Wherever I May Blog

Where do you produce your best writing — at your desk, on your phone, at a noisy café? Tell us how the environment affects your creativity.

The best is always at my desk in my bedroom at home. Playing some music on the mp3 player (preferably instrumentals as I tend to pay too much attention to the lyrics), dressed in my undershirt and a lungi with the fan on full and the wind blowing in through the open windows.

But I have also had a great time blogging from a cafe with some delicious frappes and sandwiches to eat and fuel my as I wrack my grey cells to come up with a blog post content or two. I love blogging on my laptop from the cafes or even using my BlackBerry to blog using the amazing WordPress app. I think it depends more on you as a person noticing things and getting inspired to blog about what you have seen or if that gets you to think about something that sparks the creative juices. I’ve blogged from a bus, from a train, at the office and while sitting at a hospital. Anytime anywhere inspiration can hit.

Heck I’ve even blogged while sitting on the throne in the loo! Inspiration can strike you anytime!

Prompt from the Daily Post at WordPress.com.

Super-Earth & Candidate For Best Habitable Planet Found

Nearby super-Earth, Gliese 832c, might be the best habitable planet candidate so far, astronomers say. The newly found super-Earth has a mass at least five times that of Earth’s and the astronomers estimate it receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. On a clear night, you might be able to spot the red dwarf star Gliese 832 through a backyard telescope, as it is just 16 light years away. Today, astronomers announced the discovery of super-Earth planet orbiting this nearby star and say it might be the best candidate yet for habitable world.

Gliese 832c was spotted by an international team of astronomers, led by Robert A. Wittenmyer from UNSW Australia. They used high-precision radial-velocity data from HARPS-TERRA, the Planet Finder Spectrograph and the UCLES echelle spectrograph. This star is already known to have one additional planet, a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b, discovered in 2009. Since red dwarf stars shine dimly, the habitable zones around these stars would be very close in. Gliese 832c complies with an orbital period of 36 days (it’s orbital companion Gliese 832 b orbits the star in 9.4 years.)

The newly found super-Earth has a mass at least five times that of Earth’s and the astronomers estimate it receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. “The planet might have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts, given a similar terrestrial atmosphere,” says a press release from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory. “A denser atmosphere, something expected for Super-Earths, could easily make this planet too hot for life and a ‘Super-Venus’ instead.” “This makes Gliese 832c one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the ESI (i.e. with respect to Earth’s stellar flux and mass) and the closest one to Earth of all three, a prime object for follow-up observations. However, other unknowns such as the bulk composition and atmosphere of the planet could make this world quite different to Earth and non-habitable.”

In their paper, Wittenmyer and his colleagues noted that while Solar Systems like our own appear — so far — to be rare, the Gliese 832 system is like a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet. They added that the giant outer planet may have played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System. Certainly, astronomers will be attempting to observe this system further to see if any additional planets can be found.

From Universe Today.