Time for an astro-thought experiment. You belong to a super-advanced civilization with the ability to shape the cosmos as you wish. You can move around black holes, stars, planets, comets and moons (like the builders of the ultimate planetary systems). What would your civilization plan for big celebrations? What are their ‘fireworks’? What astronomical phenomena … More Cosmic fireworks!
The time capsule must serve as a beacon. Any other civilization that detects it should immediately suspect that it is of artificial origin. And it needs to survive for countless billions of years. … More A cosmic time capsule
This post starts off with some world-building, jumps into eclipses and moons’ orbits, and finishes with a brand new Kalgash system that Isaac Asimov would be proud of (dropped into darkness every 2000 years!). More than one planet can share the same orbit around a star. This is not big news: the concept of Trojan … More Cohorts of stars orbiting black holes (with planets, moons, and eclipses!)
This post is an adventure in world-building. I use N-body simulations to find orbital configurations of planetary systems that (I think) are completely new, pretty awesome and unexpected. It involves cohorts of co-orbital planets… … More Cohorts of co-orbital planets
A while back I wrote a series of posts called How planets die. It was about all the ways planets can be sterilized or destroyed. I even made a “planetary death scale”. Gruesome stuff. Let’s liven things up with a new mini-series on Second-Chance Planets. These are planets that get a second chance at life. … More Second chance planets: Iceball worlds that thaw out when their stars go red giant
One star. Two planets share an orbit, with one following a horseshoe-shaped path around the other. Boom! … More Real-life Sci-Fi World 14: A horseshoe planetary system
Welcome to what might very well be the culmination of the Building the Ultimate Solar System series. Teaser: the system built in this post could also be called the Ultimate Engineered Black Hole Eyeball Ringworld Solar System (if you’re really not into the whole brevity thing). Our Solar System has one habitable planet. A few … More The Million Earth Solar System
What happens when the central body in a planetary system is replaced with a million-Sun black hole? … More The Black Hole Ultimate Solar System
Planets are kind of my thing. But black holes are awesome too. I mean, they can just suck you right in… (I will never apologize for my bad jokes!) I want to bring black holes and planets together. In this post, I’ll first introduce black holes. Then we’ll build the Black Hole Solar System. In … More The Black Hole Solar System
Let’s find out what it takes to build a system in which a planet remains in perpetual daylight, except for once every few thousand years…. … More Asimov’s Kalgash: a planet in permanent daytime (for real this time!)
PLANETPLANET 