Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

Epsilon Eridani is a K2 star about ten-and-a-half light years from Earth, a bit cooler than our sun Sol and quite a bit younger (estimated to be about 800 million years, compared to our 4,500 million years). It features briefly in my novel Venaticorum Archive. It’s nearest stellar neighbor is a binary pair of red dwarf flare stars, UV Ceti (also known as Luyten 726-8) at just over five light years, but Tau Ceti, home to Chris Roberts and the Port Skead spaceport in Venaticorum, is only a little further at five-and-a-half light years.

It’s been known since 1998 to have at least one planet.. Astronomers deduced the planet’s presence because of lumpiness in the cometary ring. As I write this on Oct 27 2008, NASA has anounced that observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that e Eridani has two asteroid belts, which strongly implies the presence of more planets.

The above diagram shows what we think we know, or think we know, about the system so far. None of that excludes the presences of smaller (Earth-sized) planets within the inner asteroid belt, closer to the star, because they’d be too small to detect.. My story isn’t obsolete yet. Because ε Eri (as it’s typically abbreviated) is cooler than our own sun, habitable planets would be closer. A planet at a distance equivalent to between Mercury and Venus would see ε Eri as about the brightness of our sun from Earth, although specific temperatures would depend on other factors too (greenhouse effect, for one).

There are other story implications. This being a young system with a lot of asteroidal material, and being young, there’ll be isotopes with relatively short half-lives that no longer exist (or exist in short supply) in the Solar system. Asteroid mining will be a major industry. Higher levels of background radiation will likely mean that life on the terraformed planet has mutated more than usual, with interesting results.

To be expanded.

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