Periodically, my life enters the Twilight Zone. Or, in this case, the Goldilocks Zone.
You’ve heard about it, by now. The planet twenty lightyears away, which has a good potential for human habitation. One paper described it as the “Goldilocks” planet — not too hot, not too cold, just right to support life.
The Gliese star has been known for awhile; NASA identified it way back in 2007 or earlier. The big news now is that they found a planet orbiting the star that is tidally locked to the sun (weird to think of galactic, system-wide tides!) — one side always in the light, one side always in the dark, and the strip down the middle – a temperate zone habitable by humans. Just like the moon only shows one face to the Earth, the little planet will always show one face to the star.
This is good news. Especially since I picked Gliese 581c out of NASA’s website as a place to base a fictional Earth colony I started writing about in December of 2008. It seemed like a reasonably close place for humanity to explore and colonize after the Moon.
I have written sixty thousand words on this story since January… getting to know all about that red star, and imagining what life would be like with a pink sky. And eventually, we might know.
The coincidence both thrills and amazes me …and slightly freaks me out.
Farida, *I* will squee FOR YOU: there are two exoplanets also capable of supporting life… sooo, maybe I *did* already colonize this and write about it. In my spare time. Or, you know, in my sleep…!
That is so cool!
If I were one to squee, I’d be squeeing. But since I am not one to squee, let me just say that I am so pleased that this is the star system you’re writing about.
Well, keep in mind, it’s BASED on the Gliese system… but it’s fiction! I’m not writing ABOUT the actual place (there are several nearby moons and space stations which are colonized, in my version) but the characteristics of life on a red star are the same.
Here’s more coolness from the guy who made the discovery…
That’s extremely cool that you picked Gliese 581c as the sight of your colony. Feels like a sign that this book is meant to be. A pink sky…wow. I can’t wait to hear more about life on this planet by reading your book!
OK, that is incredibly cool! You were the first to colonize the planet!
I have had a fascination for this sort of thing ever since reading Anne McCaffery’s Pern series in junior high. “Rukbat, a golden G-type star…”
Oh, I remember Rukbat!!!! Hah! I still have a corner of my heart reserved for Anne McCaffrey, although I have to say that rereading some of her stuff makes me go, “WOW!” All the men were very… er, antique in attitude. But – hey, she was written science fiction, and I think only Ursula LeGuin was doing so at the same time, so more power to her and her antique men.