Author notes

200 - Smoked

El Cid

on Nov. 3, 2017

200th page! Whoo-hoo! And only 200 more to go! Seriously, I'm sorta joking, but that sadly could be the case if I don't get my act together.

When I originally envisioned this sequence, Nascha's death was supposed to be a big multi-page event, with huge splash panels and multiple angles and such. But as the scene gelled together, I realized it would be more in keeping with the arc of her character that her death should be portrayed more along the lines of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet: Dispatched almost as an afterthought, and the show goes on without her. And not unlike those two ill-fated bunglers, she seems to have been a pawn in a much greater plan that she knew nothing about.






It was once common to hear it said that we live in a “typical planetary system, around a typical star,” usually as a prelude to some monologue about how exceedingly unlikely it is that Earth is the only place in our galaxy to have developed intelligent life. I'm not sure that the sun is all that typical, but as we continue to discover more exoplanets, we're starting to get a better idea of just what a typical planetary system looks like. And it looks nothing like our solar system.



This chart by University of California researchers Konstantin Batygin and Greg Laughlin graphically plots out the orbital distances of sub Jovian (non gas giant) exoplanets discovered so far. From what we can see, it looks like most sub Jovians occupy tidally locked orbits very close to their parent star, with an average orbital period of less than 100 days, and most of them are “super Earths” and “mini Neptunes” much larger and more massive than the Earth. It's likely that part of these results are due to observational bias (it's easier to spot big massive things close in to a star than smaller things further away), however the observations also agree with computer simulations of how planets form.

It seems most likely that our oddball solar system turned out the way it did because Jupiter migrated outward from the sun, whereas in most solar systems one or more of the gas giants tend to migrate inward, ejecting smaller planets or else sucking up all the primordial material they would have formed from. When Jupiter migrated out, it cleared the way for a handful of relatively modest-sized rocky worlds to form in stable orbits within the habitable zone. So – assuming that theory is correct – we may owe even more to Jupiter than we once thought we did!





Coming up next is what really should be the final page of this chapter, but I'll go ahead and post the full “extended” version, so there are three more pages left. Hope you enjoy! (and if you don't, there are no refunds!)