I mention the novel largely in the hopes that someone will be inspired to revisit the plot. Even if their version isn't all that good, odds are that it will at least be an improvement on the original.
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Jerome Branch Corbell, protagonist of Larry Niven's 1976 fix-up A World Out of Time , fled across gulfs of space and time at near light speeds in the hope that, by the time he returned to the Solar System, the authoritarian state of 2190 that resurrected him in a stranger's body would have withered away. By the time he returns, three million years have passed. That is not long enough to explain the great changes in the Solar System.
And here's another article:
Many Astronomers Now Think Planet Nine Might Not Exist After All, Here's Why
Planet Nine is a theoretical, undiscovered giant planet in the mysterious far reaches of our Solar System.
The presence of Planet Nine has been hypothesized to explain everything from the tilt of the Sun's spin axis to the apparent clustering in the orbits of small, icy asteroids beyond Neptune.
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The Kuiper Belt is a collection of small, icy bodies that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune, at distances larger than 30 AU (one astronomical unit or AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun).
Aquatic Biospheres On Temperate Planets Around Sun-like Stars And M-dwarfs - Astrobiology
In both panels, the photon flux in units of the compensation flux (FC ) is shown for an Earth-analog orbiting a solar twin (Planet G) as a function of the depth; the compensation flux specifies the photon flux at which net growth of the organism is not feasible. The various curves correspond to different choices of the global ocean temperature, and the intersection points of the various curves with the dashed horizontal line yield the compensation depths.
Aquatic biospheres reliant on oxygenic photosynthesis are expected to play an important role on Earth-like planets with large-scale oceans insofar as carbon fixation (i.e., biosynthesis of organic compounds) is concerned.
Proxima b, the closest alien planet we know, may be even more Earth-like than we thought | Space
The closest alien planet to our solar system is even more Earth-like than scientists had thought, new observations suggest.
Previously, scientists thought that this exoplanet, which lies in the habitable zone of its star, harbored a minimum of about 1.3 Earth masses. The new measurement indicates that Proxima b could be even more like our home planet, at least in size, than previous observations led scientists to think.
The research team studied Proxima b using the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, or ESPRESSO for short. ESPRESSO is a Swiss spectrograph that is currently mounted on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. Spectrographs observe objects and split the light coming from those objects into the wavelengths that make it up so that researchers can study the object in closer detail.
Were you following this:
Magma ocean deep inside Earth kickstarted our magnetic field first - Business Insider
This planetary safety net has existed for at least the last 3.4 billion years. Today, it's powered by swirling liquid metal in Earth's outer core. But according to scientists, this magnetic-field-generating engine has only been running for the last 1 billion years or so. Before that, the planet's core didn't facilitate enough swirling.
So a geological mystery has lingered: What powered our magnetic field before that liquid metal layer took over?
Stixrude and his co-authors also suggested that if this magnetic-field-creating magma once existed deep within the Earth, it could exist in other planets outside our solar system, too. And that means they might have atmosphere-protecting shields scientists weren't previously aware of.
In Planet Formation, It's Location, Location, Location – Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are finding that planets have a tough time forming in the rough-and-tumble central region of the massive, crowded star cluster Westerlund 2. Located 20,000 light-years away, Westerlund 2 is a unique laboratory to study stellar evolutionary processes because it's relatively nearby, quite young, and contains a large stellar population.
A three-year Hubble study of stars in Westerlund 2 revealed that the precursors to planet-forming disks encircling stars near the cluster's center are mysteriously devoid of large, dense clouds of dust that in a few million years could become planets.
Bombardment by Asteroids and Comets in Another Planetary System Predicted by Astronomers
The planetary system around star HR8799 is remarkably similar to our Solar System. A research team led by astronomers from the University of Groningen and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research has used this similarity to model the delivery of materials by asteroids, comets and other minor bodies within the system. Their simulation shows that the four gas planets receive material delivered by minor bodies, just like in our Solar System.
Counting outwards from the Sun, our Solar System consists of four rocky planets, an asteroid belt, four gas giants, and another asteroid belt. The inner planets are rich in refractory materials such as metals and silicates, the outer planets are rich in volatiles such as water and methane. While forming, the inner planets had a hard time collecting a volatile atmosphere because the strong solar wind kept blowing the gas away.
Planet walk in Fairbanks puts things in perspective - Anchorage Daily News
Space physics expert Peter Delamere at the start of the new UAF Planet Walk in Fairbanks. (Photo by Ned Rozell)
It is a pleasant day for a walk in middle Alaska, with blue sky overhead, and people perhaps looking for something to do outside, with lots of space and sweet-scented summer air around them.
Not long ago, I hiked the length of a new planet-walk display on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus with Peter Delamere. In a little less than 1 mile, we spanned the relative distance from the sun to dwarf planet Pluto. (A similar planet walk exists in downtown Anchorage, as well.)
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