NASA OFFERS GOOD NEWS FROM OTHER PLANETS

Hubble telescope image courtesy NASA

Earth-bound biologists, ecologists and climatologists have had little good news to offer us lately. But astrophysicists with their eyes on the skies continue to make new, more wondrous discoveries in exoplanetary science, assuring us that our own little solar system is not alone in the galaxy.

The older-generation Kepler and Hubble telescopes, which gave us our first glimpses of planets circling distance stars, have begun to reach their limit of usefulness. Kepler went dark last October, after almost a decade of observation from Earth orbit; Hubble remains fully functional after five in-orbit repairs but will eventually be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope due to be launched in 2021. 

NASA’s newest tool in the hunt for exoplanets is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which launched last April and began observations in July, 2018. In its first four months of operation, TESS found eight confirmed new planets and 320 more as-yet unconfirmed possibilities, according to Xu Chelsea Huang of MIT.

Observations from TESS are stretching our understanding of planetary formation and what a “planet” can look like. Some of TESS’s discoveries include HD21749b, only 52 light years away, with the lowest temperature known for a planet orbiting so close to a bright, nearby star. 

“If we want to study atmospheres of cool planets, this is the one to start with,” Huang said. The planet has a thick atmosphere, but Huang’s use of the term “cool” is relative: the planet is likely too hot and gassy to support life. Its orbit takes 36 Earth days, the longest known orbital period for planets transiting within 100 light-years of bright stars.

Or take the denizens of the star system Pi Mensae. Pi Mensae c orbits its star every 6.27 days and has a density similar to water; Pi Mensae b has a mass ten times that of Jupiter that orbits the star every 5.7 years in a wildly swinging ellipse—sometimes as close as that of Earth, sometimes as far as that of Jupiter.

Huang describes another planet TESS found, LHS 3844b, as “likely a lava world.” It has a radius just 1.3 times Earth’s, but it swings around its planet every 11 hours, giving it a surface temperature of about 540° C.

All of which goes to show that the universe is stranger by far than anyone could have predicted. These are only the newest planets among the thousands that have been discovered over the last decade by scientists using NASA instruments. And that can only be good news.

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post taken from “Less than a year after launch, TESS is already finding bizarre worlds,” by Lisa Grossman, Science News, January 8, 2019.

CHASING THE FUTURE: TECH AND SFR

As writers of science fiction romance it’s our job to envision the future and the technology that will make that future possible. How will we get around? What gadgets will make our lives easier—or more complex? What aspects of technology will threaten our privacy or freedom or humanity or survival?

Those kinds of questions about the nature and limits of technology are a huge part of the fun of writing SFR.  They are also a huge part of the challenge. Because in this age of tremendous technological growth and change, we no sooner construct an elaborate world full of shiny tech toys than some garage genius has actually made it happen. Staying ahead of the tech game means running full out all the time.

Just take a look at Greta’s post on interstellar travel. A few years back, actually traveling to the stars via warp drive or hyperdrive or jumping into a wormhole or whatever seemed impossibly out of reach. Now, researchers are closing in on the theoretical foundations for these crazy star-hopping ideas. 

As few as ten or fifteen years ago, you could find plenty of reputable scientists to say that Earth could be the only planet capable of sustaining life in the galaxy. Then more powerful telescopes and better analytics allowed us to find the first planet in that “Goldilocks” zone just far enough and not too far from its parent star to allow the possibility of liquid water (thus life as we know it). Then we found more planets. And more. Now everyone agrees: there must be millions of Earth-like planets out there. New technology has allowed us to recognize a new truth.

I’m not that old, but in my lifetime, I’ve seen computers go from the size of a room, storing data on reels of metal tape, to the size of an iPod or watch, storing data in a chip the size of a baby’s fingernail. We’ve sent manned teams to the moon and back and established a permanent presence in orbit around the Earth. We’ve sent probes to Mars and out into the solar system and down into the depths of the oceans. We’ve made Captain Kirk’s communicator and Dr. McCoy’s medical scanner everyday realities. And don’t even get me started on movies and television!

Some of these things were predicted by SF writers, many were not. Strangely, it seems the less bound by the “rules” of prevailing science the writers were, the more accurate they were in their predictions. The STAR TREK Original Series writers, creating without much concern for how stuff really worked, were a gold mine of future technology simply because they inspired young tech nerds to invent what they saw on screen. (The inventor of the cell phone and the researchers working on warp drive have all admitted that TREK was their inspiration.) Writers of the Golden Age of science fiction took us to outer space without a thought as to how we got there. Their readers took us to the moon with the U.S. space program.

Like Greta, I don’t worry too much about whether the system I choose for interstellar travel (and communication and a dozen other things) works given current scientific knowledge. I take pains to make sure it is internally consistent and logical, given the science I have posited for the world I have created. Who knows? One day that world may exist.  And wouldn’t that be fun?

HAPPY 25^th BIRTHDAY, HUBBLE!

Speaking of technologies that changed our view of the universe—25 years ago, a new kind of telescope was assembled in orbit, beyond the interference of our atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope has treated us to some spectacular images over the years, as well as quite a few startling discoveries. Enjoy these images from the Hubble, courtesy of NASA!

Cheers, Donna