The "Super-Earth" topical session at the Astrobiology Science Conference wasn't quite the "Woodstock" of astrobio, but it was pretty good.
There were many a famous pundit sitting on the floor between rows of seats or crammed standing up against the wall when came in to the room thinking they could do the usual trick of catching a talk here and there in different sessions, casually wandering in-and-out.
The Super-Earth session was scheduled in one of the small meeting rooms, with seats for about 50, but closer to 100 people turned up.
The science is still wide open, but there is some convergence that Super-Earths will tend to have plate tectonics, all things being equal, and may have interesting water rich surfaces with moderate temperatures in many circumstances.
Volatile delivery and persistence will be an interesting issue for the low mass stellar hosts. Some work to do there.
The "Origins of Life" group at Harvard certainly seems to be doing some interesting things with some interesting people. And, yes, I am sooooooo jealous.
We can detect the Super-Earths and they may be habitable.
Scientists go wild.
None of the few currently known Super-Earths are likely to be habitable, as we currently and narrowly understand habitability, but there are hints of whispers of rumours that certain Europeans may have detections of some interesting candidate planets that may be published in the not too distant future...
Reading between the lines, I am guessing someone has a "goldilocks" planet - a Super-Earth around a low mass star, square in the habitable zone.
That would stir things up a bit. We'll know soon enough.
Question is whether it is a transit detection or if found by blind radial velocity search.
Anyone heard any CoRoT whispers?
On a more serious note, we emerged at the break of the Super-Earth session to find the coffee was running out.
Fortunately a quick thinking and energetic senior NASA manager showed some serious initiative and managed to extract significant quantities of caffeinated hot brew, by careful reorientation of the relative direction between the local normal to the gravitational equipotential and the long axis of the structural vessel containing the aromatic organic solute.
Not only did this save the second part of the session for some of us, thus serving the user community, it also maximized utilization of taxpayer provided resources and minimized waster.
It was black, hot and from starbucks. Of course.
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