Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
Keeping on with my exoplanet series. First of all, some updates in their number, that keep changing – due to new observations, discoveries and so on. As of April, 9th 2015, more than1900 exoplanets have been located (the latest statistics give 1953…
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Today is my first birthday as a blogger. The Earthian Hivemind was online first on December, 16 2013, just giving a flash report on Yutu, the Chinese Jade Rabbit on the moon. Only few lines, but I had to start…
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Post number five in the exoplanet series, covering this time the important aspect of size. (In case you are interested to other variables examined so far, here they are: habitability, age, distance, temperature). After that in April 2014 a Earth-size planet…
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Post number four in the exoplanet series. Among variables considered so far, planetary habitability, age and distance have taken the spotlight. Today I’m going to talk about another important factor, especially because it has a direct impact on habitability: temperature. There are…
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Keeping on the exoplanet series, after the general introduction and the presentation of the oldest one (so far) discovered, today I am going to address another interesting characteristic: distance. Distance matters, no discussion about it. I have already mentioned the importance of the…
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Some weeks ago I talked about the incredible variety of exoplanets, which we have just began to discover. I have also mentioned what we normally find and we can expect to find according to astrophysics, including the most coveted targets – i.e., planets in…
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I have started since a couple of months or so to contribute to a great blog called Serious Wonder, one of the most innovative and amazing web outlets I have found on futurism, new technologies and, yes, my favourite subjects,…
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I have already spoken a few times here about the challenges of worldbulding in SF, both in terms of designing working planetary systems – around a single or binary star – and imagining celestial bodies where life is at least…
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“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide…
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Ever desired to destroy entire planetary systems? Now you can, with the online game Super Planet Crash, available (and playable) at http://www.stefanom.org/spc. You may actually find that building a functioning system is more fun than just provoking celestial catastrophies. And here…
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