Geek Blog

I woke up this morning to the news that three new planets outside the solar system have been discovered. They’ve even been sort of photographed! Space types always say they have “photographs” of something, but their definition of a photograph and a sane person’s definition of a photograph are two entirely different things.

Basically,  one of the pictures is incomprehensible and the other is some digital imaging with bright, sparkly colors rather than, say, something you might take with a camera. Fine, though, at least there are images of them. I remember the first time that a planet outside the solar system was discovered. I was sitting on the floor of a hotel room in Hawaii and got so excited when I heard the news. My little geek heart leaped at the thought and at being vindicated about planets and the possibility of life elsewhere. Oddly, I also visited the Mauna Kea observatory on that trip, and that’s one of the observatories that made this discovery. I also fainted from lack of oxygen and had to be carried into the wuss cabin and given a mask, but that’s another story.

Amazingly, there were plenty of people back then who claimed that there were probably no other planets and that it would be highly unlikely for other solar systems to form planets the way that we know them. They were stupid. They are the same people who now concede that there are other planets but that there is no way that life could exist on any of them.

I love how in this article about the discovery, the astronomers involved are quick to say that although we know nothing about these planets, we don’t really even have a proper picture of them, we have no idea what they are made of, how old they are or anything other than their approximate size, they do know that life could not possibly exist on them. Right.

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