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A Weekend Away

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Having had enough of persistent ice and prolific snow, I have taken a weekend pass to travel to the Kepler 62 exoplanets in search of a more hospitable home.

How could I not be excited by Thursday’s NASA “rollout” of these beauties? Worlds slightly larger than Earth (more room for me!) are orbiting close enough to their suns to have liquid water – a necessary component to support Kardashian-based life forms like ours.

NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech
NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech

Yes, there could be creatures on these worlds as strange and puzzling as the ones that inhabit Earth. Even moreso, since some of the scientists examining the scant traces we have seen of these planets (virtually nothing but a blink) have supposed that they are “water worlds”, completely oceanic environments as inhospitable and off-putting as the Kevin Costner movie of the same name.

Could life-forms like us live in these places? We’ll probably never know, but Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said “it might even be cooler life than we have here. Looking at the oceans, we find a lot of interesting life-forms there.”

Perhaps some people will find that intriguing, though I’m the sort who doesn’t care for shellfish and cringes at anything slimy. On second thought, I’ll probably stay home.

But that’s before the marketing effort kicks in. I have no doubt the Kepler Exoplanet Resorts Corporation will find a way to spin the total absence of land, not-quite-powerful-enough sun, and arduous to-and-from travel times (1,200 light years!) into selling points.

After all, every vacation involves some heavy lifting. And if it was easy to go, everyone would already be there.

If you were a fish, what sort of fish would you be?

48 thoughts on “A Weekend Away”

  3. I buy stuff
    20 years ago at a garage sale there was this fish tank and all the stuff needed to be a fish guy and for 29 dollars I became a fish guy. Simple as that
    I went to the store and they said put water in in and wait a day a gallon for the water to be ok then try a couple hardy fish to begin your tank. I did and 20 years later I am a fish guy that knows a little more. Life is kind like that
    This blog is kind of like that
    The universe is kind of like that
    If you were a universe what kind of universe would you be

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  4. Good morning. The first one that sticks out for me, as a fish I would choose to be, is a sturgeon. They are a very amazing fish and are in danger of being wiped out in some places. Of course they are best know as producers of caviar, but their flesh is also good to eat. I ate grilled sturgeon in Azerbaijan when I was there as a volunteer in agriculture. It was very good. There are sturgeon in some lakes and streams in Minnesota. Sturgeon are large, live for a long time, and are protected in places where they are rare. Those might be some good reasons to choose to be a sturgeon.

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    1. When I was a kid my dad and one of his fishing pals landed a sturgeon while fishing in the St. Croix. We all stood around and looked at it awhile before they threw it back in the river. I don’t think they considered it edible – they were usually after walleye and northerns.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Given our present weather conditions, I would be a tropical fish living just off of Jamaica in a colorful reef in WARM water that reflects bright sun.

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  7. Can I choose to be another aquatic-based life form and be a sea turtle living someplace warmish like near Hawaii or the coast of Australia. Bonus: if I live past the first few years there’s a good chance I’d live to be hundreds of years old.

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  11. im thinking sailfish or killer whale (something a little dynamic) would be cool. something that seems to have a mission other than swimming around and hanging out. i think being put on the planet to eat poop and exist is kind of a simple life description. maybe it would be worth a shot.
    i never thought about fish until i got the aquarium. then my co worker would sit in front of the aquarium i get it but started to plug him to the aquarium program and he is a reader researcher kind of guy so we tried different stuff and some fish cant be tried with others so a new tank was called for. i am down to only 7 tanks now. 1 functioning salt water one in waiting. 5 freshwater tanks and the fish in there are not like pets but they are. you get accustomed to them in the same way as cats or dogs. they have their own little quirks and oddities.
    i love the exposure to the space stuff. i enjoy following the planet and star and moon stuff and have no other connection so thanks to dale i kinda get hooked in. keep it up dale. wonderful photography and interesting perspectives on whats going outside my world.

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    1. One of my favorite things when I was a kid was tropical fish. I kept many different kinds of them in my aquariums. I had 3 or 4 tanks. The tanks were not too large so I could only keep some of the smaller kinds including neons, zebras, guppies, angel fish, various ciclids, and some others. At one point I was starting to get set up to breed fancy guppies and somehow never manged to get that done. I did try to get the right mixture of fish, lighting, plants, and snails to keep my tanks well balanced.

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    1. There are rare blue suckers (and shovelnose sturgeon) in the Minnesota River. Fish biologists go nuts over these. They say they’re really cool.

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  18. I’d like to be a dolphin, as long as there are other dolphins to play with. But technically I suppose they’re mammals. I wouldn’t mind being something with flashy colors like you see in coral reefs… as long as the coral reefs last.

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  20. According to my sources we have the occasional birthday on the trail today. Happy birthday, Caroline. Hope you stop in to say hello, but even if you don’t, we wish you a grand day.

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    2. I think it’s actually Carolyn, as opposed to Occasional Caroline.

      Occasional Caroline is the one who lives in Chisago City and rides a motor scooter…Carolyn is the one who lives in Philadelphia and gave us the term “spiritual tithe” for the glossary. Like Donna, she doesn’t come around very much during the school year – I think she is a teacher or counselor.

      Happy Birthday Carolyn if you are peeking in!

      OC – I think we missed your birthday, but have a Happy Day anyway!

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      1. I was wondering, I don’t think I “know” Carolyn. Do we know when Caroline’s birthday is?
        Happy birthday, Carolyn.

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        2. I’m curious…I think I missed the list of birthdays. Is there a list that could be passed on to me?

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        3. Edith, I can forward on to you the spreadsheet that vs was kind enough to compile when we all wrote about our birthdays, back in 2011.

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  21. Greetings! I think I would like to be one of those large, colorful jellyfish. They’re so beautiful, ethereal and angelic-looking — but with just enough sting to keep bad guys away. Or I would like to be a dolphin — they’re so smart, fast, playful and fun. I realize that technically, neither of them are fish, but they both live in the ocean and that’s close enough for me.

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    1. If we can choose from all of the things that live in the sea, how about a giant squid? That would be a spectacular choice.

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