Ice Planets Moving Within Their Star's Habitable Zone Will Skip Habitability

It's bad news for Arthur C. Clarke today. Computer models now suggest that moons or planets composed mainly of ice that warm up as their star becomes more luminous with age will not become nice places to live.

It made a lot of sense, really. Oh, warm up the giant ice cube, then you've got a bunch of water. Unfortunately, it takes more energy to melt a planet covered in ice than what the Earth receives, and by the time the ice does melt, the combo of reduced surface albedo (how reflective the surface is), increased solar radiation, and water vapor's status as a potent greenhouse gas would lead to a very quick runaway greenhouse effect. You'd go from Europa to Venus in no time at all.

So for any monoliths hanging around, don't go transforming Jupiter into a star to help out that native Europan life. Turns out, they're better off as they are.

In completely unrelated news, my review for Atlantic City Country Club is coming along nicely, and it'll be done before the end of the month. Here's a little teaser of the sort of course we're dealing with.

Even if I hadn't been playing from the back tees, I would have on that hole.

Anyway, I'm going to make a commitment to doing a golf course review once a month from now on. I enjoy playing new golf courses, I enjoy taking pictures of golf courses, and I enjoy writing about them. Maintaining that schedule might get dicey over the winter, so hopefully I can build up a backlog so I don't have to go roaming for warm weather on the last weekend in January.