Thursday 24 May 2018

periastron

Via accomplished internet caretaker Miss Cellania, we’re introduced to the intriguing notion that we are most likely to first detect signs of extra-terrestrial life on worlds tidally-locked (like the Moon to the Earth or Mercury in relation to the Sun) to their host stars.

Rather than necessarily being restricted to a so-called Goldielocks zone of habitability (not so chauvinistic to accommodate life as we know it and our assumptions but rather a sanctuary wherein conditions are stable enough to foster multiple generations of an organism and let Nature runs its course) these exoplanents, dubbed eyeball worlds, because while one hemisphere always faces the star and is arid—perhaps inhospitably so—and the other side is eternally frozen and always experiences night, there’s a narrow meridian that rings the pupil of the planet that could provide the right conditions for life to flourish—in between the two extremes. Eyeball planets are potentially plentiful and might have a bit of the right real estate. Learn more at the links above.