Nearly everything that is known about exoplanets has been learned in this century. Apparently, all four outer planets in the Solar System have rings, not just Saturn, but so far only one ringed exoplanet has been detected either because such planets are rare or because they are difficult to detect.
Sf writers have to update their premises in the light of new scientific data. When I started reading sf in the 1960s, it had not been confirmed that there were any exoplanets. Other galaxies were recognised as such only ninety nine years ago. Imagine sf set in a universe with only a single galaxy and no extra-Solar planets.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Despite my lack of astronomical expertise I never believed that there were no other planets orbiting other stars before the first exoplanets were discovered 25 or so years ago. It didn't make sense, to me, to think our Solar System was the only one, among all the uncounted galaxies, to have planets.
I took one book with me during my short holiday: A SEPARATE STAR: A TRIBUTE TO RUDYARD KIPLING (ed. by David Drake and Sandra Miesel, 1989). A collection of stories by SF writers with commentary on how Kipling influenced them. Anderson's contributions were an introductory essay and "No Truce With Kings." In comments prefacing the latter Anderson thought Kipling's influence on that story goes back to Kipling's poem "The Old Issue."
In "No Truce..." Anderson takes a sympathetic look at feudalism and the idea that would work best for mankind is a world of decentralized small states. He also took a hard and severely disapproving look at the dreams some that a "predictive science of society" is possible or desirable.
Considering my distrust for bureaucratic, centralized states and Utopian fantasies of an "ideal" society, I have sympathy for such views!
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I accept and espouse views which you describe as Utopian fantasies.
There was a theory of planetary formation that would have made them very rare.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I recall that now discredited theory of planetary formation, but I never believed in it. And I think astronomers had discarded it before Anderson pub. HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE in 1959. Because that story posits a far more plausible theory.
Ad astra! Sean
We now know that planets are common as dirt, as the saying goes -- and that's the premise behind the Technic history. Of course, we also now know that the arrangement of planets in the Solar System -- gas giants outermost, rocky planets innermost -- isn't a pattern for all of them.
Right now we can't detect planets as small as Earth or Venus (or Mars, of course), which gives us a somewhat skewed vision; but we'll get there soon.
I thought some terrestroids had been spotted?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: The discovery of "hot Jupiters," gas giants orbiting very close to their suns was esp. amazing to astronomers!
Paul: I think some explanets were speculatively thought to be close to being terrestroid.
Ad astra! Sean
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