Sometimes removing the outer atmosphere from a Neptune-like planet can reveal an ocean paradise! … More Second chance planets 2: Pre-terraformed, habitable evaporated cores of mini-Neptunes
Planets orbit stars. Moons orbit planets. But no moons have their own moons (let’s call them submoons). Why is that? … More Can moons have moons?
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
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!)
Isaac Asimov‘s sci-fi stories are one reason I wanted to become an astronomer (I talked about this in a recent interview). So I’m a little sad to shoot down a classic…. Nightfall is a classic Asimov story (and later, novel). The residents of a planet called Kalgash live in system of six stars that leaves … More Real-life Sci-Fi world 11: Kalgash, a planet in permanent daytime (from Asimov’s Nightfall)
Trojan planets are the best! I am a big fan. I love the idea of two planets sharing the same orbit around a star. To me, it’s where physics meets magic. (Remember, we’re talking planets not condoms! See here for a little refresher, and here for another article about Trojans). As a planet orbits a … More The Ultimate Trojan 2-star planetary system
This planet and star, now, you really should know ‘em.
And that’s why I’m bothering writing this poem. … More Is our closest neighbor an Eyeball planet? A Proxima poem
What happens when good planetary systems go bad…. … More The biggest tragedy in the history of the Universe
We Earthlings have just one Sun. Tatooine has two. Wouldn’t it be even cooler with three Suns in the sky? Or four or five or twenty? Several extra-solar planets have been found in triple- and even quadruple-star systems (for example, GJ 667C and PH1b). But none of these planets has more than two Suns because … More An Earth with five Suns in the sky
