Pete deduces. Joe claims to come from Astan IV which would be the fourth planet of a star called Astan but shouldn't a fourth planet of a GO dwarf be cold, like Mars?
"The systems of similar stars were usually very much alike - especially where it came to the spacing of planets." (p. 33)
I don't think so. I have not followed the reports about exoplanets but I remember hearing about some systems with giant planets in close orbits.
Sf writers used to have only a single example to generalize from. Now so many exoplanets are known that I hope that nearby high tech civilizations will be detected soon. If so, then a conceptual revolution will be just around the corner.
4 comments:
"The systems of similar stars were usually very much alike - especially where it came to the spacing of planets."
We *now* know that is not true, but at the time Anderson was writing these stories that was the scientific consensus. Yes, that was based on *far* too little data for confidence in that conclusion.
Even now planetary systems like the one we live in would be hard to detect over interstellar distances, so they might actually be common, but we know that there are a lot of planetary systems that differ radically from ours.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, plus Anderson would have been delighted to live long enough to know what we now know, astronomically speaking. He had to write using what was known or thought likely to be true at the times he wrote these stories.
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah, there just wasn't enough data back then. For that matter, there isn't now -- we still can't directly detect planets of Earth-size or smaller.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Soon, I hope! Esp. when humans are living off Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
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