Not only is this the 50th anniversary of the "Fintstones", but the wonks have just found an earth-like planet out there.
Not bad for a dreary Wednesday.
The happy planet circles Gliese 581 which is a dwarf star. That is about one-third the strength of our sun, and is 20 light years away. We can't see it with the naked eye, but the folks there can see us just fine.
There's six other balls of rock in that system, but only one in the sweet zone. Not too hot, not to bleeping cold. Odds are it's crawling with things that would like to make friends, conquer, put us in a zoo, or eat us.
So maybe we should just leave'em the hell alone.
As for the "Flinstones" like some of you I was there opening night,..same for "Star Trek", but that's another post. Anyway I nearly didn't watch. I thought it was going to be just another bland sitcom about the 1950's suburbs that my family wasn't allowed to live in.
If it weren't for our old pal Jim Crow I would have grown up in Levittown Long Island. Unfortunately "No Niggers" need apply. They didn't tell my dad that...exactly, but it came down to the same thing.
Such was life in apartheid America so I wasn't interested in yet another "Burbcom". Imagine my happy surprise when it turned out to be a cartoon! A "Creationist" one at that. What with humans, and T-Rex's running around together.
Ah,..life was good for us post war kiddies!
Cheap comic books'n movies, keds, plastic backyard wading pools, cowboy hats, and Depression, and WW2 era Daddy's that didn't take shit from anybody. ...well yeah there was that Jim Crow thing, but Dad, and his pals was working on that.
3 comments:
Our all wise government should establish a bunch of relay satellites across the 20-light years of space between Earth and the dwarf star, Gliese-581, so that we can "steal" their television programs as well as spy on them.
Afterall, many space aliens already steal our TV shows which we find boring. However, learning about the sexual appetites and social structure of the Gliese-581 aliens will be fascinating for Earthers, and commercial advertisers will shower the U.S. government with money to run commercials in the alien TV shows.
Furthermore, if the natives look conquerable, we Earthers could attack them. This planet hasn't had a really good war since the Germans finally accepted the reality that all of us "sub-humans" out-number them about 100 to one.
I think these space guys are just getting the Brooklyn Dodgers on our early TV signals.
Also imagine if they become Mets fans when 'those' images arrive.
They've got decades of bad news ahead.
A small rocky planet in the temperate sweet zone, and only 20 light years away - fantastic! At that close distance (by interstellar standards), statistical probability suggests that (potentially) life-bearing planets are thickly spread all over the universe.
I doubt we'll be visiting there any time soon, if ever. I mean, what are we going to use for fuel? We'll be lucky if we've got enough coal and gas to keep the lights on for a few more years. Though the relay satellites might be small enough for feasibility.
I hadn't have heard about this wondrous discovery until finding it here today. I've been out of the news loop since my web connection went down on me, and not in a good way. Now I'm exiled to dial-up land, stuck in the slo-mo trailer park outskirts of Cyberville. O how I pity me! As Mr. Toad said.
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