At that range of semimajor axes, it's starting to overlap the protoplanetary disk gap population very nicely as well!

We can also make predictions for what we will be able to see if we have better stellar mass measurements: as Gavin points out, with those, it becomes possible to determine how important magnetohydrodynamic winds are for removing angular momentum from a disk.

The idea here was to take Gavin's large grid of disk models (which includes all kinds of physics for disk evolution, and crucially external photoevaporation), and see how the median disk mass evolves with external UV. It matches up really well to observational data in Orion: the environment matters!

I think adding stakes would make it a ho-ho, per Pratchett, but I am not a landscape architect.

Another argument against these things is that, if someone else's missile defense is 90% effective, you have no reason to not try it anyway and maybe blow up just one major city instead of ten, lowering the barrier to a nuclear exchange between superpowers.

It's lovely (and reminded me that everyone should know the doors to the Pantheon in Rome are, likely, the original bronze slabs (with later decoration) from 126ish).

Nederlandse F-35s zijn al gestationeerd in Polen in de context van de NATO, en hebben - volgens het laatste nieuws - ook concreet geholpen met het onderscheppen van deze drones.

That is indeed odd. If I understand correctly it's in an older moving group? Maybe it's just a lucky straggler; but I do wonder if the fact that it has formed a planet has been good for the disk's survival.

Dat is natuurlijk waar, maar hij zegt niet dat het direct moet. En door nu op te schieten met klimaatbeleid ontstaat ook ruimte voor de innovatie die op de langere termijn nog steeds nodig is.

But what if it's the opposite, and the aliens are testing humanity to see if we're rational enough as a species to not freak out at an interesting interstellar comet when we detect one!? At this rate he's actively chasing them off!