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Musings on White Dwarfs and Planetary Survival

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/10/07/musings-on-white-dwarfs-and-planetary-survival/

Published: October 7, 2026 12:46

A research team at the University of Warwick (UK) has turned up what may be a planet orbiting a white dwarf. That’s an interesting find given the lifetime of white dwarfs after the parent star has lost its outer envelope. Any life on such a world would…

Photosynthesis: A New Angle into Fermi’s Paradox?

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/10/02/photosynthesis-a-new-angle-into-fermis-paradox/

Published: October 2, 2026 13:34

One of the things that gives the Fermi paradox its punch is the age of the galaxy. Back in 1950 when Fermi uttered his famous ‘Where is everybody?’ question, ideas about how old the Milky Way was were all over the map. Working with Hubble’s constant as…

Sakurai’s Object: A Stellar Rebirth

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/09/24/sakurais-object-a-stellar-rebirth/

Published: September 24, 2026 17:25

Given how long stars live in comparison to human lifetimes, I always do a double-take at science fiction tales of starships dropping in to study a nova just as it’s about to go off. I suppose we have to assume the starship civilization has found a way to…

Disrupted Systems: Implications for Life

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/09/16/disrupted-systems-implications-for-life/

Published: September 16, 2026 16:57

Anthropocentric thinking is a persistent problem when we’re talking about extraterrestrial civilizations. Some of our most cherished notions can be invoked so effortlessly as to defy the imagination. The Copernican idea that life must exist elsewhere…

Pandora: Tuning Up our Data on Exoplanet Atmospheres

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/09/09/pandora-tuning-up-our-data-on-exoplanet-atmospheres/

Published: September 9, 2026 17:03

Launching a flagship-class mission like the Roman Space Telescope is always exciting, but with Roman in space, let’s also keep an eye on Pandora, a smaller though fascinating NASA mission (through its Astrophysics Pioneers program) that is now beginning…

Fermi Explorer: Building the First Mission to Another Star?

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/09/02/fermi-explorer-building-the-first-mission-to-another-star/

Published: September 2, 2026 15:34

The question of when to launch an interstellar mission has occupied us many times in the past. Specifically, how long do we wait so that travel times are reduced to something like the lifetime of a researcher working on the project? But there is another…

Roman Space Telescope Launches Tomorrow

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/08/29/roman-space-telescope-launches-tomorrow/

Published: August 29, 2026 12:46

We’ll have a lot to talk about when observations from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope start coming in. But first we’ve got to get it out to its halo orbit around the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange point. With the Sun, Earth and Moon permanently blocked out,…

A ‘Time Variable’ Feature on Pluto?

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/08/25/a-time-variable-feature-on-pluto/

Published: August 25, 2026 13:57

With New Horizons now 63 AU out, it’s time to ponder that record hibernation period that the spacecraft just went through. Over 10 months long, this one had the same goal as previous such periods, to hold down operating costs but also give a break to…

The Limits of Understanding Between Species, and the Issue for Interstellar Communication

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/08/14/the-limits-of-understanding-between-species-and-the-issue-for-interstellar-communication/

Published: August 14, 2026 12:56

We’ve yet to find any evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth, a puzzling failure given the widespread belief that where habitable planets exist, life will somehow emerge. If we do receive a signal, though, would we be able to understand it? We’ve made…

The Ones Who Look Outward

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/08/06/the-ones-who-look-outward/

Published: August 6, 2026 13:02

Thinking about a great filter through which a civilization must pass before its survival is assured usually leads to catastrophic scenarios, such as planetary suicide by nuclear war, or climate holocaust (assuming the filter lies ahead of us and not…