Alien Earths

The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos

Lisa Kaltenegger 2024 | 534.35 KAL Beaverton Library

Director of Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell asst. prof. astronomy

• p55 "We would realize the Sun was gone only when the news of the explosion reached our planet -- in the form of the absent sunlight -- eight minutes later": explosion? The Sun-facing side of the Earth would be vaporized by a Solar explosion.

• p56 Sun evolution to red giant, "expel outer layers" ... some of which would be gravitationally captured by the ram surface (orbitwards) of the Earth and slow it in it's orbit. That said, the outer layers are a tiny fraction of the Sun's mass, and the Earth's "capture zone" out to the Lagrange point radius is 1% of the earth orbit radius, so we can expect the earth to capture perhaps 1/4 * (1%)^2 (area of capture disk compared to area of "earth orbit radius sphere", or 25ppm of the expelled mass. Probably would not slow it much - except that the solar corona will expand beyond Earth radius, so the Earth will orbit through it. Definitely "Citation Needed" ... which this book lacks.

• p196 That is how we do science; we find something, then we challenge every aspect of it to ensure we're not seeing something we want to see rather than what is actually there. Every scientist knows the drill. This scientific method lets you distinguish what is there and what is not, step by occasionally painful step. Often you disprove theories you have worked on for years. Theories that would have made the front pages of newspapers worldwide -- if they had been proven.

.p198 Ted Chiang 1998 novella Story of your Life, 2016 movie Arrival