The announcement of the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri is absolutely fascinating; we finally have a (roughly) Earth-size world orbiting in the (notionally) habitable zone of a (by astronomical standards) close star. There's been a lot of speculation about what Proxima b might be like, but one description I saw didn't quite ring ( Read more... )

I've been interested in space and astronomy all my life, and I'm a lawyer. As such I've been thinking about the question - back in the public eye again with the Pluto encounter - of what the rules should be for defining a planet ( Read more... )

Martin Mobberley’s biography of Sir Patrick Moore is saddled with perhaps the most ungainly title ever for such a work, and the first impression that the title conveys is only amplified by the subtitle: ‘A Fan’s Biography of Sir Patrick Moore.’ In the face of such, a reader could be forgiven for expecting a hagiography heavy on anecdote and light ( Read more... )