Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 19:42:28 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: "gt-pfrc at ml.gt.org" <gt-pfrc at ml.gt.org>,
 WSFA Official List <wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>,
 WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>,
 bsfsgeneral <bsfsgeneral at bsfs.org>
Subject: [WSFA] New planet discovered that just might hold life
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

And even the headline is reasonable....
Excerpt:
Scientists hunting for distant planets far beyond our solar system have
discovered the first alien world whose rocky surface may hold liquid water
- the essential ingredient for life as we know it.

Of all the hundreds of so-called "exoplanets" found by international
astronomers in the past 20 years, many of those worlds are bigger than
gassy Jupiter, one or two are smaller than tiny Mercury, and some are
roughly Earth-sized.

But this one is different.

It is just about the size of our own home planet. It is the outermost of
five small planets orbiting a cool but abundant star. And its entire orbit
carries it well within what is termed the habitable zone - where its orbit
is just the right distance from its star for temperatures on its surface
to be just right - neither too hot nor too cold - for reservoirs of liquid
water to exist.

It's the kind of exoplanet that fiction writers like to speculate about as
an abode for distant life, although astronomers would never make a quick
leap on such a subject.

The new-found planet lies in the constellation Cygnus, some 500 million
light-years away in the Milky Way,
--- end excerpt ---

And then they blow it completely with the distance. *sigh* "The Kessel run
in less than 12 parsecs...."

(The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. We're inside of it. I dug
around, and found the NASA announcement, and Kepler 186 is 500 light years
away....

Oh, and then I started thinking about it: distant, red sun, near the edge of
the habitable zone, so it's chilly.... Gee, I could even put a name to it:
Darkover.

mark "fire up the engines, Mr. Scott! (or is that pull out
your crystals?)"