h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I'm done arguing this point."

Oh, you're no fun anymore!

Any respectable astrophysicist is only so because he doesn't get out more often. If only he could find a couple Jodi Foster clones naked and experimenting on new uses for a telescope then he'd have a chance to lose some respectability!

..what were we talking about?

Oh yes, the original impetus for my even writing this damned guide entry in the first place was that it was an attempt to write something for h2g2.com that didn't try to directly refer to Douglas Adams' works but would indirectly allude to it.

Does anyone remember the phrase, "..and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri"? I mean really! I'm appauled that no one caught that one. I mean it's not like you have to be a rocket scientist or something...

The fact I never directly went that way with this piece was quite an amazing feat if I do say so myself and I do! You're talking about scientific theory, which has yet to be proven. Granted my assumptions have yet to be proven either, but as to which one of us is right falls to opinion and conjecture. Until we can actually fly up there and take a look it's anyone's guess.

Why someone at NASA hasn't turned Hubble that way and told it to squint I have no idea.

I hope you're right. I hope there's planets all around all three of those stars, even the one that we all agree can't possibly have life around it. I hope that trinary star system is teeming full of life and I hope that life consists of nothing more but small furry creatures and naked Jodi Foster clones. Then my life would be complete.

Sorry about looking so far in the past, but I'm new to the area and have a lot of catching up to do. This seems like an interesting topic.

Given that Jupiter is promoted to star, Earth may well shoot off on its own exploring the lonely spaces between the stars. None of us would know since we would be incinerated shortly after the visual discovery of the new star. The narrow temperature window that supports our curious life forms would be shot, and we'd all be toast.

Forget lasting one orbit. We'd only survive the discovery by days at the most.

With the added heat energy from a solar system co-starring Jupiter, we would quite literally fry. Then when our planet was flung into the deeper recesses of space by the gravitational roller coaster we would as quickly deep freeze.

Come to think of it, it sounds like something that would work well for some of the lazier species in the galaxy. We'd be cooked, then freeze dried and sent off (delivered) to some distant solar system. I wonder if somewhere an alien mega ad agency isn't working on the campain even now. Talk about "take out".

This is more real. There are bineries with planets, but this system has only one, and you can't get there. As space travellers we are experts on planets.

LOOK!
The entry simply states that there is no KNOWN life around alpha centauri - while we, as researchers, may even hail from that sector, we're composing a guide to earth - if you want to talk about Centauri as a tourist spot, work for THE guide of Mr Adams work.

Whether or not a system is possible in that sector is irrelevant to how accurate this entry is - it's just saying that there rn't known planets/life there.

From an earth perspective anyway.

A planet was discovered around Alpha Centauri about 8 to 10 years ago. They believe it to be the size of jupitor. In fact, it was the first planet discovered outside of our own solar system. As for the rest of the conversation; Newton was obsurd! Newtonian physics is devoid of time considerations. Very flat indeed. Think in terms of powers not in terms of mass. Its all just a machine, a very large bluff, in a sense. peace

The Earth isn't approximatly half way between the Sun and Jupiter. The Earth orbits at around 93 million miles and Jupiter at 507 million.

As the gravitational attraction between bodies falls with the inverse square of the distance, even if there was a second sun at the orbit of Jupiter it wouldn't significantly affect the orbit of the earth.

Alpha Century a & b orbit the common centre of gravity at a bit further out than the distance between the sun and Saturn. Proxima is much further away. It'd be possible for both stars to have planets in the ecosphere without each star significantly affecting the other planets orbit.

Sounds like time for an update. but I am not going to be the one to do it.