Day 9
Alpha Centauri is the star system nearest to Earth. Actually it’s a binary star system, Alpha Centauri A and B, which revolve around each other. We see it from the southern hemisphere, where it is one of the pointer stars to the Southern Cross. The following is an excerpt from my YA novel, Far Out.
Alpha Centauri, Binary Star System
‘Nate already had his dinner when they arrived at the canteen and they joined his table. That night it was Fidget Pie: apple, onion and potato with the occasional strip of ham under a pastry crust. Jock had done local green chard, shredded and steamed, to go with it. It tasted divine and Saffron hoped she could learn to cook like Jock, if she was lucky enough to get the ingredients.
“Why is it called Alpha Centauri AB?” she asked Nate. She felt tingly and emotional around him and found it hard to concentrate on her food.
“It’s a binary star system. Two stars, A and B, rotate around each other and there’s a third, Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf, which belongs to the system. We’ve known about the planet Alpha Centauri Bb for a long time, and we’re searching for another exoplanet around Alpha Centauri A, which is a star in Band G of the main sequence.”
“Which means?”
“Which means it fits the criteria of a sun stable enough for organic life to thrive, however, even if we humans can’t get to Alpha Centauri B yet, it is only four point three seven light years away which makes it near enough to be a problem for us.”
“Why?”
“Because the servers can live indefinitely and the travel means nothing to them. They plan to make the servants launch a network to it and provided their space ship makes it, the network will establish itself on Alpha Centauri Bb and branch out from there.”
“Does it really affect us?”
Her father nodded and Nate explained. “If we allow the servers to contaminate our nearest habitable star system, mankind will never propagate into space. It’s us or them, Saffron.” He took a deep breath. “We have to stop them.” ‘
Moving House
Maybe mankind has decided it has trashed planet Earth so badly, it’s prompted us to hunt out new planets to trash with garbage, poisons and plastics. As a result, deep space exploration has become big business. The fact is, we have made exciting new discoveries of habitable, earth-like planets since I wrote this, in only a few short years. Alpha Centauri was considered to contain the nearest planet that might be habitable for humans. One of the most recent discoveries is a batch of ten, found by the NASA telescope earlier in 2017. (The TRAPPIST System.) On the other hand, man has been excited by exploration and adventure since the dawn of time. It’s in our nature, and it looks like our favourite science fiction writers might have been right after all.
Happy stargazing. It’s logical that our summer blog hop has long since finished, since October approaches at speed, but I thought I would finish the series anyway.
If you are interested, you can find the book FAR OUT on Amazon. Check out the links on the My Fiction page.
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