: We may have found a planet with life, or at least habitable conditions. Holy fuck, dude.

Let's go.

Comments

[mallorypen.livejournal.com]

*fistpump* ISN'T IT EXCITING?? The possibility of life on a place where our sun is just another faraway star!

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I know. And I'm wondering if it's at all possible that, directly because of this discovery, we'll start building ships for long term voyages to go exploring.

I mean, dude. The greatest disappointment of my life is that there AREN'T ships for me to go to different planets. YET.

That could change. And if it does, I really really hope they'll need librarians for the trip...

[mallorypen.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder why we don't have the deep-space ships yet, just to see with the human eye what we might be missing with our telescopes and hands-free probes.

Why wouldn't a new colony/deep-space voyage need a librarian? I mean, archivists are important for the purpose of keeping new information safe!

Designers, on the other hand...well, someone needs to make the new colony aesthetically pleasing, right?

[caitri.livejournal.com]

My theory is that everything has been about immediate return for the past forty some years. The immediate return of going to the moon was doing something before Russia did. The thing about deep space voyages is that there IS no immediate return, and with sciences cut every day and increasingly having to go to private companies who want even MORE immediate return, the likelihood of any such mission becomes smaller. I seriously fear that a major major planetary crisis will have to occur before they get to working on such ships. :/

[karraparis.livejournal.com]

It 'is , it is!! I still think they demotted Pluto so that they didn't have upgrade Alvin, Simon, and Dave. But that's just me.

[100wordspermin.livejournal.com]

It's super exciting and cool; I can't wait to find out more about it.

I did, however, laugh very very had at Stephen Colbert's take on it: "An Earth-like planet has been discovered 20 light years away. Great. Now even the Earth's job isn't safe."

[caitri.livejournal.com]

As you should. Cos Stephen Colbert is awesome.

[amine-eyes.livejournal.com]

It is so exciting! Just the knowledge that there really really might be life out there :D :D

*bounces with you*

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I know!!!!!!!!!!!

[szkoda.livejournal.com]

Jim and I are very excited about the possible influences this will have on today's Sci-Fi. Maybe we'll get some fun idealistic adventure stories!

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I would approve of this trend!!!!!

First time I've logged into my LiveJournal account in years...

[ndemcbad.livejournal.com]

About this planet, which I think is going to be called "Goldilocks" whether we like it or not--- the crowd has spoken. ("Zarmina's World" can be its romantic name, just as "Gliese 581g" is its technical name--- which name a character uses says a lot about that character's personality.)

It's been a long time since science fiction has had an existing, named planet with possibly livable conditions to visit. One thing I like about 50's sci-fi is that depictions of Mars were always variations on a theme--- a starkly beautiful desert, as was Venus--- a lush yet dangerous jungle. When it became unreasonable to believe that either of these could support life, stories went off to other solar systems where there were no limits on the possibilities, but this often meant that they were vaguely Earth-like with less focus on the geography.

But now we might start seeing a bunch of stories about a planet 20 light-years away (how long would that take with a thermonuclear-powered rocket on full blast the whole way there--- accelerating and decelerating? How long, relativistically, for the people on board?). Its sun is giant and red in the sky, and doesn't rotate. Maybe the only good place to live is in the twilight, where you can see the other planets as hard, bright specks in the purple sky. The weather patterns would be very different from Earth--- all radiating to and from the Noon Pole? Gravity is strong, somewhere between two and three Earth gravities. It should be relatively easy to find out if this solar system has a lot of heavy metals like uranium or not. If so, it could have geothermal hot-spots. Lots of things to anchor a story with, more on the science fiction side than fantasy.

Hmmm...

Signed,
The Notorious Dr. Evil McBad (ndemcbad)

Re: First time I've logged into my LiveJournal account in years...

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I forget where I read an article about this, but it was basically supposing that the winds from the hot side of the planet would move heat to the dark side, so that humans could quite possibly live on the dark part of the planet in a near-twilight.

Have I *mentioned* I want to go there NOW??

[gadgetorious.livejournal.com]

Just in the nick of time. With the weather we're having here, I'm sure the end is extremely fucking nigh.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

You are ever cheerful.

[gadgetorious.livejournal.com]

Do I detect a subtle hint of sarcasm?