re: #73 Justanotherhuman

Yesterday was our first warm day in quite a while. This has been a very cool summer so far, but there has been some cold water off the coast.

Recently it has been colder than average in the Arctic, record warm in the Far East, and much above average in Antarctica.

These things happen, and are influenced greatly by the flow of water around the planet. This is why yearly temperature variations are not very indicative of long term climate changes, something which is intentionally overlooked by the know-nothings.

BTW, binary star systems are tricky things for planets. The question of whether there is an orbit that would allow for a planet to have life in such a system is one which is interesting. Long term stable orbits would be difficult in systems with relatively close stars, except for planets that would have very, very long orbits (think Pluto-like), or be very close (think Mercury.) However, in a binary system with a red dwarf and a giant star with sufficient separation you could have a planet close to the red dwarf that wouldn’t be too hot. However, giant stars don’t have long lives. Another option would be to have two very close stars of sufficient brightness that a distant planet could orbit the center of gravity and still get enough energy to melt water.

A lot of Pop Sci-Fi (like Star Wars) ignore these difficulties.

Our currently closest stars present a test case. The question has been whether the small star Proxima Centauri is indeed gravitationally bound to the Alpha Centauri AB double system. The AB system probably couldn’t have a life-supportable planet in a stable orbit, but Proxima could. Problem is, Proxima is a flare star, which might be a problem for anything living on one of its planets (and we know it doesn’t have large ones, but it could, probably does, have small ones.)