In the continued tapdance around the real truth about the Hidden Frontier, yesterday we were treated to the first official discovery of an "Earth-like" planet; true, it's sort of a giraffe to our platypus, considering it sits in near (O rly? But it's what was writ) tidal lock with its sun, one year per day and both of them 37 Earth-days long. "Tidal lock" means there's a dark pole and a noon pole, one hot enough to melt babbitt and searingly bright, the other dark and cold, resulting in howling winds pumped 'round the planet, haunting the human-habitable lands of dawn and evening at the terminator. If there's liquid water, there will be life, we're told, a hundred-percent chance; and I'd guess 90 percent chance it won't be anything very familiar-looking.
Of course it's going to be named "Goldilocks."
And you thought my bemused mentions of the naming conventions of the space-fled human civilization known as the Far Edge were fictional? Further, deponent sayeth not.
(BTW, there's an update coming; I've been working through lunch at my payin' job, which means little-to-no writing time. Plus I started another narrative thread, a fascinating diversion to follow after the current story arc. Nevertheless, I'm very nearly to the chapter end -- and you may recognize some of the characters).
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P.S.: Hint to the spellchecker, "babbitt" with a lower-case b came before "Babbitt" with an upper-case B. The character was named for the metal. So howcome you know the second but not the first?
Hmmm, how can you have life if all the water, which is somehow the right Ph (just how long was that litmus strip?), is frozen solid?
ReplyDeleteThis is just silly. Methinks truckloads of taxpayer money are on the line somehow.
Shootin' Buddy
WV: spackis, this new planet, full of life, is space kissed.
-100 points for not carefully reading the part where they said "liquid water".
ReplyDeleteWV: "spastra", "ad spastra, per aspera": Through adversity to nerdity.
"Through adveristy to nerdity" sounds backwards, to me.
ReplyDelete"liquid water"
ReplyDeleteUmmm, yeah, but on the WLS interview yesterday the $cientist said it was all frozen.
Gee, who to believe, the lying media or the lying $cientists?
I chose to disbelieve both.
Shootin' Buddy
Too bad the Anointed One has Decreed that NASA's only role will be to look for Ozone Hole Malfs and launch Spy Satellites over Wichita to look for those on the Secret Gooberment Terrorist Watch List. Oh, well, guess the Russians can get there first, since their Anointed One has Decreed that they must build new Space Launch Facilities and claim all the Universe for the Rodnina.
ReplyDelete"I chose to disbelieve both."
ReplyDeleteSo it's turtles all the way down then?
Temps of 160 above at the noon pole and 25 below at the far side, and Scientist on the radio sez "no liquid water?"
ReplyDeleteBetter turn in yer lab coat, mister.
"So it's turtles all the way down then?"
ReplyDeleteRight, frozen teenage mutant ninja turtles. This means, of course, that the French should be the first colonists.
We round up all the frogs and shoot them into space. We can only hope that they run into space creatures out of Aliens, or they, thanks to NASA-quality $cience, they plunge into the sun.
Win-win-win!
Shootin' Buddy
But before the metal babbit there was the inventor of the metal Isaac Babbitt.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "truckloads of taxpayer money?" Look, anything they don't spend on securing the borders and maintaining the roads is waste, but--
ReplyDeleteThe space program is a tiny part of the Federal budget. The Coast Guard costs more. Compared to their big social-engineering programs, it's a blip. But it's a blip with a billboard.