A lonesome traveller on the way to Neptune
Nick Abrahams still holds the official world record for the number of space launches, but he’s bored stiff with his job hosting space tours. Only when his wife leaves him, however, does he try to change his life. He accepts a tempting offer from a Russian billionaire. In exchange for making a simple repair on Neptune’s moon Triton, he will return to Earth a multi-millionaire, enabling him to achieve his ‘impossible dream’ of buying his own California vineyard. The fact that Nick must travel alone during the four-year roundtrip doesn’t bother him at all, as he doesn’t particularly like people anyway. Once en route he learns his new boss left out some critical details in his job description—details that could cost him his life, and humankind its existence...
I like to invite you to accompany Nick for his adventure. We'll start on April 20, and you can pre-order the book here:
hard-sf.com/links/1086185
If you liked "The Enceladus Mission", this is a book for you.
What's new? I am supposed to work at home (which is what I actually do all the time). I don't have to hell you why... I don't want to even name that thing because I see my task as sending you to other times and other worlds for recreation. Below, you can find a list of proposals, i.e. books. But still, I hope you are safe in these crazy times, and if I can do something for you, please tell me.
While you have to wait for the start to Triton, I'd like to single out one of my books that I have the impression hasn't got the attention it might deserve. It's "The Death of the Universe". It's kind of an extreme book. It brings you billions of years into the future (away from al the hassle here) while maintaining all the hard science. You'll explore fascinating star systems. Humans have become immortal by then which allows them to conquer the milkyway even with space ships that don't reach the speed of light. How does that change us? If you have all the time of the universe, can time still be running out?
hard-sf.com/links/835400
Did you know you can follow me on Bookbub? If I reach 1000 followers there (right now it's 460), they will let me participate in a special marketing programme:
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/brandon-q-morris
Kind regards from my nightly desk!
Brandon Q. Morris
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Cloudy with a chance of iron rain
The exoplanet, WASP-76b, about 640 light-years from Earth, orbits its host star, WASP-76, once every approximately 1.8 days at the relatively small distance of only 0.03 astronomical units (AU). The Earth, in contrast, is at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun. The star, WASP-76, is somewhat larger and hotter than the Sun, but that doesn’t make much of a difference for the planet orbiting around it. At such a small distance, the planet would be damn hot no matter how big the star was. The planet, almost as massive as our Jupiter, is therefore classified as a “Hot Jupiter.” The huge amount of heat has greatly inflated this alien world; WASP-76b has a diameter significantly larger than our Jupiter. But that isn’t the planet’s most exciting feature. WASP-76b moves around its star in a tidally locked orbit, so the same side is always facing its star. It is so hot that molecules split into atoms and metals, such as iron, are vaporized into the atmosphere. Read more → |
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Did You Miss One?*
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The Triton Disaster
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Hexaquark d*(2380)
One of the biggest mysteries of our universe is what is dark matter made of. Its existence is suggested by several astronomical observations, among them peculiarities in the rotation of galaxies. Dark matter would have to make up at least 63% of all matter in the universe and to date, physicists have no idea about its exact nature. All that is clear is that dark matter interacts with normal matter only via gravity. These could be, among other things, so-called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which would be considered cold dark matter. However, researchers are not making very quick progress on their search for these particles. To date, they have only been able to rule out more and more possible candidates, which is gradually making it more and more unlikely that they are actually on the right track. Now, in an article in the Journal of Physics, researchers have presented a new candidate. This is a so-called hexaquark: a particle consisting of six quarks, the basic building blocks of many elementary particles. Read more → |
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