Epistemophilia: Gliese 581 and how to read T. S. Elliot

I have heard two stories on Gliese 581g lately and it's funny-in a disconcerting way-how much the two scientists I heard disagree. This is of course the Goldilocks planet that was recently discovered orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 581. One of the discoverers was on Science Friday and he said he didn't like to speak in absolutes but he was 99% sure the planet harbored life (not, needless to say, meaning intelligent life or even the multi-cellular variety.) The planet is tidally locked to its star so if life exists, it probably does so on the twilight boundary lines. The main reason for his optimism is because the planet exists in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist.

Meanwhile, Pamela Gay on Astronomy Cast didn't think it was as likely. If it's in the proximity of a red dwarf, for starters it would have to have a magnetic field to protect it from xrays and flares and sufficient gravity to hold onto an atmosphere. The tidal locking also would cause large convective cells which means strong winds. The extremes of temperature between the day and night sides would further be inhibiting. I guess red dwarfs in their youths go through a period of massive flare activity which could wipe out life on an orbiting planet.

I get confused by the variety and disparity of dwarf stars. A red dwarf is type of main sequence star which means it's in the happy fusion stage of its existence. They are the mostly commonly observed star type. Proxima Centauri and Betelgeuse are red dwarfs. Main sequence stars are plotted on a graph of color versus brighness called the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram with blue at one end and red at the other. I wish they would name white dwarfs something else as they, as supernova remnants, are a different stellar kettle of fish. Our sun, btw, is also considered a dwarf of the yellow variety.

Here is a mnemonic to help remember stellar types: Oh be a fine girl, kiss 'em. A red dwarf would be on the coolest, or "E", end of the scale.

One other thing--I've heard Gliese 581 pronounced at least two ways. Wikipedia says it's "Gleesa" with a shwa on the end. Germanic pronunciation is victorious again.

(All of this typing may be for naught. A team in Switzerland just announced that they can't find that the planet actually exists.)

I listened to an interview between The Guardian and Tom McCarthy, who was on the Booker short list for his novel C. It sounds experimental and was described as conceptual, a term which ruffled him greatly as aren't all novels concepts? I suppose dude but to me this means the concept is paramount, possibly to the detriment of character and plot but maybe you are good enough at sleight of hand that we don't notice. I think the bizarrely overrated and pseudo-clever Don DeLillo might have ruined me for anything experimental or post-modern. I might have to read books about plucky girls who find love in the unlikeliest of places just to purge my fear of stumbling upon another shitty, smug vomitus like White Noise.

I ramble. What I found most interesting is McCarthy said reading Eliot's "The Wasteland" was like flipping the dial and tuning into different radio stations. Which kind of fits in with his own novel's reflection on the early days of the wireless. He also said Joyce's Ulysses should be read for the threads of connectivity in it and not for the plot. He pointed out both of these works were written in 1922 which is the final year of his novel. I thought this might be an important safety tip for whenever I might eventually tackle Joyce.

(holy shit, it's almost 800 pages. Well, this will be an important safety tip for whenever I want to convince someone I've read Ulysses.)