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Other Earths

By drorzel on December 29, 2006.

Speaking of James Nicoll and space news, he also notes the launch of the COROT satellite, which is designed to look for extrasolar planets. The detection limit for COROT is supposed to be something like twice the mass of the Earth, so there's some reasonable expectation that it should shed light on planetary systems more like our own than the oddballs that have been detected so far. I also agree with James's prediction in comments:

[T]he first detection by this system of a roughly Earth-massed planet around a sunlike star will involve a "who ordered that?" moment as the new world turns out not to comform to our expectations in some notable way.

While I'm talking about other planets, I should also throw a link to the Planetocopia site, found via a sidebar link at Making Light. This includes a collection of alternate Earths, modelled in great detail, with careful attention paid to the effects of geography on climate. What would happen to Earth if both poles were in the ocean? Or if you tilted the planet to maximize the east-west landmass?

It's fascinating stuff. I don't know enough climate science to say whether it's sensible, but the author has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and it makes for interesting reading.

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Astronomy
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SF

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