PUBLISHED - CHAPTER 3. Please do comment and feedback on my blog

PUBLISHED - CHAPTER 3. Please do comment and feedback on my blog

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http://joannasdawn.blogspot.co.uk/p/chapter-3-joannas-dawn.html

Exoplanets Are Common

Exoplanet's Are Common

The recent discovery of planets around red dwarf stars is an exciting prospect. Red dwarf stars represent nearly sixty percent of all stars in our galaxy and likewise in other galaxies too.

What does this mean for us on lonely planet Earth. Well for the man or woman on the street, it probably doesn't mean much. But for the scientific community and those working in the field of space exploration or discovery this is monumental.

But it also means satellite's like Kepler are in part redundant. Why? Kepler is designed to observe one hundred and fifty thousand stars. It watches and records any dip in light output. If the star flickers the chance of a planet in orbit is likely. The problem is, that with the discovery of planets around red dwarfs, the new statistics estimate that most stars now have planets, an average of 1.6 planets per star. So for Kepler its primary mission should surely change if it has the capability to do so. All efforts now need to be directed at the Goldilocks Zone around stars. This zone is considered the area of orbit for an exoplanet that would allow liquid water to exist on the surface. Too close and the water is vaporised or blown away by the solar wind from the host star. You will find an example of that with our very own Venus. Too far away and water freezes. Examples of which are Mars,  Saturn's Moon Enceladus and the Jupiter Moon of Europa.

Of course the Goldilocks Zone is not the be all and end all of habital places. As mentioned Europa and Enceladus are believed to contain huge warm global oceans. A primordial soup perhaps that will contain life. The Goldilocks Zone is a primary search criteria for searching for planets like Earth, (water on surface in liquid form).

So we come back to the question 'What does this mean to us'. Well I think we can safely assume that we are not unique and we are not alone. The more important questions is, will we be able to contact other life forms in other systems. Yes, but only in systems within fifty light years. And even that will take either generational star ships or incredibly powerful transmitters and a very patient person.

So tonight when you look at the night sky, and a small star catches your eye, you may well be looking at a planet that has someone looking right back at you wondering the same thing.

We just have to hope that science will find a method of star travel that does not take decades or more.

Science Fiction Vs Future Fiction

Science Fiction has been the familiar and somewhat inappropriate term for many of the books classified as such for the book publishing business. Editors and Publishers alike love their labels, but does the Label Science Fiction do justice to the quality or content of a book about the future.

A more appropriate term for books that are not solely based on a theory of a new science theory should be 'Future Fiction'. This Label would better describe some works that are a human story just based on the future.

There is significant snobbery with regard Science Fiction, in may ways editors and publishers completely ignore the genre completely as if it were a plague. But in reality they are missing out on some brilliantly written books with excellent characters and interesting plot lines that would put some popular 'Fiction' books to shame.

So do you think there should be a rename of 'Science Fiction' to 'Future Fiction' or perhaps a whole new genre for those books not solely based on a new science but based on brilliant characters and plots set in the future.

You decide, share and debate.

I think yes and its long, long overdue!

Chapter 3 - Release date

Chapter 3 - Joanna's Dawn will be released on this blog on the 15th February 2013.

Will Joanna find her former lover and rescue him, will she find out why after all the years he turned to her in his darkest hour.

Neil Armstrong dies aged 82

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

 

The very sad news that Neil Armstrong, first man to step onto the surface of another planetary body on the 20 July 1969 has passed away.

 

It will of course be history that will measure his full effect on humankind, but there is no doubt that he stood as an equal with the other great explorers of human history. His name will live on as will his achievements with Christopher Columbus, Captain Scott, Captain James Cook, Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Edmund Hillary.

 

Although I was born in 1972 some three years after Neil Armstrong left his Luna Lander and climbed down the ladder to step foot on the Moon. The impact of this one individual on both my life and every person’s life after this great achievement has been immense.

 

 

Many would say that so many thousands of hard working individuals contributed to the successful landing in 1969. But it takes a special individual to be selected and then travel a quarter of a million miles to be the first.

 

That landing and the landings that followed inspired a generation sadly let down by politicians on all sides universally. Space the last great frontier of true exploration has been mostly abandoned to robotic explorers. Perhaps this reduces the risks, but it also sanitises discovery and danger and sadly robs us of future explorers and heroes.

 

The moon, left untouched by humans for over thirty years, a sad epitaph for such a heroic achievement that was the Apollo Programme. To so many post war children and their children that our appetites and hunger for greater fetes of exploration were denied by penny-pinching governments more determined to build weapons of mass destruction of spend billions on more elaborate ways to fight wars. If just one tenth of the money spent on the American Military had been spent with NASA. I would place a safe bet that we would have seen a Mars landing by now.

 

For now, we are left with the memories of Neil and his brave crew of Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. All three pushed the boundaries of human exploration which has never been matched by any human since.

 

Rest in peace Neil, you are at home amongst the stars.

 

 "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

 

 

 

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