Yet Another "Shepherded" Exo-Planet? We Find Proxima b Far More Alluring Than Our Blue Dot...

Ah -- "To burn at a distance, or to freeze nearby. . ." the old poem recites, but in fact, in the hunt for more worlds like ours, the opposite is true.

We are looking for ones that are neither -- neither burning, nor freezing. No, just right. The news of Proxima b is well covered in the video at bottom (and sketched in, to the left of what we Americans call the Southern Cross, in the night sky -- inside the tiny box). Do go watch the video for more. And now permit me a late night tangent:

For my part, this late evening (and countless ones before it) -- I find I prefer the unwasted grace of. . . mystery. Mystery of irises flashing golden flecks at the edges, and dark sienna in the middle -- to the science of blue-eyed Earth-certainty. We are finding that these blue worlds are as common as common might be.

And so in contrast, I will stand with Sweet Will [modified ever so slightly below], and declare that the rarer and darker one -- is most oft' the finer one, thus:

Shakespeare | Sonnet CXXX

My lady's eyes are nothing like the sun

Coral is no more pink than her lips' pink

If snow be white, then her skin cinnamon

If hairs be fine wires, resplendent filamented dark wires grow upon her head

And in no perfume is there more delight

Than in the far-away sighs that from my lady seep

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That no music hath a more pleasing sound

I grant I never saw a goddess go, yet

My lady, when she walks, scarcely treads on ground

So, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare. . . .

So it is, all in the eye of the beholder, to the edited Sweet Will. . . and to me, as well.


And the science of Proxima b? Right here (as advertised):




नमस्ते