Month: August 2008
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Poem du Jour
But now you object that, really, this poem is just an advanced formed of verbal bullying. Well, yeah. What did you think love poetry is? Pretty to look at, lovely to hear, and absolutely ruthless in its intentions.
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Watchmen Poster Comparison
Remembered how I said those awesome Watchmen posters are very delibrate recreations of the original DC house ads that ran in the comics?
Well, someone created a Watchmen Poster Comparison just for this.
[via LMG]
Hot super-Earths could host life after all (New Scientist) (it’s a July story; I found it through a blog that linked to my Watchmen smiley):
Massive, rocky worlds called ‘super-Earths’ – even those orbiting searingly close to their stars – may provide the right conditions for life, recent research suggests.
Super-Earths orbiting close to their stars, for example, experience gravitational tugs that keep them ‘tidally locked’ to their hosts. That means one side of such a planet always faces its star, the way the Moon always shows the same side to Earth.
Astronomers previously assumed such planets would be two-faced worlds of fire and ice, with one half molten and the other frozen.
But new models show that if a tidally locked super-Earth has an atmosphere at least as dense as Earth’s, strong winds could transport heat from its hot side to its cold side. Similarly, if the planet has a global ocean, its currents could help spread the warmth.
This effect still wouldn’t offset the intense heat the planets would experience at close distances to Sun-like stars. But it means super-Earths could potentially host life as close as 0.05 astronomical units away from dim stars known as red dwarfs, which make up about 85% of the stars in the galaxy (for comparison, Mercury lies 0.38 AU away from the Sun).
And in some ways, super-Earths might even be more likely to support life than their Earth-sized cousins, scientists say.
Recent research suggests that super-Earths will experience more plate tectonic activity than smaller rocky worlds.
On Earth, plate tectonics – the shifting and colliding of continental plates – is necessary for life.Super-Earths should have larger molten cores and should generate more heat than Earth-sized worlds, Valencia told New Scientist. This could cause more vigorous convection in the planets’ mantles and create thinner plates that slip and slide more easily.
So, let’s recap: a terrestrial planet 15 times more massive than the Earth, orbiting a dim red star, with a large molten core and stronger tectonic activity… that sounds a lot like Krypton. No wonder they call them Super Earths. Does one of the life forms on such a world proclaim unheeded prophecies of doom, while building a space craft to rescue its son from the dying planet?
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