I haven't heard from PeterKirby.com since 2015 and there's no "Peter Kirby" tag on Vridar.org since June that year.
I wanted to inform his "2 Elijah" page of John Reeves' Sefer Elijah translation which, I think, translates Buttenwieser's Hebrew (I don't find a German translation here).
I mean, if he'd hear me out, which in 2014 he likely would not have.
Nyrath has directed us to Arthur C. Clarke's minor work "Saturn Rising" which we may read in Fantasy & Science Fiction 20.3 (1961), archived. How's it doing in 2021? (Or in 2023.)
Clarke was of course over-optimistic about how the US (or USSR) space-programme could achieve any of this. I am unsure this is NASA's fault; we needed much better robotics than anyone had in the 1960s or even 1990s, to re-use the rockets so's to make spaceflight practical. Well okay; a bit of it is NASA's fault, for letting Congress design their "Space Shuttle" for them . . .
Also Clarke got Titan wrong, imagining a methane atmosphere with ammonia snow. The inner moons were, likewise, deemed fluffballs which they are not. And you'd think somebody would have mused about Enceladus as an ammoniate Europa-ulterior.
On the plus side: the rockets do use methane, which was science-fiction at the time, but now being successfully tested at Boca. (It's the launchpad that needs work, down there.) And heck with pulling methane from the atmosphere; at Titan, you scoop it from the lakes.
Since NYT and the original paper are paywalled, let us all thank the Turtle for Anneline Pinson's "Human TKTL1 implies greater neurogenesis in frontal neocortex of modern humans than Neanderthals". So let's think of a reason why we got TKTL1 and the Neanders didn't.
I would guess at abstract thought over memory. Neanders would have to own good memory simply to survive a Pleistocene winter. On the other hand, once they learn (or physically evolve) how to survive in (say) a Pyrenees valley, a Neander tribe has little incentive to innovate. Innovation takes time away from hunting and gathering.
Modern East African TKTL1 perhaps arose where the enemy wasn't "General Winter", a vicious enemy but a predictable one; but where the enemy was other humans and also cunning beasts like the jackal, the lion, and the baboon.
I'm somewhat reminded of the Germans at the point the Romans first met 'em. The Romans thought the Germans were a pack of dolts. I mean, yeah; racists lol look at what they thought of West Africans. But the Romans didn't think that the Iranians or (especially) the Greeks were dummies.
Another question we might ponder is whether the TKTL1 mutation had evolved in such modern-humans as expanded into Eurasia and then simply failed to take hold. It seems untraceable in the hybrids as of 2020 excavated. If I'm right then Eurasian conditions selected against this, so their absence in the hybrids doesn't prove much.
I've got a couple posts here about whether we really are that lucky. First up was that Goldilocks thing: if we'd be better off closer to a more auburn (i.e. K) sun. Lately Eccentricity, where the Jupiter analogue is closer too or else maybe just bigger, but either way eccentric, thus pulling the inner planet to an eccentric orbit too.
Eccentricity can lead to yeeting. In a longer-lasting system (like a K system), the inhabitants can wait that bit longer; their sun might not catch up with them until the dynamo runs out. I am here for the shorter-lasting system. It has taken our Sun 4,567 million years to develop us - which span would rule out an F system. Some of this delay came from various physical setbacks; the worst delay may be an accident of plate-tectonics which just... did nothing.
An F system might luck out, if it escapes a Boring Billion (and, incidentally, also boils off the nearest comets). This can be extended to G systems with close-in heavy planets; they might eccentre the planet's orbit too far, but not too late for life to emerge.
I am unsure that eccentricity will help a K-system Earthlike however. It might exacerbate the infrared warming.
A few months ago I pondered HD 60584 CC1 and HIP 21152. These are F stars ~1.4 M⊙, so aren't likely to have planets with Cambrian-plus life on them, unless some alien terraforms it all. They also each own a browndwarf in the low 30s Mj over 16 AU out.
It was my thought that, if they did have an Earth-mass planet at 2 AU (the habitable zone), the eccentricity would be a problem even for Ediacaran life.
Per Jules Bernstein, eccentricity might be good. Pam Vervoort et al. poses the constraint of a closer and eccentric Jupiter. Right now, Jupiter pulls Mars into an eccentric orbit but not (so much) Earth. A closer Jupiter is presumed to have yeeted Mars away so it's now looking to the next planet inward: Earth. The eccentricity pushes irradiance on summers more than winters. Warmer summers mean better crops.
There's no "global warming" on account Jupiter hasn't changed our temperature overall. For the winters - which will be longer given Kepler - we suppose everyone just hunkers down.
Anyway I expect the Earth would, actually, get more eccentric as time goes on if only because it can hardly get less so. Maybe a big rock might help us along. I however doubt any influence from Jupiter; the giant is not as vulnerable as is, say, Neptune. So by the time we get to enjoy the extreme-r seasons, the hotter Sun has already done for us.
Hence my interest not in this system but in others', like HD 60584 CC1 and HIP 21152.
I am unsure this is the vehicle to explain the low-density smaller worlds we've found in-transit. This notes from a sample size of 43 worlds (very close to very cold stars) that although the density is low (and probably not from carbon as we used to think of 55 Cancri e), the transiting worlds aren't big enough to be vapour-shrouded Supervenera.
Solution: sublimation of water underground.
The article suggests something like Europa but, would the ice of a warm world really be on the surface? It would just melt and boil off, making that steamworld.
More likely is hydrates in the (rocky) mantle, I think. As we have here 'neath Earth and, perhaps, Venus.
In the double-digit parsec/parallax range: Amaury Triaud's LP 890-9. It's got a transit and the orbiting TESS saw it, so it's now TOI-4306. A hundred lightyears out.
LP 890-9 is the second-coldest dwarf known to host planets after also-Triaud's TRAPPIST-1. The planet's year as usual with transits is swift: 2.7 days.
Personally I might not care but today a second planet was found, at 8.5 days, perhaps not transiting. That is habitable-zone. 'Twas found by land telescopes at Tenerife and Chile.
This makes LP 890-9 a candidate for the JWST. Although as the article notes, TRAPPIST-1 will likely come first.
